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Ah, I was going to stay away from this thread but it appears that Mr. Schimpf and I are actually in agreement about something. That alone warrants my responding to this thread.
There are a lot of nicknames for ballplayers throughout the history of the game. Some were definitely racial slurs that are, in retrospect, particularly appalling. Lots of darker complected players were given derisive nicknames, including Babe Ruth. Nig Clark was certainly not named Nigel and the nickname was absolutely a derogating reference to his skin color.
So many nicknames were just mean spirited. Arguably, locker room humor run amok. One that really bothers me personally is KiKi Cuyler. The man was shy and retiring and stuttered which is how that moniker arose. Pure meanness.
One could also argue that baseball back then was closer to warfare where heckling the opposing players was just a pervasive part of the game, and any perceived difference was fair game for heckling. And then, as Hittmen's correctly notes, the sports writers were also nstrumental in assigning, often brutal, nicknames to players, just to sell papers.
But these nicknames are what they are. I don't support the cancel culture that has taken hold in our country and its ties to CRT, which is just socially re-engineered Marxism, and is designed to inculcate self-hatred in Caucasians and promote social divisiveness.
There is great danger in attempting to cancel history, as Santayana cogently pointed out. From that perspective, it seems to me, most important to recognize and acknowledge that history, and learn from mistakes that were made. So no, it is not time to reinvent the past by doing away with historical nicknames that are generally deemed offensive by today's standards, but which particularly enrage the would be cultural revisionists.
There are a lot of nicknames for ballplayers throughout the history of the game. Some were definitely racial slurs that are, in retrospect, particularly appalling. Lots of darker complected players were given derisive nicknames, including Babe Ruth. Nig Clark was certainly not named Nigel and the nickname was absolutely a derogating reference to his skin color.
So many nicknames were just mean spirited. Arguably, locker room humor run amok. One that really bothers me personally is KiKi Cuyler. The man was shy and retiring and stuttered which is how that moniker arose. Pure meanness.
One could also argue that baseball back then was closer to warfare where heckling the opposing players was just a pervasive part of the game, and any perceived difference was fair game for heckling. And then, as Hittmen's correctly notes, the sports writers were also nstrumental in assigning, often brutal, nicknames to players, just to sell papers.
But these nicknames are what they are. I don't support the cancel culture that has taken hold in our country and its ties to CRT, which is just socially re-engineered Marxism, and is designed to inculcate self-hatred in Caucasians and promote social divisiveness.
There is great danger in attempting to cancel history, as Santayana cogently pointed out. From that perspective, it seems to me, most important to recognize and acknowledge that history, and learn from mistakes that were made. So no, it is not time to reinvent the past by doing away with historical nicknames that are generally deemed offensive by today's standards, but which particularly enrage the would be cultural revisionists.
Last edited by The Last Druid on Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.