Some of the best in baseball have nicknames. Some just have cool names, like former ‘80’s Oakland A’s pitcher Tom Tellmann, whose name sounds like a fairy tale character, or the palindrome club of Toby Harrah, Mark Salas, Robb Nen, and Dave Otto amongst others – whose names spell the same thing forward and backward.
But it is the nicknames that tend to stick, like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, or Stan “The Man” Musial, Ted “The Splendid Splinter” Williams, and most especially Baltimore’s own George Herman “Babe” Ruth, not to forget John Wesley “Boog” Powell and Don “Stan the Man Unusual” Stanhouse.
Then there are those who get a theme song. The Oakland A’s play “One” by Metallica for their closer Grant Balfour, while Mitch Williams, former Phillies closer, got “Wild Thing” and even at the All-Star game Mariano Rivera, baseball’s greatest closer, got his normal “Enter Sandman” also by Metallica.
The current O’s have Chris “Crush” Davis, but after that, things get iffy. With the on-off struggles of closer Jim Johnson, who was denied an All-Star appearance despite leading the MLB in saves due to six blown saves and a poor won-lost record, maybe all Johnson needs is a little motivation.
How about a nickname and some theme music? Interestingly enough, it’s all sitting there in one place for Johnson: the movie “Phantasm.”
Now technically Johnson has a nickname already, “JJ,” but it’s not very good. Not really. When you consider that the O’s have a player already named JJ (Hardy) the nickname JJ is not a particularly good choice, though it certainly makes sense.
But “The Tall Man” is better. Consider the similarities: Johnson, like Phantasm actor Angus Scrimm is pretty tall – Johnson is 6’6” to Scrimm’s 6’4” though he was even taller in the movies due to the shoes he wore.
Johnson and Scrimm both have a mean scowl – “The Tall Man” when he’s about to kill someone with his infamous metal spheres and Johnson when he’s on the mound.
They both throw things at their “victims” – for Johnson, well-placed fastballs, Scrimm’s “Tall Man” those blood-sucking metal spheres.
The music is a perfect fit too. For Rivera, “Enter Sandman” usually signals a horror story for opposing batters (and their bats). For Johnson, it could be the “Phantasm” theme, one of the horror genre’s best and most recognizable.
Though Johnson, unlike Scrimm, has never won a Grammy Award (which Scrimm won in the 70’s for Best Album Notes) and is a few decades younger than Scrimm (now 86), the movie version of “The Tall Man” definitely fits Johnson.
Scrimm is still very popular at horror conventions even today, and is still making movies, including an appearance in “Phantasm” creator Don Coscarelli’s “John Dies at the End,” out this year.
Johnson, who the O’s hope will create come horror stories for opposing batters rather than for his own teammates (like the 3-run lead he blew earlier this year in Toronto) likely has quite a few more appearances in him this season.
So, perhaps it’s a match made in Heaven…er, Hell. What say you O’s? How about a new theme for the O’s “Tall Man?”
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One Response
This is an excellent idea. I would fully support Johnson getting this nickname and using the Phantasm’s theme music.