R.I.P Creativity

We live in a very unimaginative society.
The “Lord of the Rings” was conceived over 50 years ago, P. Diddy gets rich off of ripping great riffs from artists of the past, and the books we read are not wonderfully wrought pieces of prose but instead “The South Beach Diet” and Dr. Phil’s teachings.
We live in a very unimaginative society.
Now this lack of creativity has seeped its miasma of mundaneness into the sports realm in the form of nicknames. A lack of clever, tongue-in-cheek, giggle escapes every time you pronounce them and let them roll off your tongue like Scripture nicknames.
Babe Ruth acquired them: “The Sultan of Swat,” “The Colossus of Clot,” “The Great Bambino” even “Babe” was not his given name. Baseball itself collected nicknames (notice the past tense): “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, “Joltin’” Joe DiMaggio, Ted “The Splendid Splinter” Williams, Lou “The Iron Horse” Gehrig, the list is endless.
Today’s nicknames in baseball give off a raunchy odor of mediocrity. When Mark McGwire broke the single season homerun record all we could do was meet capitalism halfway by naming him “Big-Mac.” Clever, really clever.
Finally, Alex Rodriguez was lifted out of Hell and into the baseball version of Heaven. The nickname that has been tacked on him for a while is “A-Rod.” Whoa. Mrs. Jones’ second grade class needs to be credited for fueling the creative juices behind this nickname.
The best pitcher in baseball, Pedro Martinez, gets no nickname. The Atlanta Braves are about as void of nicknames as Iraq is of WMD’s.
The new king of the long ball can do anything in the sport except get a quality nickname. Sorry Mr. Bonds.
Basketball is no different. Apologies Mr. Duncan, Mr. Garnett (KG doesn’t count), Mr. Bryant and Mr. McGrady (T-Mac is pathetic).
Can’t we learn a lesson from the old school nicknames? Dr. J, George “Iceman” Gervin, “Magic” Johnson and let’s not forget Charles “Round Mound of Rebound” Barkley. That one elicits a belly-shaking chuckle.
The virus has spread to football and hockey. Terrell Owens is called “T.O.,” (which brings up a yawn of mediocrity) but Michael Vick, Brett Favre, Donovan McNabb, Ray Lewis and Jamaal Lewis are all left out in the nickname cold.
The only hockey player that comes to mind who has been bestowed with a nickname is Wayne “The Great One” Gretzky. The lesson here: only the greatest player to ever play hockey can get a nickname, albeit a weak one.
So, what caused this lack of originality? You got me. What caused this lack of originality in sports? One person: Michael Jordan.
Yes, Jordan, the player whose propulsion toward godlike status started right around the death of the nickname.
Jordan swept through sports like the tornado out of the “Wizard of Oz.” He excited the new school liberals and terrified the old school conservatives with his tongue wagging maneuvers. After he left, the landscape was changed, virtually unrecognizable. One of those changes was a void. A tiny one. A nickname one.
Sports writers and the guys on ESPN failed to create a catchy nickname. Oh, we tried — Air Jordan, MJ — but he was so good, so hard to pin down with a label that we quit. The sports world was KO’d by a 6’6″ guy who didn’t even make his high school basketball team. Ever since the Jordan tornado people have stopped trying, stopped thinking, stopped invoking the help of the muses a la Homer to create a nickname.
Jordan did wonders for basketball, for sports in general, and now the throne has been bequeathed to Lebron. Lebron is Miles Davis in terms of improvisational movements and he is turning into a tornado that will once again scare little Dorothy. He will do much to further the marketability of the NBA; he will do much to fill the stands in Cleveland and the cities the Cavs visit. But will he be able to resurrect nicknames? “King James” is not a good start.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 2 2004. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry