On the Ball and Off the Wall: The name game

This column is for non-sports fans who would like some enlightenment and hopefully humor beyond being sports fanatics.

Years ago, OTB&OTW did a name game of the weirdest names in college basketball. Thanks to the COVID pandemic, the national magazines that supplied those candidates are virtually nonexistent, so we will try our best to keep up, extending into professional soccer leagues, where insanity and wit still prevail.

The local winner was and still remains the Providence College basketball star, God Shammgod. You just can’t make that up, but evidently his mother, right after giving birth and highly sedated, thought otherwise. And URI’s current hoopster Fatts Russell deserves a nod, but nicknames just don’t count.

But through the course of the years, there have been some eternal honorees. To wit, Napoleon Lightning and Elvis Old Bull among the dignitaries.

And as a sidebar, a good friend of ours in California who played minor league ball in the Dodgers’ organization, had a dazzling high school teammate who changed his name to Marvel Champion, and from all accounts lived up to his personal ambitions, despite smoking perhaps a bit too much SoCal weed off the diamond.

But no one can touch the Mapp brothers duo who went to the University of Virginia to play hoops. They were — wait for it — Majestic Mapp, and his brother, Scientific Mapp. Now those parents are some folks you would want to invite to a dinner party.

So as enjoyable as those players are, we’ll switch over to international soccer. We have always had a soft spot in our heart for the much-travelled Nacho Navas. But he must give way to this year’s winner, Marvelous Nakamba, of England’s Premier League team, Aston Villa. Say all you want about him playing a horrible game, but that “Marvelous” sets you back a bit.

Finally, speaking of English soccer, the fans are known for their non-stop chants during a game, and outlandish team “anthems.” As a fan of London’s West Ham United, we were shocked that their team song was “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” not exactly designed to intimidate rivals in anybody’s book.

But the best chant we ever heard was by the fans of Everton, one of Liverpool’s two top teams. It was directed to a Korean player who was one of their favorites — believe it or not — but carrying the weight of his country’s taste for eating dogs. (Full disclosure – We have eaten dog in Indonesia at a friend’s house. Think of carrying your wallet in your back pocket all day in 100 degree heat and humidity, then taking it out and chomping down on a piece of it. You get the idea. And there is a widely held belief that black dogs taste much better than white dogs. So if you are ever driving through villages in Southeast Asia and see dogs milling about, remember they are not cute house pets, rather future dinners.)

But we digress. The chant for Everton’s Korean star went as such:

He shoots!

He scores!

He eats a labrador!

Tasteful in so many ways, n’est-ce pas?

Sleep tight, Majestic and Scientific. We love you.