THE BOYS OF AUTUMN or WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Boston, Schmoston... A report from the Arizona Fall League... observations on names and titles that will make you.... wince...

THE BOYS OF AUTUMN or WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Every time I go to a game, I come up with all sorts of ideas for a blog. Observations, stupid people, funny happenings... but then I always forget by the time I get home. I should really carry a notebook. I'd take my laptop, but with my luck it would get hit by a foul ball.

The Arizona Fall League has some interesting team names. Scorpions, Solar Sox, Javelinas, Saguaros, Rafters, and Desert Dogs. Sometimes there are exhibition games, and last Friday afternoon I saw Team China play the Phoenix Desert Dogs.

There's sure a lot less arguing with the umpires when they don't speak the same language. But I've learned that looking the umpire right in the eyes, while shrugging one's shoulders in an exaggerated manner with the hands held palm up is evidently the international gesture for, "You called THAT a strike?"

I know, it's so wrong, but some of the players' names made me hungry for Chinese Food. I just couldn't help it, I was hungry and I refuse to buy ballpark food in a place where they don't let you bring your own. It's a matter of principle. I don't have many, but that's one of them. I refuse to be extorted for food money.

Then there was the guy sitting behind us who told his companion, in all seriousness, "Today my name is Steven," and the other man says, "OK." Luckily they were SEVERAL ROWS behind us.

It really made me think about names, though. Today I noticed some names on the backs of the Scottsdale Scorpions, my home team. The manager's name is HALE, which is good, because you wouldn't a manager who was feeling puny. I think NOWAK should be a pitcher, not an infielder. Then there was NICKERS.... I hope he doesn't get his in a bind. And LIVESLY... it's always good to "look alive out there!"

Movies have names, or rather they have titles. And sometimes the title and the movie really fit together, like The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Independence Day. The Terminator. Air Force One. Good titles for good movies. Sometimes good movies have lame titles, and vice versa. The American President... decent movie, lame name. Because I Said So... funny title, lame movie.

I thought Attack of the Clones was a dumb name, because that wasn't what the movie was really about. But that may be a leftover from that old idea we all had back in the 1977 that "the clone wars" were fought about cloning or the ethics of cloning, not that they were fought BY clones. Not that that doesn't bring up a lot of ethics questions in itself, but I'm here to talk names.

There's a big difference in names between Jedi and Sith, too. I'm a member of The Jedi Assembly costuming group. We all have Jedi names. They're supposed to be "other worldly" which sometimes just means a weird spelling or letter combination, or the liberal use of the hyphen. "Granny-Wan" is OK for the forum, but it's not acceptable as a Jedi name.

I guess the Jedi have names that are from their home planets. Like Ki-Adi-Mundi, perhaps everyone on his planet has a double hyphen, and folks from Yoda's neck of the galaxy have only one name.

The Sith like to make their names sound nasty. Bane, Maul, Vader, Sidious, Tyranus, Plagueus. Things to which you won't wish to cuddle up. Darth Fluffy just wouldn't have the same effect as a man named after a deadly contagious disease.

According to the old man in "Logan's Run" a cat has three names. His official name, the name you call him, and his real name, the one he won't tell you. Not long after the release of ROTS, we had a litter of kittens born at our house. The striped one was Sith Lightning; the black one was Vader, Dark Lord of the Hiss; and the one with blue eyes is Obi-Wan Katnobi.

They were soon shortened to Stripes, Vader and The Ob-ster... I still have him with me, and I still don't know his real name...

As far as blogging ideas that occur while I'm away from the PC, maybe someday I will take the laptop along and blog from the ballpark. Then people will be looking at me funny instead of the other way around.