Each year around this time, we take a musical tour through Baseball's Hall of Names to ring in the new year -- and in fact, these tours have more commonly been New Year-themed (see Auld Lang Syne and Just Another New Year's Eve from years past). But before we completely run out of New Year's songs -- or have we already? -- let's back up a week and try our lyrical hand at Christmas. (We sort of did this a few years ago, but this is the first real attempt at a carol).
So with a nod to Gus, Buddy, David, Cool Papa and George (among others) -- or had you figured that out for the headline already? -- let's join together in a chorus of ...
Carol of the Bells
Carol of the Bells is
an adaptation of an ancient Ukrainian folk song called a "shchedrivka."
An arrangement by Mykola Leontovych (1877-1921) was popularized in the
1930's by Oleksander Koshyts (1875-1944), a Ukrainian choir director
who worked in the United States and Canada. It has since become a North
American Christmas classic.
Hark how the bells,
sweet silver bells,
all seem to say,
throw cares away
Christmas is here,
bringing good cheer,
to young and old,
meek and the bold,
ding dong ding
that is their song
with joyful ring
all caroling
one seems to hear
words of good cheer
from everywhere
filling the air
Oh how they pound,
raising the sound,
o'er hill and dale,
telling their tale,
Gaily they ring
while people sing
songs of good cheer,
Christmas is here,
merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,
merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,
on on they send ,
on without end,
their joyful tone to every home
dong ding dong ding, dong bong
Hitting (or missing) a few high notes ... Thanks as always to
the holiday miracle that is BaseballReference.com, without which the
entire concept of the Hall of Names -- and certainly these song
stylings -- would not be possible ...
The word "bring" links to 1958-61 RHRP Al Schroll because his middle
name was "Bringhurst" and thus it's the only return on a BBRef search
for "bring" ... Maybe this is a reach, but with nobody in baseball
history named "Throw," we had to either go with Bill Singer, "The
Singer Throwing Machine," (one of the greatest nicknames ever), leave
it blank, or -- as you see we chose to do, give the link to the
greatest baseball arm (non-pitching division) ever, Bob Clemente ...
Since
there's been nobody named "Cheer" (that actually surprised me), the
link goes to Charlie Hickman, who was nicknamed "Piano Legs," which
doesn't help us, but also "Cheerful Charlie," which definitely does ...
While
the various references to "ding" in the song led us to Craig Dingman,
the equally various references to "dong" led us only to Bill Bell --
hey, another Bell! -- whose nickname was "Ding Dong" ... He might have
covered both those words, but oddly enough, they never appear in that
order in the song itself ... I suppose we also could have reached for
Don Cullett (Don G. = "dong," get it?) ...
Is it too much of a reach to use "Thatcher" for "that" or 'Gaillard'
FOR "Gaily"? ... Every link in the song above leads to a page on BBRef
except one -- how could we not link to Sadaharu Oh for the word "Oh"? And that left us with his Wikipdedia entry ...
Homonyms
are okay here, so "Eyre" for "air" works just fine ... We are also
largely ignoring the standard "no first or middle name" rule -- you
should have gleaned that from the aforementioned link to Schroll -- but
there are other examples like Ona Dodd (who beat out Onix Concepcion
for link-to "On"ors) and Homer Bailey, who gets the "home" link over
Tom House -- for as anyone can tell you, not every House is a Home ...
There is nobody in baseball history named "Sound" or even "Noise," so
we are left with Baldy Louden -- got any other suggestions? Make them quietly ...
Wasn't sure what to do with the word "One" since the search returned mostly a bunch of O'Neill's
which is really off by an apostrophe ... Who's the greatest player to
ever wear the uniform #1? (Mags, you out there?) ... Couldn't come up
with anything clever or punny to link to from "everywhere" ... any
ideas, anyone?
We did limit ourselves to MLB players only
(with the exception of Oh), which led us to use Don Songer over the
wonderfully-named Seung Song
Art Merewether gets multiple links
because he was actually nicknamed "Merry" ... Yes, that's ex-Jay Robert
Person taking up the "people" link -- what's a pluralization among
friends at the holidays? ... As for the word "tale," again to my
surprise, there has never been a player named "Tale" or "Tail" or even
"Story," except in the minor leagues ... Speaking of a reach, the word
"raising" can be shortened to "rais" as in Tampa Bay's Rays ... no?
How else can we creatively fill in some of the blanks here, Bauxites. And one last thing ... Happy Halladays!
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