First off, since this post is occasioned by today's Baseball Hall of Fame vote, SC wishes to congratulate Tony Gwynn, his favorite player growing up. In college, your host decorated his room with just two posters. Tony at the bat was one.
While reading through the transcript of a chat that baseball writer Rob Neyer did today for ESPN.com on the occasion of the aforementioned Hall of Fame vote, SC came across a humorous gem he has to share:
Craig (Minneapolis, MN): Your opinion...biggest name missing from the HoF
Rob Neyer: William Van Landingham.
No, but seriously folks . . . Aside from Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, the biggest omission at this point probably is Ron Santo, followed by Blyleven and Gossage. Santo's one of the 10 best third basemen ever, Gossage was a lot better than Sutter, and Blyleven's record speaks loudly for itself.
Biggest name. Heh. Although that got SC to wondering; when Mr. Neyer made that joke, did he actually know whether or not there was a name of equal or greater length in the Hall already? So your host looked it up. The longest name of any inductee -- albeit not a player -- is the commissioner who cleaned up the game the first time it needed rescuing, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, at 21 characters (not including spaces). Mr. Van Landingham, a pitcher SC recalls as an opponent of the Padres in the mid-'90s (he played for the Giants), checks in with a mere 20 characters -- but if we're going to cite Judge Landis' middle name, we have to do the same thing for Mr. v.L., which buys him 6 more (Joseph). However, then we have to ask about full names more generally, not just the citation forms used on the page. And there's a Hall of Famer with a 26 or 27 character name, depending on how you count it -- Martin Magdaleno Llanos Dihigo. SC says "depending on how you count" because while the "ll" in "llanos" is typed with two separate characters, it's considered a single character in the Spanish alphabet (and pronounced "ey.ye", distinct from the "one-l" "e.le"). And then it turns out that "Rabbit" Maranville has them both beat with 28 characters in his full name, Walter James Vincent Maranville.
Of course, Mr. Neyer's joke wasn't meant to suggest that William Van Landingham had a longer name than anyone currently enshrined, but rather than anyone not enshrined. And there are just too many former players -- and not nearly enough curiosity on SC's part -- to go looking into that one (although if you care to, a good place to start might be here).
I went to school with William Van Landingham, and his brother. I'm always hoping for "longest player name in MLB history" as a trivia question.
Posted by: Chris | January 10, 2007 at 01:11 AM