If you look at the Athletics franchise career leaders in OPS and OPS+, you’ll find a bunch of Hall-of-Famers (Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Reggie Jackson, Rickey Henderson), a few Hall-of-Juicers (Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi), a couple of classic baseball names (Matt Stairs, Gene Tenace), and…Bob Johnson.
Bob Johnson is largely forgotten in Athletics lore. His name appears in the top ten of nearly every batting category in franchise history, so being forgotten hardly seems a fair fate. He played 10 years with the A’s, averaging 25 homers and 104 RBI. His career rate stats were .296/.393/.506. So why is he forgotten?
Part of it is that he started late; he was 27 years old in his rookie season, and he never accumulated the kind of career totals that would make him a Hall-of-Fame candidate.
But I think a lot of the reason is because his name was "Bob Johnson". Johnson had a nickname, "Indian Bob", from his 1/4 Native American lineage. But that’s not the kind of nickname we repeat in these days of political correctness. So he remains "Bob Johnson", a name that could not be better chosen to blend into the background and fade from attention.
* * *
Daric Barton made his major league debut this week, and has impressed mightily. So far, he’s hitting .353/.450/.471. Those numbers are positively Bob Johnsonesque! Barton’s debut is probably the second-most exciting thing to happen to the team all year. The kid can hit. Dan Johnson’s days as Oakland’s first baseman are numbered.
And yet, Dan Johnson is the source of the most exciting thing I’ve heard all year: he got a nickname. Dan Johnson has one of the few names that could possibly surpass Bob Johnson in forgettability. In ten, fifteen years, will anyone remember Dan Johnson and his brief tenure in Oakland? Certainly not, especially if we keep calling him "Dan Johnson".
But now there’s this: apparently, Marco Scutaro was recently making fun of Johnson for the way he was chasing down a popup in Oakland’s large foul territory, saying he ran after it like a crab. A nickname was born: Dan "Crab-Man" Johnson.
I hereby declare a new law: Dan Johnson shall be henceforth be called "Crab-Man Johnson" in all forms of conversation. Anyone who fails to use the nickname shall receive a $100 fine. All in favor, say aye!
Dan Johnson was just passing through, a forgettable face in the crowd, in a forgettable year for the franchise. But Crab-Man Johnson is a classic baseball name that will likely live forever. It leaves a smile on my face. This season shall not have been in vain.
1. I think a lot of the reason is that Johnson got there just after Foxx, Cochrane, Grove, Simmons et al left, and the A's starting losing 90 games every year until Eddie Joost (another forgotten Athletic) showed up.
2. I think a lot of the reason is that Johnson got there just after Foxx, Cochrane, Grove, Simmons et al left, and the A's starting losing 90 games every year until Eddie Joost (another forgotten Athletic) showed up.
3. I hope comments 1 and 2 above are not technical glitches but the never-varying double-posting policy of the aptly named doppelganger.
How could I not have a firm idea of who Bob Johnson is? I guess I must have read a profile of Bob Johnson somewhere in Bill James' historical abstract. I wonder if there are more guys like him from the hitting-rich '30s who have been more or less lost to time. To the baseball encyclopedia!
Also, "Crab Man" is an oft-uttered nickname on a current popular TV comedy. Any chance of getting the nickname to evolve to the still colorful (and more seedily ambiguous) "Crabs"?
4. 3 I don't watch any current popular TV comedies, so I was not aware of it being oft-uttered. 'Tis a shame, because we don't want his nickname to be oft-uttered in other contexts.
On the telecast last night, they offered the alternative "Crabber Johnson". That would work for me, too. "Crabs Johnson" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, with that heavy consonant cluster in the middle.
5. My first thought was of the Bob Johnson who played mostly for the Orioles and Senators in the 60's. I kind of remembered him playing a little for the A's and I was trying to remember if he was that good of a player to be one of the best in the franchise history. I knew he wasn't that good.
I remember reading a little of the "real" Bob Johnson but I didn't remember him being an Athletic.
6. 3
My first comment wasn't showing up, so I assumed it was a glitch and posted again, and then they both showed up.
7. 6 : Ah. Yeah, that's happened to me, too.
8. 6 Ah, my first post bug. I've never been able to track that one down, because it only happens sometimes. If it happened every time, I'd be able to trace it more easily. The cache is supposed to clear after every new comment so the page will refresh, but after the first post it doesn't always happen for some reason.
So if a first comment doesn't show up, you can just wait, the post is there, and it will show up later, when cache eventually clears.
9. Bob Johnson is, of course, one of my favorite Above Average Players That Are Relatively Obscure thanks to their bland name/the fact that they played on a middling team/playing in the long-ago time (or a combination of all three). The others:
* Cy Williams of the 1920s Phillies: His numbers were probably inflated by the Baker Bowl, but still was among the league leaders in home runs for most of the 20s.
* Ken Williams: No, not the mercurial White Sox GM, but the St. Louis Brown who managed to become even more obscure by playing on the same team as George Sisler. Special tip to anyone who plays Sports Illustrated dice baseball -- while others might flock to the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants or other glamour franchises, you can rack up some serious win totals with the Browns-Orioles all-time team by making sure to give regular starts to Ken Williams and Baby Doll Jacobsen in your outfield.
* Buddy Lewis -- Good hitter on some fairly forgetable Washington teams.
10. Cy Williams was also regarded as one of the worst fielders of his era.
11. Dan Johnson, the .236-hitting 1B is dead to me.
Since being christened, Crab-Man is now 4-for-9 with 2 HR and a 2B.
12. Dan Johnson already has a nickname give to him by Scott Hatteberg. When Johnson came up, he hounded Hatteberg with questions about the game so incessently that Scott gave him the name "Band Camp", after the character in the movie "American Pie" who wouldn't stop telling stories about her time at camp, and began each story with "One time, at Band Camp, ..."
He also enjoys some notoriety for being blamed for the A's moving to Fremont in the youtube video "Ghostriding a Volvo". check it out if you haven't:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlTvSUCCqPo