The mirror., 1922-03-30
LEAGUE CLUBS SOBRIOUETS
CONTINUED from page I

0naIly was CONDENSED 10 DOuScIS, anu
today is the standard nick name for the
club.
When Ned Hanlon won pennants for
Brooklyn in 1899 and 1900 the Brook
lyns were known as Hanlon's Superbas, but
the name "Superbas" since has disappeared.
Since Robinson became manager of the
team, the Brooklyn team occasionally has
been known as "the Robins" but the rather
foolish sobriquet of Dodgers continues to
get the call.
We venture to say there isn't single
member of the Yankees, who knows how
his club got to be called "Yanks." We
doubt if more than fifteen people know
how the New York Americans got their
present nick name.
When the American League first in
vaded New York in 1908, they pitched
their camp in an undeveloped section in
the Washington Heights district of New
York, in what is the highest point of Man.
haitian Island. The American League
park became known as "the Hilltop" and
the team as "the Highlanders" and "Hill-
toppers."
Both names were very awkward to put
into newspaper head lines. Finally the
sporting editor of one of the New York
evening papers exclaimed: "The H
with this Highlanders; am going to call
this team, the Yanks;' that will fit into
a head better"
Sam Crane, who wrote baseball on the
same sheet, began speaking of the team as
"the Yankees" and "Yanks." When other
sporting editors saw how much easier
"Yanks" fitted into top lines of head,
they, too, discarded the cumbersome
"Highlanders," name which never was
popular with the fans.
After the Yankees left their hilltop
heath in 1912, and moved down to the
Harlem lowlands on the Polo Grounds,
the name "Highlanders" lost all of its
significance, and has been dropped entire
ly. The name, Yankees, which once was
selected to fill head, now is emblazoned
on the windows of the Fortysecond Street
Office of the New York Americans.
The nick name Chicago White Sox,"
of course, was taken from the old Chicago
White Stockings of an earlier era, and i'm
mediately sprang into favor. When the
Cubs of the nineties discarded their white
hosiery, Comiskey appropriated the name
for his Aemrican League team, when he
bucked Harris team in Chicago in 1900,
abbreviating the word stockings" to Sox.
No name in the American League ever
took such hold as did the White Sox.
As already written, the name of Mack's
Philadelphia team is officially "the Ath-
letic Club of Philadelphia" and the club
properly is called "Athletics" in the stand
ing of the clubs.
In Philadelphia, John McGraw is Gre
dited with giving the Athletics their other
nick name, "the White Elephants" Early
in the American League fight, McGraw
was manager and part owner of the new
Baltimore American League team. At a
meeting of the league, McGraw was
quoted as saying: "You will find that the
Athletics will be a white elephant on our
hands,"
Shibe and Mack liked the word, and
said: Cali right, we'll be the White Ele-
plants"
Ever since the white elephant has been
the clubs favorite quadruped.
Like the Chicago White Sox, the Boston
Red Sox took their name from the old
Boston Red Stockings. However, the club
has been known as the "Red Sox" for only
ten years. Before that they were the Pill
grims, Puritans and Beaneaters In 1912,
the club selected "Red Sox" as its nick