It was a beautiful late September day in Kansas City, temperatures in the high 70s, as a 27-year-old Chris Berman wandered around the Royals Stadium field. He didn’t quite know where he was supposed to be.
Berman, working for a relatively new sports-only channel called ESPN, was in town to cover the Royals series against the California Angels. The Royals were just a few games behind the Angels in the American League West division standings in the final week of the season. Berman was sent here because the NFL players had gone on strike a few weeks prior, and he needed something to cover in the fall of 1982.
Advertisement
He found himself around the batting cage when he struck up a conversation with George Brett, the Hall of Fame third baseman two years removed from an MVP season. Brett told Berman he enjoyed his work on ESPN and he was happy to see him, but he had a bone to pick with the broadcaster.
“We don’t seem to have a lot of nicknames on the Royals, and other teams have a lot more,” Brett said. “Is there a reason?”
Berman didn’t know what to say. He’d begun using nicknames for players on his overnight SportsCenter broadcast as a way to have a little fun, and now here was Brett — George Brett — asking him about it an hour and a half before a huge game.
“It’s a big pennant game, and I couldn’t believe he was worried about this,” Berman says, reflecting back.
Berman’s response? He didn’t want to insult players like Brett who were already on their way to the Hall of Fame before he arrived. He could have called him George “Wonder” Brett,” but who was Berman to put a goofy name on such a player at this stage in his career? He wasn’t going to say “Johnny ‘Park’ Bench” on air.
Brett asked Berman if he himself had a nickname. Berman said people at work had begun to call him “Boomer,” so Brett told Berman to come by his locker after the game, and Brett would have a new nickname for him.
Berman, now 66, has been at ESPN for all but the first month of its existence in 1979. He’s as synonymous with the Worldwide Leader as much as anyone. He’s still there, still crafting nicknames. With the NFL season upon us, he’ll begin his third season on the revamped NFL PrimeTime on ESPN+, alongside Booger McFarland for the second consecutive year.
For all of his accomplishments and accolades, of everything he’s known for, the nicknames have endured. Everyone who watched Berman in the 80s, 90s or 2000s has a favorite. There’s Eric “Sleeping With” Bieniemy. Bert “Be Home” Blyleven. Andre “Bad Moon” Rison. CC “Splish Splash I Was Taking” Sabathia. John “I Am Not A” Kruk.” It was a part of sports culture.
Advertisement
“I’ve had people call me that nickname now for decades,” says Bieniemy, now the Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator. “I’m just grateful and honored that Chris Berman took the time to consider making up a nickname.”
Berman essentially started the nickname gimmick because he was bored. In the spring of 1980, he anchored the 2 a.m. edition of SportsCenter and figured it would lighten the mood at a time when few people watched. His propensity for nicknames dated back to one summer as a camp counselor in Maine in his late teens, when he’d give kids in the bunk names like “Speedy.” Berman was fascinated by “Babe” Ruth or “The Say Hey Kid” Willie Mays. While a student at Brown in the 1970s, he pored through baseball box scores to follow the sport and came up with nicknames with his friends. Now on a national television broadcast, he put it to work.
The first one was pitcher Frank Tanana “Daquiri.” Or first baseman John Mayberry “RFD”, a reference to the short-lived CBS show from the 1970s. Berman doesn’t remember which was first, so he goes with both of them.
“They were the first two I think, and it came out by accident,” Berman says. “My producer was in my ear like, ‘What?’ I saw one of the camera people laughing. It’s 2:30 in the morning, so you’re a little off anyway. We went to commercial and in my gut I’m like, did you just do the equivalent of swearing on TV? You finish the show, drive home, thought about it the next day. You know, everybody kind of enjoyed it. Maybe when the opportunity presents itself, do a few more.”
Chris Berman and Buck Martinez at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, on scene for the game where Cal Ripken, Jr. surpasses Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played. (Photo by Scott Clarke / ESPN Images)Tanana, for his part, loved the honor.
“It flowed nicely,” he says. “I was Tanana Banana since I was two or three years old, so it was all cool.”
From there, Berman was off and running. Most were puns or play-on-words. Maybe it was a song. A movie. Or food. In his mind, he was reviving the glory years of nicknames in the early 1900s, like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, but in a fun way where everyone could participate. It focused heavily on baseball early, but when Berman took the lead on NFL PrimeTime alongside Tom Jackson in 1987, it really took off. NFL highlights were always a career goal, as Berman had admired Brent Musberger on The NFL Today pregame show on CBS. Before social media, SportsCenter and “PrimeTime” were must-watch shows for fans and players. Not only for the highlights but to see what anchors like Berman would say. It didn’t take long for Berman to be overrun with fan mail, viewers suggesting their own names. He used plenty of those.
Advertisement
“He would get mountains of mail,” says Tim Brando, a former SportsCenter anchor who now works for FOX Sports.
Berman didn’t want to force a name. Most popped into his head within a few seconds. He wouldn’t spend longer than 30 seconds thinking about it. He wasn’t staying up late to think of them. If he used one once and didn’t like it, he didn’t use it again. Like Tom “Heard It Through The” Glavine, when the future Hall of Fame pitcher was called up from the minors. Two weeks later, Berman learned how Glavine was actually pronounced (Gla-vin, not Glay-vine). He scrapped the name.
Music was a common theme, even if younger fans didn’t always get the references. That came from Berman’s love of music, dating back to his time as a radio disc jockey in Rhode Island. He recently guest-DJ’d an hour of No Shoes Radio on Sirius XM and discussed some of his sports nicknames. It could be a song from decades ago that still stuck because it rolled off the tongue, like Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake “Daylight Come And You Gotta” Delhomme.”
“Still to this day, people bring that up constantly,” Delhomme says. “People absolutely loved it. I get a kick out of that. This is my 10th season out, and people still bring it up. It was great. It was funny. He was so clever with those names. I thought it was awesome. Mine fit just right.”
Players loved them. As Delhomme pointed out, it usually meant you were making a good play in a highlight. Teammates would sometimes tease each other over their nicknames, but everyone was jealous if you had one. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers fullback Mike “You’re In Good Hands With” Alstott has a photo of himself, Berman and Warrick Dunn at the Pro Bowl holding out their hands like the Allstate logo still hanging on his wall.
“You talk about childhood dreams playing in the NFL, but being recognized by Chris Berman and having a nickname, having a picture with my running mate and him, posters made of it, it’s unbelievable,” Alstott says. (Somehow, he never got an Allstate sponsorship out of that).
Of the hundreds, maybe thousands, to chose from, Berman still believes his best is for pitcher Bert “Be Home” Blyleven.
Advertisement
“Every kid has heard it. Every parent said it,” Berman says. “It appealed to a lot of people.”
There’s a photo of that one, too. Berman and Blyleven both looking at their watches, but both men say their copy of the image is somewhere in storage.
“Every time I pitched, if it’s a 7 o’clock game, hell yeah, I wanted to be home by 11,” Blyleven says. “I didn’t want to be out there late at night. Chris is legendary with nicknames and how we had fun with it. That’s all it was. It was fun. There wasn’t a negative with what Chris brought to the show. It was always a positive. That’s what sports is supposed to be.”
But not everyone at ESPN thought so.
Just as the nicknames were taking off, they stopped. In September 1985, SportsCenter’s new executive producer, Jack Gallivan, told Berman he couldn’t do the nicknames anymore. It was just something the executive didn’t want to have. Berman didn’t get it. He would’ve understood if he’d gone too far and he needed to cut back. But it was a stop, cold turkey, three weeks before the baseball season ended. He did as he was told. He even backed off nicknames that weren’t his. New York Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson became “William Wilson,” just to make a point.
He reversed it to have some personal fun. “We’re only asking Chris to moderate his use of nicknames,” Gallivan told the Los Angeles Times that year. “We want to establish SportsCenter as a show of record, and we don’t think nicknames fit in with hard, Page 1 sports news. We’re not censoring Chris. We’ll still let him do nicknames in special features pieces. … We also think there is a lot more to Chris Berman than just his nicknames, and we want to play to his strengths. ”As the 1985 baseball season wound down, Berman called Brett to wish him and the Royals luck in the playoffs. Berman mentioned he was told to cut out the nicknames, and Brett was apoplectic.
Speaking to reporters before the next playoff game, Brett ripped the decision in front of reporters, who didn’t know what he was talking about. But it became news because Brett said it. “There was a frickin’ outcry,” Berman says. “ESPN told me in the ’80s they’d never gotten more negative mail over anything else. It became a big deal.”
Advertisement
“This is getting bigger than I hoped,” Gallivan told the Austin American-Statesman that October. “The mail we’ve received is universally opposed to my move.” By the start of the next baseball season, the producer situation changed and the nicknames came back. “It was just an organic thing that happened,” Berman said. “The fans probably saved them. George lit a fire and the fans saved them.”
Those who work with Berman get a kick out of them. There’s no doubt he enjoyed the notoriety, but it was about having fun.
“It was like he wanted to create nicknames for all of us,” Brando says. “It wasn’t just people in sports. It was people in the newsroom, production assistants. Everybody had a nickname. It caught on to a point where, if you didn’t have one, you felt like you were an outcast. It was very real, very honest.”
Chris Berman, Steve Young and Booger McFarland on set after Super Bowl LV (Photo by Allen Kee / ESPN Images)Berman’s co-host now is a man who was nicknamed “Booger” as a child. Booger McFarland joined Berman on the revamped NFL PrimeTime last year and will do so again this fall. As an NFL player, McFarland watched Berman on the very show he now hosts. If a player got a nickname from Berman, that felt cool. It gave that player more attention.
Now a broadcaster, McFarland sees up close how it comes together. Berman’s on-air role at ESPN was reduced in 2017, but he convinced executives to bring back “PrimeTime” for ESPN+ in 2019, and he received another contract extension this past May. It’s been 40 years, but he’s still coming up with new names. There’s quarterback Gardner “Min-, Min-, Min-SHEW” like a sneeze, or wide receiver “AB” CeeDee Lamb. McFarland doesn’t want to know the names ahead of time. He enjoys hearing them in the moment.
“It’s a treat watching how he goes about creating and doing highlights,” McFarland says. “Any person that’s great at their craft, preparation is key. Watching games on Sunday, watching his wheels turn, he’s taking notes, thinking out loud, bouncing ideas off us. Once the highlight starts, his ability to ad-lib and never lose composure is one of the most organic and fun things to watch. I’m in awe at how he does his job.”
Back on that late September day in Kansas City in 1982, Brett drove in the winning run as the Royals inched closer to the Angels in the standings, and reporters wanted to talk to him about it. Halfway through his answer, Brett looked up and spotted Berman. He’d promised a nickname for Berman after the game, and he’d figured one out.
Advertisement
“Ethel Merman Berman!” Brett exclaimed in the middle of an answer. “I told you I’d have one.”
Eh. It could have been workshopped a bit more, but one could forgive Brett for having his focus elsewhere. The situation was a little embarrassing for Berman, but it was the moment he realized this whole nickname game might have some legs. Four decades later, it’s still running.
(Top photo by MSA/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kXBtbmhianxzfJFqZmlwX2Z%2FcLXFZrCorV2ZtqW602afmq6VYryvsYyypq5llpq5tXnLoqKeZamkwm7DxKucZpmeYry2wMKaqq1lp53GbrPErauippdirm66yJyip5mdmnqnvs6mZJygop7Abq7Eq6Sapl2srrR5wKebZquknrmtecisZK2glWLCrcDIppitnV2osqK4jKidZpmgpb%2BwwsClZg%3D%3D