Rubes

[7nohitter]

Why were so many players in the early part of the century named, or nicknamed, Rube?

I mean between Foster (black and white), Walker, Marquard, Wadell, Dahlberg, etc. the name seems to appear on almost every major league roster!

[HRBAKER]

I have always been told it was sort of a colloquial term for anyone from the "country."

[Jantz]

Same can be said with the nickname of Heinie.

Quite a few ball players with that moniker.


Jantz

[ScottFandango]

thats like asking why so many of their wives were named AGNES

names go in and out of style...

for instance, there are many scotts on this board but NO scotts in my kids elementary school....scott is a dead name

[tbob]

I just had a conversation about this the other day, how parents no longer have kids named Bob, Tom, Bill, Mary, Sue, or Linda or any of the other popular names of the past. Everyone wants to name their kids for celebrities or Biblical figures and a lot of the names are spelled (?) phonetically or just plain incorrectly, i.e. Ashlie, Ashlee, Ashllee etc. instead of Ashley, etc.

[prewarsports]

There were probably 100,000 guys in America nicknamed "Rube" back then, it was a derogatory yet somewhat socially acceptable term for "country boy" at the time. Similar in some ways to "redneck" or something today but society has changed in the way people address each other so informally or impolitely(unless you are a rapper). It had nothing to do with baseball. There could be "rubes" as a group as well (pluralized).

On the other end of the spectrum, "Heinie" was a nickname if your first name was Henry, it has no negative connotations that I know of.

The other really popular nickname not mentioned is "Deacon". That was just for someone who either abstained from drinking/smoking/swearing or all of them for religious reasons which REALLY stood out in the game of baseball back then. There were at least 50 "Deacons" who played Baseball before WW2 including Phillippe, Everett Scott etc.

Rhys