Benny Bengough

[asoriano]

Originally Posted by JustinD

From his SABR bio:

"As newcomers to the Yankees, Bengough and young Lou Gehrig were assigned to room together. The two ex-college men immediately hit it off and forged a strong, lasting friendship. Bengough also became a favorite of Babe Ruth. They started a pregame ritual of warming up together, a habit Ruth felt brought good luck. It was from this daily ritual that Bengough’s nickname was derived.

Ruth was notoriously bad at remembering names. In most cases he simply referred to males as Kid and females as Sister. In seeking out Benny for their pregame warmup, Ruth couldn’t come up with the name of his little buddy. The closest he could come to Benny was remembering Barney Google, a popular comic-strip character at the time. Ruth proceeded to start barking for “Googles.” Teammates roared, and knew what was up; from that day on, Benny was christened with the monikers of Barney or Googles. Ruth and Bengough remained close friends as teammates and beer-drinking partners. Benny was part of Babe’s inner circle of friends, accompanying the Bambino on offseason barnstorming tours and hunting trips.

Bengough claimed to have the most mispronounced last name in all of baseball history. “Almost everybody called me ‘Bengow,’ ” he said. Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert “called me ‘Benkopf.’ But the way my name was really pronounced was ‘Bengoff.’ "

Very interesting...