I really really did not know where to start this blog. At least, when it came to the history posts. News is largely dictated by what actually happens in the baseball world, but finding a good starting point to talk about the many weird reasons I love this goofy sport was a little trickier. There is so much I want to share, but what should bat leadoff?

So, I decided to just talk about Johnny Dickshot for a bit. Let’s just get it out of the way now: yes, his name is very funny. It’s so funny that it tops just about every list of funny baseball player names ever constructed. It gets even funnier the more you think about it too. Imagine a whole family of Dickshots. A family that, initially, went under the already funny name of “Dicksus” until it was allegedly misheard as, well, Dickshot. The laughs keep coming from the fact that Johnny Dickshot’s nickname was “Ugly,” because, of course, it was. Better yet, he clearly had a sense of humor about it all, proclaiming himself to be the “ugliest man in baseball.” What a legend.

I say this all not to punch down on poor Dickshot because of his unfortunate name, but to give proper context as to why I love him.

You see, my family and I have card nights whenever my brother comes home for a weekend. With drinks flowing to at least someone at the table and tiredness setting in after rounds of Thirty-One and Poker into the wee hours of the morning, sometimes it only takes one really stupid thing to get everyone into can’t-breathe levels of laughter. One night, the source of that laughter came from funny athlete names and, specifically, Johnny and his family of Dickshots. It’s one of those “you had to be there” moments to understand why it was so funny and it probably says something about our levels of maturity that “lol, Dickshot” was enough to break us, but it’s a happy moment that now we can all look back on together.

For that reason, I owe at least some level of joy to Johnny Dickshot, a player I never got to watch because he retired around 52 years before I was born and died less than two. It also spurred me to learn about the man behind the name and just what kind of player he was.

Born John Oscar Dicksus in January 1910, Dickshot played 322 major league games from 1936 through 1945 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the then New York Giants, and the Chicago White Sox. He enjoyed a much longer career than that, however, first entering the minor leagues in 1930 and finally calling it quits in 1947. When he was a big leaguer, he was a mostly unremarkable hitter and earned negative wins above replacement (WAR) in two of his six seasons per FanGraphs. The one year he showed real promise, however, came in what would be his final season where he hit a very respectable .302/.366/.407, good for a 125 wRC+. He also played 130 games, better than at any point in his career. That’s no small feat for a guy firmly on the wrong end of the aging curve.

Compared to other age-35 seasons, Dickshot also outperformed plenty of genuinely fantastic hitters. By wRC+, his final season ranked 109th all-time among other hitters his age with at least 500 plate appearances, placing him ahead of, among others, Kirby Puckett (123 wRC+), Charlie Gehringer (123 wRC+), and Vladimir Guerrero Sr. (119 wRC+). This is probably cherry-picking a bit, but it’s all to say that, when given the chance, Johnny Dickshot could hit.

As for Dickshot the man, well, he was reportedly quite the character. Some of the coverage of his life is flat out wrong (no, he was not a Native American, he was of Lithuanian and German descent), but there are a few stories that give some insight into who he was. At the time, multiple reports spotlighted his embrace of being considered among baseball’s ugliest players, confidently telling reporters “Don’t mind my looks; I’ve got personality.” The feeling was apparently so widespread that a fan reportedly tried to lead Dickshot over to where his wife was sitting because “I want my wife to see you, so she’ll appreciate me.” Poor John.

My favorite anecdote, however, comes from his obituary in the Chicago Tribune. After baseball, Dickshot owned a bar called the Dugout in his home of Waukegan where his granddaughter recalls he would often phone his wife for answers from his encyclopedias to settle disputes over baseball trivia. That’s “Ugly” Johnny Dickshot folks. A baseball player who is so much more than a name and has given me, a writer who wasn’t even alive at the same time as him, so much joy.