Splendid Speedies

Hey baseball fans!

Today I will be starting a series of blogs about the greatest nicknames in baseball history. Each blog will focus on a different baseball characteristic. This blog will be about the nicknames pertaining to speed:

Commerce Comet -  Mickey Mantle
I know what you’re thinking: Mickey Mantle was speedy? Well, the answer is yes. Although he never was a huge stealing kind of guy, he could run the basepaths in about 12 seconds! The reason he was called the “Commerce” Comet was that he was born in Commerce, Oklahoma. Mick is also on my  all time dream team .

Larcenous Lou -  Lou Brock
Lou was once the all time steals king, but the king was overthrown by someone else on this list. He still has the most steals in World Series history (14), and has the second most steals all time, with 938. For those of you who don’t know, the word larcenous means acused of “stealing”.

Mick the Quick -  Mickey Rivers
Rivers is the only non-Hall of Famer on this list, but still earned his nickname. He did steal, but his real talent was hitting triples. He was also very speedy in the outfield.

Fordham Flash -  Frankie Frisch
Frisch had 419 stolen bases in his career. Along with Mick the Quick, he was also great at legging out triples during the ’20s and ’30s. He is also sixth all time in World Series steals with nine.

Man of Steal -  Rickey Henderson
Rickey is the all time stolen base king in baseball history, with 1,406 career SBs. He had 3,055 hits, which basically calculates to almost one steal per two hits. He also has the most career runs scored with 2,295. Want to know something funny? He also was caught stealing the most times, with 335.

Please check my blog in a few days for the next part of this series which will be fielding nicknames. Thanks for reading!

Matt Nadel is a 13 year old baseball history kid blogger from Springfield, NJ who writes two baseball blogs under the name, Baseball with Matt.  Matt started  his original blog  back in April 2012 when he saw that a lot of his friends didn’t know anything about baseball history and he thought that a blog would be a fun way to educate kids and adults about baseball history.  After posting nearly 85 times, he was introduced to John Thorn, the official historian for MLB, and John liked Matt’s blog and arranged for Matt to have  his own Pro Blog on MLB , making Matt the youngest Pro blogger on MLB.com. You can also follow Matt on Twitter @BaseballwMatt.  Baseball with Matt is a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.