Cuddles

My vote for best baseball nickname of all time.

Cuddles

It’s late at night and I should go to bed. However, I simply can’t let this guy go by without comment.

There was a player on the New York Yankees back in the late 1940s named Clarence Marshall. And, yes, his nickname was indeed “Cuddles.”

Now, I could see that happening in our time. I really could. It’s kind of a cute nickname, with kind of an endearing quality to it.

But in the late 1940s? In post-war America? I mean, it’s a story that’s too good to be true.

So let’s take a quick look at Cuddles, shall we?

That Awful Name

You remember that Johnny Cash song about The Boy Named Sue, right? If not, you can check it out here:

Well, Cuddles ain’t exactly Sue, but, umm, I can see how Clarence would have a few qualms with it.

To figure out the origin of this nickname, we’ve got to go over to Marshall’s SABR biography, which is really well written and researched. Here’s the story in full, referring to his time in spring training with the 1946 Yankees:

True to that tale, the earliest reference I could find to the nickname comes from spring training that year:

From Daily News (New York), April 10, 1946, page 57

Sadly, the newspapers.com sources for the late 1940s are limited, which is why I haven’t been able to look through many other contemporary New York papers. If you’re nice to me, though, maybe I’ll dust off the old New York Times Proquest account and give that a whirl.

Anyway, the nickname stuck. Not only did it stick, but word traveled pretty quickly.

This is from a North Carolina newspaper only 2 weeks later:

From The Charlotte News (North Carolina), April 23, 1946, page 11

And here’s another photo from later on in the season, this time from a South Carolina paper:

From The Herald (Rock Hill, South Carolina), September 6, 1946, page 6

And, well, there’s not too much to say about Marshall at this point. He was in and out of the minors in 1947 and 1948, saw limited action with the Yankees in 1949, and was with the Browns in 1950:

From Tulsa World (Oklahoma), May 16, 1950, page 17

Marshall was largely ineffective in his 53 innings in St. Louis in 1950, and was released at the end of the season. And, since it’s late, I’ll leave the rest to that SABR biography linked above.

And that’s the story of the kid with the golden chin and the special nickname.