Mickey

With a name like Mickey, one receives a lot of questions about the origin of that name. Also, I am asked, "Isn't it really Michael?" People are generally more comfortable with names with which they are familiar. My dad's name was Billy and people were just certain that his legal name was William. It wasn't. 

Everyone loved Billy, sometimes Bill and often as is the case in the South, Billy Boyd (His middle name).  He once won 40 games in one season pitching fast-pitch softball for three different teams. But I digress.

When I would tell friends and others that I was named after a baseball player, the assumption was usually Mickey Mantle. But I didn't say it was a famous baseball player, besides very few baseball enthusiasts my age knew any other baseball Mickeys. With the possible exception of my friend Tony, who had an encyclopedic knowledge and love for the sport, and still does.

As it turns out my parents were always baseball fans, as well as football and basketball. It was 1949, and I was living in Seattle at that time, having been born a few days earlier in the thriving metropolis of Mt. Vernon.

Mickey Grasso was the catcher for the Seattle Rainiers in the old PCL (Pacific Coast League) during the '48 & '49 seasons. My folks evidently were quite fond of him although I never really knew why. Grasso, whose actual name was Newton Michael Grasso, got the nickname "Mickey" (According to the back of this 1953 Topps baseball card) because he looked like the Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane. 

An unusual name doesn't make one unusual. You have to earn it.

So there you have it, I got the real name Mickey from a rather obscure, unknown baseball catcher from the 1940's and 50's, whose nickname was Mickey.

Hey, you could be calling me Newt. Wasn't that the little girl's name in Alien 2?