President Obama thinks Royals’ players need better nicknames

The defending World Series champion Royals are at the White House on Thursday to meet President Barack Obama. Considering a whole bunch of Royals weren’t even born yet the last time Kansas City visited Washington D.C. for something besides a series against the Nationals, this was a long time coming.

The Royals deserve to be there, of course, but they might want to work on a few things before the next time they get an invitation from whomever our next president happens to be. Namely — pun not initially intended but sure, let’s roll with it — they need to work on their nicknames. President Obama is not impressed by them:

You’ve got an offense led by homegrown guys like Alex “Gordo” Gordon -- (applause) -- and Mike “Moose” Moustakas. (Applause.) Eric “Hoz” Hosmer. (Applause.) World [Series] MVP Salvador “Salvy” Perez. (Applause.) These guys are all great players. Can I say, though, the nicknames aren’t that creative. (Laughter.) It’s like, Barack “Barack” Obama. (Laughter.) You know? I mean, listen to this -- Hoz, Moose, Gordo. We’re going to have to work on these. (Laughter.)

Our President isn’t wrong, you know. Baseball nicknames just aren’t what they used to be. All those years of “A-Rod” and “E-Rod” and “A-Gon” and just shortening players’ names into things like “Youk” and the like isn’t cutting it anymore. Even in the 90s, we mostly just attached “Big” to things, giving us “Big Hurt” and “Big Unit” — those read like Shakespeare compared to today, of course, but that just shows how far we’ve fallen.

I’m not saying we need to have players lose some fingers so we can get us a present-day Mordecai Brown, but great nicknames in today’s game are few and far between. Mark “Scrabble” Rzepczynski is a good one. Mike Trout as the “Millville Meteor” is good in a corny, over-the-top way. What’s our next-best modern one, though? Joey Bats? The President is right: we’ve all got some work to do.

You can watch Obama’s speech in full below.