Last Wednesday, professional team nicknames was the subject of that day's post. There is one nickname that needs to be addressed for its unusualness and that is "Spiders." Most Virginians know that the University of Richmond is known as the "Spiders," and according to their website, the nickname goes back to 1893 when a team of University and local players formed a baseball team. Star pitcher Puss Ellyson ("Puss"? I hope that was his nickname and not his given name.) had what we would today refer to as a herky-jerky delivery, i. e. all arms and legs, or so it appeared to opposing hitters. A Richmond reporter named Ragland Chesterman ("Ragland"?) dubbed the team the "Spiders" and the name has been used ever since.
Many people do not know that Cleveland had a professional baseball team in the American Association that was also nicknamed the Spiders during that same time period. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, the team was so named because of the large number of "skinny players." This makes no sense to me as the adjectives "big" and "fat" seem most often applied to spiders as in "Come kill this big fat spider!" Rarely do you hear someone say "Aww, look at that poor skinny spider. Let's find him something to eat." By the way, the Cleveland Spiders set a truly scary record by going 20-134 in 1899, in what turned out not surprisingly, to be their last year of existence. If that isn't enough to give you arachnophobia, nothing is.
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