Who Are You?

In the midst of a stream of consciousness conversation with Inky last night something odd occurred to me. I don't know exactly how we landed on the topic, but I came to the realization that Tom Brady's jersey doesn't say T. Brady even though there is another guy named Brady (super virgin Kyle) on his team. I started to ruminate on the topic of first initials on the back of a jersey. Is it really necessary? Who decides if it is done or not? My guess is that it isn't up to the league to mandate if the first initial is used or not, because some teams do it and other's done.

One could argue that it is generally accepted that when two guys have the same name on the same team that they get a letter or two followed by a period to differentiate them from one another. Hell, sometimes it's the whole first name. Think of the time in the late 80's when the Orioles had Jerseys that Read C. Ripken, C. Ripken Jr. and B. Ripken. What has always driven me crazy about this phenomenon it the fact that the jersey also contains a handy dandy number to help you differentiate between the players. If they all said Ripken the 7, 8 and 3 would have let us know who was who, not to mention the fact that you should know by where they are standing. If a guy with a Ripken jersey is at Short, it's Cal, if he's at Second it's Billy, if he's in the dugout it's Cal Sr.

So why the initials? As a skins fan I don't even need to see the #17 to know that I'm looking at Jason Campbell and not Khary Campbell. Likewise, when watching Tom and Kyle Brady play it is very easy to distinguish them from one another even if you can't see their 12 or 88. Tom will generally have his cock in a supermodel and Kyle will be preaching no sex before marriage. Also, Tom is smaller and throws the ball, Kyle is big and catches it. So I'm going to give a tip of the cap to the Perfect Patriots for not bowing to the first initial pressure.