It’s All in Game and Not in Name

Much has been made of the fact that a football player from UCLA has changed his name to Karim Abdul-Jabbar. I suppose we never dreamed there would be two.

His faith aside, Sharmon Shah’s advisers should have taken into account what would happen if all 11 of UCLA’s offensive players changed their names to Kareem or Karim Abdul-Jabbar. This could cause coaches and sportscasters considerable confusion.

On the whole, though, this is no big deal.

Duplication is not unusual in the wide world of sports. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Thousands of names cross these pages. For many years, a professional baseball player and a football kicker have shared the name Eddie Murray. Not once has anyone confused them for the same person.

Same with Fernando Valenzuela, the jockey. He’s a few pounds lighter than the pitcher. Bill Russell the shortstop was a couple of inches shorter than the center.

To me, the guy who really had a problem was the TV sportscaster, James Brown. By calling himself James, he had to carry the name of a very famous singer. But by shortening it to Jim, his name would have been that of a very famous athlete.

Now, there’s a guy who needed a nickname.

A prominent football player at the University of Miami last season--now in the NFL--went by the name James Stewart. I suspect that he heard his fair share of “It’s a Wonderful Life” gags.

UCLA had a basketball star, Don MacLean, who is now in the NBA. I can’t recall how many crowds at Oregon or Arizona sang refrains of “American Pie” during a game. But after a while, MacLean broke Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring records and became the Don MacLean.

So, maybe the former Shah will someday become the most famous Abdul-Jabbar.

Perhaps today at the Rose Bowl against Miami, he will run for hundreds of yards and the headlines will read: “Abdul-Jabbar Leads UCLA--Again!”

I remember attending a Notre Dame football game one day and sitting beside a Boston Globe writer, John Powers. Late in the game, an opposing lineman named John Powers scooped up a fumble and ran toward the end zone.

My friend Powers began yelling: “Go! Go!”

No cheering up here, everyone in the press box reminded him.

“I just want to see ‘John Powers Beats Notre Dame’ in tomorrow’s paper,” he said.

During the NBA playoffs, the Seattle SuperSonics’ first opponents were the Lakers. The starting center for the Sonics was a not particularly magical young man named Ervin Johnson.

Had he done better, papers would have run unprecedented stories along the lines of: Ervin Johnson Helps Lakers Lose .

Back when a gifted young actor named Matt Dillon came along, I remember thinking that audiences would never take him seriously, inasmuch as Matt Dillon was, of course, the marshal from “Gunsmoke.” But nobody cared.

So, relax, Abdul-Jabbar the Sequel.

Names don’t mean a thing. If you’re good, you’re good.

In the NFL last season, there was a Reggie White who played defensive end for the Green Bay Packers and there was a Reggie White who played defensive tackle for the San Diego Chargers. One was in the Super Bowl, but the other was more famous. Sorry, other Reggie.

Also on NFL rosters last season, there were three men named James Williams, one named Jimmy Williams and one named Jamie Williams. I believe they were traded for five players to be named James Williams later.

When two guys named John Williams played ball in the NBA simultaneously, one of them went by the nickname “Hot Rod.” Because the other ate too much, people began calling him “Hot Plate.”

Personally, I would rather be known as a Rod than a Plate.

As for a second Karim Abdul-Jabbar, I am sure he will do fine. In fact, I worry about only one thing.

I worry that he’ll hang back by himself, instead of running to both sides of the field with the other 10 guys.