Eric Thames is crushing it. “It” being baseballs, over, and over, and over again. It took all of three games for Thames to show off his power after almost five years away from the majors:
More on that in a moment. I try to focus on specifically British-based content here at Bat Flips & Nerds and at first glance, this would appear to be a post devoted to Eric Thames hitting dingers, but it’s ok, there’s a link: you may have heard that the Thames is a river in London. Admittedly, his name is pronounced “Thaymes” and not “Tems”, but we’ll gloss over that. The point is, we were already interested in the Brewers, Eric Thames is hitting a lot of home runs, and now that we have an official minor league affiliate of the UK, it’s about time we had an unofficial slugger and all-around general hero (if you’re here to talk about all the things you think Thames is taking to help him hit home runs even though he keeps passing drug tests, then I’m sure you can find an alternative corner of the internet which will be more receptive). Obviously once there’s an actual Brit hitting bombs in the majors, we’ll get behind them, but for now, who better than this guy?:
Maybe some of you are wondering why there’s no contest, poll or nomination process this time for the fans to have their say. The answer is that we already had a contest: it was the first month of the season, and Eric Thames won.
In Korea, they just called Thames “God”. Justified, given that he hit .349/.451/.721 with 124 homers over his three seasons there, but hardly creative or a British-themed nickname. We can do better. Tom suggested simply misprounouncing his name so that it does sound like the river – certainly British, but perhaps not all that effective in text form. We could go with The River, or simply River, yet it doesn’t seem to do justice to a man who can do this to a baseball:
.@EricThames woke up in beast mode.
HR No. 1: https://t.co/SRDkyHdEfF
HR No. 2: https://t.co/DxuoxWaAF6 pic.twitter.com/HR7rf9iN2B
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) April 25, 2017
Reds manager Bryan Price called Thames ‘a destroyer’ as most of his blasts have been hit against Cincinnati. Eric the Destroyer certainly has a medieval European ring to it, and it could be combined with some European history (or Mancunian football – ed.) if you really wanted to reference Erik the Red.
It’s been a while since we watched Thames hit a home run, but enough videos for now. We need some advanced Statcast analysis from MLB’s Director of Baseball Research & Development, Daren Willman:
All of Eric Thames home runs this season 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/h3Iemnu7Vt
— Daren Willman (@darenw) April 26, 2017
Triple fire emoji indeed. Having a nickname that was simply emojis would be very social media, and we could then also refer to him as ‘The Hitter Formerly Known As Thames’. Not quite the brief, punchy nickname that’s really likely to stick, though.
While we’re thinking some more, let’s see what Eric Thames was up to last night.
A home run! Who would have thought it? It still doesn’t feel like we’ve found the right name for the future MVP. Maybe we need to turn to Thames’ Korean team, the NC Dinos, for inspiration. What better than the first of the Dinos’ three mascots, the most famous of all dinosaurs: tyrannosaurus rex. “T-Rex” is short, it combines a fleeting reference to his actual name and the intimidation factor of the tyrannosaurus, and has the very literal translation to king. There’s even the connection to a British band. Pitchers wouldn’t want to face either of these monsters:
T-Rex is my leading candidate, but I’m open to suggestions. Let’s hear them.
River God
How about “The Dark Lord?” It combines his “Godly” Korean nickname, and the river Thames is located in UK so it plays on Lordship and ties to his name and the word Thames has celtic meaning, once having meant “dark” or “darkness.” Also The Dark Lord sounds fun and can be parodied off Star Wars.