Columbus
Posted by Andy on October 11, 2010
Happy Columbus Day!
There has never been a major-leaguer with the first or last name of Columbus, but there have been 4 guys with Columbus as a middle name: Count Campau, Crash Davis, Michael Driscoll, and Carl Yowell.
Of the handful of minor-leaguers to have Columbus in their names, the most interesting by far is Columbus Christopher, a player who presumably was a pitcher for the Landis Senators of the North Carolina State League.
There are, of course, lots of player who played in the city of Columbus in the minor leagues.
October 11th, 2010 at 8:40 am
"Columbus" is the latinized form of the name. Not often did Italian families latinize their names when they immigrated to the US. It did happen occasionally though (as with the film director's family).
The Italian form is Colombo. No major leagues with that name, but several minor leaguers. The Spanish form is Colon and several major leaguers have had that name including a "Christobal Colon" who played for TEX in 1993. The most famous Colon in baseball was of course Bartolo Colon and interestingly, the explorer's younger brother was Bartolome.
October 11th, 2010 at 8:51 am
There was also Carlo Colombino (colombino in Spanish roughly translates to "of Columbus") who played three seasons in Columbus, Ga. at the AA an A levels.
October 11th, 2010 at 9:07 am
I love how one can learn information on various subjects on this site.
October 11th, 2010 at 9:39 am
I don't know how to reach you, other than through the board, Andy....
ain't we gonna have a thread on last nights Simpsons episode? The whole thing was on the tension between sabre-heads and seat-of-the-pants guy
P.S. I have a real thread that I'm working on- not a joke, no Blyleven nonsense. How do I float it to you to see if it's worthy of publication?
October 11th, 2010 at 10:31 am
I saw Carlo Colombino play a number of times in Reading in '93. Short, stocky 3B with a big smile 🙂
October 11th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Plenty of MLB guys played in Columbus, too. 23 with the Buckeyes and 46 with the Solons (wow... an ancient Greek name like that NEVER would be picked these days). Two guys even played with both.
October 11th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I used to live in a suburb of Cleveland named Solon, OH. There's also a South Solon, OH in the center of the state. Outside of those names, a few minor league franchises, and the Greek philosopher, I don't think I've ever heard the name elsewhere. Odd that all these occurrences involve Ohio.
October 11th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
My opinion of Ohio just went up another notch.
October 11th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
@7
I was just in Solon a couple hours ago.
There are also players who were born in Columbus, OH (Paul O'Neill, Frank Howard, Kip Selbach)
players who died in Columbus, OH (Billy Southworth, Jack Taylor)
and players who are buried in Columbus, OH (Benny Kauff, Wally Gerber, Earl Moore).
The Columbus minor league team just won their championship.
Let's hear it for the state that's "hi" in the middle and "round" on both ends!
October 11th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Orlando Cabrera and Edgar RenterĂa have had the best careers among the nine major leaguers born in Colombia.
Prominent major leaguers born in Colón, Panama, include Manny Acosta, Héctor López, Ben Oglivie, Chico Salmon, Manny Sanguillén and Rennie Stennett.
October 11th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
And don't forget all of the places called Columbia, including the District of Columbia, home of three different major league franchises during my lifetime and other franchises earlier and in the Negro Leagues. 96 players were born in the District of Columbia:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/DC_born.shtml
13 players from Columbia University:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/schools/columbia.shtml
Jim Traber was a promising player with the Orioles in the mid-1980s, just before I moved away from the area, but fizzled out. He was one of the players born in Columbus, OH, but he grew up in Columbia, MD, between Baltimore and Washington, but closer to Baltimore.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/trabeji01.shtml
I'll let someone else mention players from Columbia, SC, and Columbus, GA.
October 11th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
What if we examine the flip side of Columbus's legacy? Let's talk about players with Native American or American Indian ancestry? If we wanted to be REALLY accurate, we could look at players with indigenous roots on the Caribbean islands where Columbus actually landed.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
My other cool thing about Solon, OH. The father of one of my daughter's best friends played high school baseball in Solon . . .
. . . with freaking Sal Bando :-O
October 13th, 2010 at 12:02 am
Presumably almost any player from Puerto Rico or the Dominican has some Taino Indian ancestry, and there's obviously been tons of them in the majors, so it hardly seems worth discussing.
Which current players have American (U.S.) Indian ancestry? (Of course Columbus never actually reached the present U.S.) Joba Chamberlain and Jacoby Ellsbury. Probably some others. Probably some who aren't aware of it. I feel like Andy Pettitte was described as having native American ancestry when he came up, but I haven't heard that in a long time, so I either invented it or heard some incorrect info.
October 13th, 2010 at 2:54 am
Well, there IS a player who has the last name Columbus in his name Bartolo Colon.
(Check any Spanish websites. Every one of them will list the one Americans call "Christopher Columbus" as "Cristobal Colon".
English is not the only language spoken in the world. Apparently Andy might have thought Columbus was a good American like Jim Joyce.
October 13th, 2010 at 5:33 am
I just engaged in simple word play. I am well aware that English is not the only language spoken in the world.
October 13th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Cabriael, rather than hastening to make your point, whatever it is, you might have read the thread and found Bartolo Colon mentioned in the very first reply. Congratulations on identifying him again, though, two days later.