Randy Smith
Atlanta Braves outfielder B.J. Upton has decided to change his name. For the 2015 season he will known as Melvin Upton Jr. After all, his stats for the last two seasons in Atlanta have been not only less than productive; they've been absolutely horrible. He hit .184 in 2013 but rebounded to a sizzling .208 in 2014. Those are not exactly the numbers one would expect from a guy that signed a free agent deal with the Braves for $75 million over five seasons, which is by the way the largest free agent deal ever signed in Atlanta.
Melvin Upton Jr. is his birth name and for years the name B.J. Upton was short for his dad Manny's nickname, "Bossman."
A name change has worked well for Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins. He decided to change his name from Mike Stanton to Giancarlo after suffering through some less than productive years at the plate. After batting a combined .261 in 2010, and 2011, he changed his name and has hit .277 over the past three seasons. Upton needs more improvement than that, considering he has struck out more than a third of the time, and his stats are much worse than Stanton's ever were.
I can see a hitting coach after trying everything he knows to make a hitter better and more productive saying, "Just change your name. That should help."
Changing your name is nothing new in sports. Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali more than fifty years ago. Lloyd Free changed his name legally to World B. Free and more recently, NBA stand out Ron Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace. Those name changes dealt more with political issues rather than personal production. In the early 1980s, boxer Marvin Hagler changed his name to Marvelous Marvin Hagler, because he was unhappy with the lack of media attention he was getting.
Weird name changes have also taken place in the National Football League as well, with perhaps the most famous coming in 2006 when Bengals receiver Chad Johnson changed his to Chad Ochocinco (Spanish for the numbers 8 and 5. If he wanted a true match to his jersey number 85, he would have called himself Ochoycinco) in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. When he moved to Miami to play for the Dolphins, he legally changed his name back to Chad Johnson because in his words, he "wanted to reconnect with my old self."
There are no short cuts to success. It takes hard work and discipline to get better no matter what sport or business you're talking about, and changing your name only works if you are working hard along with the name change. I certainly hope Melvin Upton Jr. understands this. After all, he is a professional athlete who knows what hard work and discipline will do for you.
There have been times in my career when I could have used a name change or something. Now is not the time, however. maybe I could change it to get attention; perhaps "Dandy Randy" would work.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.