In August of 2023, baseball player Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers was getting ready to go up to bat when a fan said, “Mook, if you hit a home run I’ll name my daughter, her middle name, Mookie.”
Here’s more of their short conversation (according to a video that Betts posted to Twitter):
And I heard this, and I laughed, and he said he was serious.
So I turned around and said, “Nah, don’t do that bro. Don’t do that.”
He said, “No, I’m going to do it.”
I said, “Your wife wouldn’t like, bro, don’t do that.”
Betts proceeded to “hit a 436-foot blast to left field, his longest home run as a Dodger.”
He circled the bases and, when he returned, he fist-bumped the fan, Giuseppe Mancuso.
And then, like a couple weeks later, I see on Twitter the birth certificate for Francesca Mookie Mancuso. Shout out to you Giuseppe. I can’t wait to meet Francesca.
Mookie Betts’ nickname, which was chosen for him when he was a baby, was inspired by that of basketball player Daron Oshay “Mookie” Blaylock. (Blaylock’s nickname was given to him by his older sisters.)
So what’s Mookie’s real name?
Markus Lynn Betts. He was born in Tennessee in 1992 to sports-loving parents Willie Mark Betts and Diana Benedict, who “borrow[ed] from Willie’s middle name and [Diana’s] middle name” to create “what they hoped would be fortuitous initials: MLB” — the acronym for Major League Baseball, of course.
Sources:
- Harris, Beth. “A home run by Mookie Betts prompts fan to give his new daughter the middle name of the Dodgers star.” AP News 15 Aug. 2023.
- Verducci, Tom. “Moveable Beast.” Sports Illustrated 1 Jun. 2015.
- Corio, Ray. “Question Box.” New York Times 8 Aug. 1988: C8.
Image: Adapted from Mookie Betts (53182259916) by Erik Drost under CC BY 2.0.
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