Trivia: Was Carlton Fisk nicknamed "Frankenstein"?

[podart]

I was recently on a cruise that featured different trivia games throughout the week. One of the Sports Qs was "What Red Sox catcher's erect posture earned him the clubhouse nickname 'Frankenstein'?"

Their answer was Carlton Fisk.

A google search turns up this exact Q from a very short-lived sports trivia Twitter account from 11 years ago, but not much else. Have you ever heard this 'fact' before?

So weird that they would chose this question for a guy who is already famously nicknamed Pudge, but they don't put that much effort into the trivia...I was just wondering if there was any sort of truth to the Q or if its just entirely made up (like Columbo's first name)

 

[E5 Yaz]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZFiJUiwuxY

 

[SumnerH]

So weird that they would chose this question for a guy who is already famously nicknamed Pudge, but they don't put that much effort into the trivia...I was just wondering if there was any sort of truth to the Q or if its just entirely made up (like Columbo's first name)

Columbo's first name is never spoken on the show, but “Frank Columbo” is seen on screen many times throughout the course of the show on his ID, evidence bags, etc. One can debate whether Levinson originally meant for it to be unstated and whether it's “canonical”, but it's not entirely made up (other than in the sense that Columbo is fiction, of course).

 

[phrenile]

Doug Wilson's 2015 biography Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk says Luis Tiant nicknamed him that.



You can find mentions in other compendia of Tiant's nicknames for folks, going back to the 70s.

 

[podart]

Columbo's first name is never spoken on the show, but “Frank Columbo” is seen on screen many times throughout the course of the show on his ID, evidence bags, etc. One can debate whether Levinson originally meant for it to be unstated and whether it's “canonical”, but it's not entirely made up (other than in the sense that Columbo is fiction, of course).

Great info! That show probably had dozens of propmasters over the years, funny that one of them just named the main character one day.

 

[podart]

Doug Wilson's 2015 biography Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk says Luis Tiant nicknamed him that.

Whoa, that's a deep cut, thanks for sharing!

 

[Brianish]

Three replies. Three replies and someone not only arrived with a definitive answer, but had the sourcing and a screenshot to prove it.

I love this place.

 

[Norm Siebern]

+1

 

[Norm Siebern]

Three replies. Three replies and someone not only arrived with a definitive answer, but had the sourcing and a screenshot to prove it.

I love this place.

+1

 

[EyeBob]

There should be a whole thread of minutia trivia.

link to Columbo for those that never watched it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbo#:~:text=Columbo aired regularly from 1971,-TV movie "specials".

 

[Saints Rest]

Doug Wilson's 2015 biography Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk says Luis Tiant nicknamed him that.

View attachment 61675

You can find mentions in other compendia of Tiant's nicknames for folks, going back to the 70s.

So Cam Newton was the 2020 version of El Tiante.

 

[Humphrey]

Didn't know Colombo's first name; did know his basset's name was Dog!

 

[Leskanic's Thread]

Doug Wilson's 2015 biography Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk says Luis Tiant nicknamed him that.

It is notable that the book wasn't called Frankenstein: The Biography of Carlton Fisk.

 

[chrisfont9]

It is notable that the book wasn't called Frankenstein: The Biography of Carlton Fisk.

Sure, because Tiant didn't write it.

 

[Minneapolis Millers]

This whole thread has ended up being an homage to El Tiante.