The home plate umpire in last night's South Carolina-LSU baseball game was named Fred Cannon, and the radio color guy started calling him "Boom Boom" because that was the nickname of long-ago pop star Freddy Cannon. And I thought, no, that can't be right; he's thinking of Freddy Washington, the Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs character on "Welcome Back, Kotter." Now anybody with more brains than amoeba (apparently I don't qualify) can see straight away that this is ridiculous. Though I did look it up, even I figured out immediately after doing so that of COURSE a guy using the stage name "Freddy Cannon" would have the nickname Boom Boom. And of course the Hilton-Jacobs character is called Boom Boom because of the then still somewhat famous singer. I was very fond of Gabe Kaplan's pre-Kotter standup work, in which the characters that would become the Sweathogs played a major role, but I don't remember whether Freddy was one who predated the show. However, a character named after the guy who sang "Palisades Park" would probably appeal to a New York guy like Kaplan.
Long way to go from a home plate umpire, isn't it?
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