I blogged about this when Stephen Strasburg made his debut, but with 19-year-old Bryce Harper now seemingly in a Nationals uniform to stay the situation has become intolerable. Washington has two of the most exciting, talented, compulsively watchable young players in their lineup that the grand old game has had grace its fields in a long time...

...and neither one of them has a decent nickname.

Heck, neither one of them even has a crappy, "A-Rod" style nickname.

This injustice cannot stand. Baseball is a game of tradition, a game that cherishes its history in a way no other sport does, and yet one of its best traditions and one of its richest veins of historical awesomeness - memorable nicknames for its stars - has almost completely faded away. Even as recently as a decade ago there were still some solid nicknames floating around (the Big Unit, Rocket, the Big Hurt, and other less phallic ones I can't think of at the moment), but now? We've got King Felix, and that's about it. How does a hard-nosed sparkplug guy like Dustin Pedroia not have a nickname? Pete Rose had Charlie Hustle, and even Lenny Dykstra had Nails. Dustin deserves something equally gritty. Or what about Clayton Kershaw? I mean, who even wants to say "Clayton Kershaw" all the damn time? It's an awkward name. It's unpleasant to say. Unrewarding. It stops and starts with those hard K sounds, like a backfiring motorcycle. Ugh.

But nowhere is this sad state of affairs more obvious than in DC. When Strasburg came up I suggested he should be the 'Double-S Express', following in the long tradition of train nicknames for power pitchers like Walter 'Big Train' Johnson and 'the Ryan Express' for Nolan Ryan, but nicknames aren't really something you can manufacture. Now with Harper in the lineup there are TWO players, two pillars of the franchise in the nation's capital, who have to go about their day-to-day lives deprived of the catchy moniker that should be their due as baseball stars.

Harper may have taken care of the problem for himself though, at least to some extent. After he swung his bat in frustration and had it ricochet off the dugout tunnel wall and gash him above the eye Friday night, Harper's teammates have started calling him 'Bam Bam'. I can see that one sticking, but it's still not exactly on the level of the 'Splendid Splinter' or 'Wild Thing' or 'the Wizard of Oz'.

I can appreciate that we may all still be traumatized by Chris Berman's long reign of terror. But it's time, I think, to put that nightmare behind us and let the healing begin.

Nicknames, people. Now, more than ever, our heroes need them. Let's get to work.