Irrelevant Juniors

It's Friday, and somehow my Friday pieces have started to wander off into the vast field of "who cares" topics.  I'm going to wander off here, if for no other reason than this one has caught my eye for a few months and I've never gotten around to writing the actual piece.

I am a "senior."  I am a senior, not in the sense that I am in my fourth year of high school or college (I did both already, with uneven success), but in the meaning that out there exists a "junior", one of my sons who has the same name as I do.  Many such people choose not to use the "Sr." suffix in their formal correspondence, but I do, as I expected long ago that there would be need to distinguish us in correspondence.  We ended up working in the same place a few times, too, so it was reasonably decent foresight.

A very high percentage of those "juniors", however, use the "Jr." suffix to distinguish themselves from their fathers.  In fact, it's pretty rare when they don't (Jimmy Carter, who was president 40 years ago, is James Earl Carter, Jr., but never used "Jr." and signed everything formally as "Jimmy").  And that is today's piece.

Back around 1960, the Chicago White Sox first started putting the last names of players on the back of their uniform.  That notoriously didn't go quite so well; the slugging first-baseman Ted Kluszewski, who had recently joined Chicago after a long career in Cincinnati, played a bit with his name misspelled -- and the "z" sewn on backward -- a lovely testimony to the "look for the union label" types.  But I digress.

Eventually all teams not named "Yankees" followed suit with their road uniforms, and most with their home uniforms as well. Today, you expect to know the names of the players as much for the name on the back, or more, than by their number.

So I don't know when this started, but at some point recently, some players who are "juniors" took to adding the "Jr." to their uniform name.  Jackie Bradley, Jr. of the Red Sox does, Odell Beckham of the NFL's New York Giants as well.  There are players I've seen with "III" as well as other "Jr." names and maybe a "Sr." or two.

So I'm kind of wondering this ... why are they doing that?

You see, what goes on the back of the uniform is the last name, and the "Jr." is part of the first name.  My last name is "Sutton", and my first is "Robert", informally "Bob" and formally "Robert, Sr.".  The intent of the suffix is not to distinguish the last name but the first, and to distinguish one from one's father (or son), not one's brother.

So I don't really care why Jackie Bradley, Jr. has "Bradley Jr." on his uniform, but it's unnecessary.  It's also caused some odd broadcasting, too.  I've often heard announcers refer to him as "Bradley Junior" for some reason, which makes no sense.  If you refer to John Smith as "Smith" and Tom Brown as "Brown", well, you refer to Jackie Bradley, Jr. as "Bradley" and that's enough -- remember, "Junior" is a reference to his first name, not his last.

[And for the record, there was a time when both Ken Griffey, Sr. and Ken Griffey, Jr., father and son, were on the same Reds team in Cincinnati.  I'd have been fine had their uniforms had "Griffey Jr. and Griffey Sr. on them, because the distinction was necessary, same as when you have two unrelated Smiths on the same team and need a "J. Smith" and "R. Smith" with the initials on the jersey.  But otherwise there's no reason for the suffix.]

I imagine that some of the players with the suffixes are saying that they want to "honor their father", and that's fine.  Bless them and the love they have for their fathers.  I never said this was a very important topic, remember?

I just suppose that I have to wonder how "honored" Odell Beckham's father must feel when he scores a touchdown and celebrates by getting down on all fours in the end zone and peeing like a dog -- giving his own team a 15-yard penalty.  Yeah, "Sr." must be pretty proud, and thanks to his peeing offspring, everyone knows Dad's name.  I think I'd be calling my kid and telling him to peel the "Jr." off his uniform.

Well, I have two boys I'm really proud of, and each of them can stand on his own quite well.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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