Chris Berman Reveals the Origin Story to his ICONIC SportsCenter Nicknames

Every kid who grew up watching SportsCenter can do a Chris Berman nickname. What most of them never knew is that the whole thing started as a way to stay awake on the overnight shift.

Berman traced the habit back to his Brown University days, when he would scan box scores and crack himself up. "I was always kind of a nickname guy," he told Rich. The on-air version arrived in May of 1980, on the 2:30 in the morning shift, and the first one out of his mouth was either Frank Tanana Daiquiri or John Mayberry RFD. The reaction in the studio told him he was onto something.

He was wearing an IFB earpiece when it happened, and in the middle of the show a voice came into his ear asking, "What was that?" By the commercial break the camera operators were laughing. Nobody got hurt, so Berman made a decision. "Tomorrow night I'm going to try a couple more," he said. It was a quarter to three, after all, and as he put it, the boss isn't awake.

One thing he wanted on the record: he did not invent Babe Ruth. People have asked him that over the years, including his own kid once. The nicknames he did create piled up through the 1980s, and they became a national project. Fans sent in lists, and Berman had a simple rule. If he laughed at one, it ran the next night. "I had ghost writers in 50 states and provinces in Canada," he said. Coworkers pitched in too.

His favorite came from a director named Calvin Heywood, who passed away a few years ago. Heywood's suggestion for pitcher Bert Blyleven was "Bert Be Home Blyleven," and Berman explained exactly why it lands. You don't have to know Blyleven threw a great curveball, or that he pitched for the Twins or the Pirates. You just have to be a kid who heard a parent say be home by 11, or a parent who said it. "They work when it's not an inside joke," Berman said. "If it's for everybody."

That, in the end, is the trick behind a catalog he says runs more than a thousand deep. Tanana Daiquiri, Mike Pepperoni Piazza, Going Going Gonzalez, Jeff Conine the Barbarian, all of it. "It was organic, Rich," he said. "I swear."