Gabby

Gabby Hartnett

Normally, baseball nicknames are accurate reflections of the person (Red for a guy with red hair, Lefty for a left-handed player, etc.). Not so in the case of Charles Leo Hartnett.

Hartnett was a rookie with the Cubs when he acquired his enduring nickname -- Gabby. Must have been a motormouth, an incurable chatterbox, right? Well ... actually ... he was just the opposite -- shy and reticent -- and the veterans on that 1922 Cubs team were just having a little fun at his expense. Little did they know the name would stick.

Aside from the "Homer in the Gloamin'," Hartnett is probably best known for the unfortunate consequences of a good deed. On Sept. 9, 1931, during an exhibition game with the White Sox, he was called over to a nearby field box. A heavy-set man asked him to autograph a ball for his young son, who was seated beside the man. He obliged, and an enterprising photographer captured the moment for posterity.

Appearing the next day in papers across the country was a smiling Hartnett with this heavy-set man, who just happened to be Al Capone. When Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's iron-fisted first commissioner, saw the photo, he was not amused. He instructed Hartnett to never have anything to do with Capone again.

"OK, Judge," Hartnett replied, "but you tell him."