Noah Syndergaard is great at #branding, names each of his gloves

Noah Syndergaard names each of his gloves

By Michael Clair

May 13, 2015

Names are very important.

Many religions and superstitions believe that knowing a creature's true name gives you power over it.

Others think that a name is your destiny.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs believes that a name is nothing but human branding. And what's more important in modern society than #brands? (Which, if true, means I'm a terrible Michael Clair brand manager.)

Turns out, Noah Syndergaard takes this quite seriously. During his first Major League start on Tuesday, it was revealed that the rookie starter names each of his gloves. While the one he was using in his first start was dubbed "Thor," the nickname Syndergaard has for his Nordic name and long, blonde hair:

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Syndergaard has also named his gloves "Lion," "Drago" (for how similar he looks to Ivan Drago from "Rocky IV"), and "Heisenberg" -- presumably for Bryan Cranston's alter-ego in "Breaking Bad," and not the uncertainty principle in physics. Shockingly, none of those names were among the most popular baby names in 2014.

But Syndergaard isn't the only Mets pitcher to name his equipment. Matt Harvey has "Dark Knight" stamped on his bats, while former Met R.A. Dickey named his bats "Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver" and "Hrunting." It led to one of the greatest corrections in New York Times history when they had to write:

"An item in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in "The Hobbit"; Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins's sword was called Sting.)"