Thomps? Thomper? What to call new Phils' skipper?

June 9th, 2022

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki's Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Everybody wants to know more about Phillies interim manager Rob Thomson.

I just want to know what to call him.

Thomson, 58, has been in professional baseball 38 years, but everybody calls him something different. It became apparent on Friday when he replaced Joe Girardi as manager. Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski called him “Topper.” Bryce Harper called him “Thomps.” Kyle Schwarber calls him “Thomper.”

Aaron Nola calls him “Thompo.”

“It changes,” Nola said.

Nola started to run through the possibilities, saying nicknames out loud to see which ones sounded correct to him.

“Thomper,” he said. “Thoms. Thomps. It’s usually Thomps or Thompo. Yeah, I guess he’s got about 15 different names.”

“Thoms,” Rhys Hoskins said. “Thomper.”

Thomper?

“Sure,” Hoskins said. “Thomper or Topper. Thoms.”

Hoskins thought more about it, too.

“Five-nine,” Hoskins said, referring to Thomson’s jersey number. “I’ll call him Five-Nine every once in a while.”

“Thomper,” Connor Brogdon said.

“Now I say skipper,” Phillies infield coach Bobby Dickerson said. “Before I called him Thoms, probably. I didn’t know him before [with the Yankees] when people called him Topper or whatever. I just called him Toms.”

Thomson has led the Phillies to a 4-0 record since the managerial change, including a wild 3-2 win in Milwaukee on Tuesday, when Alec Bohm and Matt Vierling hit ninth-inning homers off Brewers closer Josh Hader. Hader had not blown a save since July 7, 2021, and he needed just one more scoreless outing to set an MLB record with 41 consecutive scoreless appearances.

Thomson said former Yankees manager Joe Torre nicknamed him “Topper” because he always tried to top everybody else’s stories. But there is talk that Buck Showalter gave him the nickname. Regardless, it feels like some of this comes down to the fact that Thomson’s name is spelled without a “P,” like Thompson.

It seems like it throws everybody off.

“I don’t know why it’s spelled that way,” Thomson said. “You see it every once in a while. You don’t see it too often.”

So what’s his preference?

“Probably Thomps,” Thomson said.