Richard “Dickey” Lovelady became acutely aware of what people were saying about him online.
Before the Mets even signed him to a major league deal, he gave the PR staff a heads-up: his friends call him “Dickey,” so feel free to do the same.
Well, the Mets took that to heart and then took it public. The press release went out: Mets sign Dickey Lovelady. Naturally, the reaction was exactly what you’d expect. And before long, the collective curiosity turned to how broadcasters like Howie Rose and Gary Cohen would navigate that name on-air.
We found out on Wednesday, as SNY’s broadcast booth addressed it head-on. Lovelady, perhaps realizing what he’d unleashed, walked things back. Well, sort of. Yes, his friends call him Dickey. But for media and official purposes? Let’s keep it, Richard.
“All of Richard Lovelady’s friends call him Dickey,” said Cohen. “So, when the Mets signed him and brought him to the big leagues [on Monday], he consulted with the media relations staff, and they asked him, ‘Do you want to be known as Richard or Dickey?’ And so he said, ‘Everybody calls me Dickey. Call me Dickey.’ And so the Mets put out a press release saying they signed Dickey Lovelady.
“And then there was a response online about the idea of Dickey Lovelady. And Richard was not anticipating this type of reaction, so he went back to the media relations staff and said, ‘You guys can call me Dickey, but for informational purposes, I’m still gonna be Richard.’ So, when you come across him in the hallway, you can say, ‘Hi, Dickey,’ but for our purposes, it’s Richard Lovelady.”
Keith Hernandez is going to play it safe and call him “Richard.”
When has Hernandez ever played it safe? Awful Announcing has an entire treasure trove of archives that says otherwise.
Mets fans, on the other hand, might’ve had a few choice names of their own after Lovelady’s debut outing went sideways. But the New York faithful won’t get a second chance to decide what to call him. That’s because the Mets designated him for assignment as part of several roster moves on Wednesday afternoon.
Still, we’ll always have that glorious moment when someone in Mets PR hit ‘send’ on a press release naming a major league reliever, Dickey Lovelady.
Maybe we’ll see him again, either back in the bigs or in Triple-A Syracuse. But for now, we’ll always have those 48 hours when a fanbase collectively embraced one, Dickey Lovelady. And a broadcast that sort of did, too.