The man in right field for the Miami Marlins has "Stanton" written on the back of his jersey, but the name on his baseball cards will be changing, according to the Associated Press.
The Home Run Artist Formerly Known as Mike Stanton would like it to be known that he wishes to be called Giancarlo Stanton now -- his actual first name. Maybe he didn't want the team to be the only thing going by a different name this season; maybe the announcement of his name before at-bats didn't take long enough; who knows?
While his Twitter account still lists Stanton as "Mike," his entries...
... on Wikipedia and Baseball-Reference.com both list him as Giancarlo -- as does his baseball bat:
If you zoom in and push your face up to the screen, you'll see the bat says "Giancarlo," right there in nice gold letters. It's not clear when the picture was taken or put on Twitter, but the original file name suggests last month. He could have been hinting at this new development for weeks, and it looks like his bats haven't always said "Giancarlo" -- two game-used bats from Hall of Fame Memorabilia clearly have "MIKE STANTON" burned into them.
While Stanton also answers to "Cruz," "Mikey," and "Bigfoot," the AP story says his teammates are starting to get used to this new "Giancarlo" business:
"I told him he needs to have longer hair," catcher (and part-time hero) John Buck told the AP. "When I think of Giancarlo, I think of someone with long, flowing hair, like Fabio. But if he keeps hitting homers, I'll him whatever he wants me to call him."
