The answer is: a shortening of “zipper,” a type of rubber overshoes made by Akron, Ohio-based BF Goodrich that were popular back in 1925 when the local university held a campus-wide contest to name the school’s athletic teams.
The correct question, if that were a Jeopardy! clue, is “What is a Zip?” and it’s one Mets manager Buck Showalter revealed he asked recently to pitcher Chris Bassitt, one of two active major-leaguers from the University of Akron, when discussing some college team nicknames and mascots.
“I was like, ‘What is a Zip? And he said, ‘don’t ask,’” Showalter laughed Sunday. “Who’d like to be called a Zip?”
That fun fact came out when Showalter was discussing outfielder Travis Jankowski, who, well before hitting .500 in his first four games as a Met and becoming the team’s everyday center fielder in the absence of Brandon Nimmo and Mark Canha, was a first-round pick out of Stony Brook in 2012.
“Stony Brook, right? This is a kid who was a first-round pick, he’s got some pedigree to him,” Buck said.
He then asked what Stony Brook’s nickname was, and when one reporter quickly identified them as the Seawolves, Buck joked, “Come on, y’all rattled that right off!”
Showalter never had a crazy nickname like that – well, aside from Buck, which is a nickname for William Nathaniel Showalter – as he was a Chipola College Indian before becoming a Mississippi State Bulldog.
One can only wonder, however, what his reaction would be if and when he finds out that once upon a time, Jeff McNeil was a Dirtbag (the colloquial nickname for the baseball team at Cal State Long Beach, whose official nickname is “the Beach”) and Seth Lugo was a “Diamond Gent” back at Centenary College in Louisiana…
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