Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Sports Alphabet


Too often I've had to spell out a word to a customer service agent over the phone. Because it's hard to differentiate between sounds like D and T, the military named the letters Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. I can't remember past Delta and Echo. (Okay, I looked it up - it's Foxtrot. Tell me you know what G is.) That means I'm stuck thinking of words on the fly, which is time-consuming and potentially embarassing if one is not careful. P used indiscriminately is an especially dangerous letter.


To save Get Untracked readers this hassle, I've put together the Sports Alphabet as a public service, providing the most memorable representation for each letter.


B: Bird
C: Charles (Sir Charles to you)
D: Deion (Perhaps Daisuke in a few years)
E: Eli (Excluding the eminently eligible Eckersley, Erving and Ewing, as none of them are excellent E sounds)
F: Federer
G: Gretzky
H: Hakeem Holyfield (In deference to those who remember Olajuwon before he added the H to his first name)
I: Isiah
J: Jordan
K: Kobe (Because most CSR's don't know who Koufax is, and because Kareem is overrated)
L: Lemieux
M: Magic
N: Nicklaus
O: Ozzie (Smith, not Canseco)
P: Payton/Peyton (Edging out Pelé, Pujols, Pedro and Papi)
Q: Quisenberry
R: Reggie (Hall of fame first name of Jackson, Miller, White)
S: Strawberry (Schmidt doesn't work for this purpose)
T: Tiger
U: Urlacher
V: Valenzuela
W: Willie (Mays, Stargell, McCovey and Keeler - also Lanier and Brown)
X: Xavier (The 9-seed, X-man and Professor)
Y: Yastrzemski
Z: Zimmer


Got a more memorable name for a letter? Put it in the comments.

3 comments:

Sooze said...

Good stuff.

The Dave Matthews said...

G = Gamma?

Scott D. Simon said...

Nope, it's "Golf." Which i suppose has something to do with "Foxtrot."

This is why we need a Sports Alphabet.