50 Years, 50 Names, Part 1

(In honor of the Twins' 50th Anniversary, I've pored over the rosters of all 50 teams and determined the best baseball name on each one.  There are two rules: no repeat winners, and the victor is completely arbitrary.  Enjoy.)

1961: Ted Sadowski.  SB Nation's Jon Bois has been discussing players that are the most indicative of a certain year, (example: Jose Cruz, Jr. is 1998).  It's possible that there's a name that's more 1961 than Ted Sadowski, but whoever that is didn't play for the Twins.

1962: Vic Power. Coincidentally, this is also Jesse's porn name.

1963: Dick Stigman.  Pretty sure he and Don Draper bedded the same secretary in the first season of Mad Men.

1964: Mudcat Grant.  His nickname is Mudcat.  Duh.

1965: Cesar Tovar

1966: George Mitterwald.  Of course he played catcher.  His name was George Mitterwald.  It was either this or his own plumbing-and-heating business.

1967: Harmon Killebrew

1968: Dean Chance.  Coincidentally, this is also my porn name.

1969: Cotton Nash.  Embarrassment of riches this year, as Ron Perranoski, Joe Grzenda, Bucky Brandon and Bill Zepp were also in the running.  In the end, you have to go with the most NASCAR name of any Twin that wasn't Carl Willis.

1970: Minnie Mendoza.  MEN-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-ZAAAAAAAAAA!

More after the jump:

1971: Rod Carew.  Good enough for the Beastie Boys and Time Magazine, good enough for me.

1972: Bucky Guth.  Come on.

1973: Glenn Borgmann.  True story: as part of the stagflation problems of the era, men added superfluous "n"s to their first and last names as a cost-saving measure.

1974: Phil Roof.

1975: Lyman Bostock.  Still makes me sad.

1976: Mike Cubbage. 

1977: Paul Thormodsgard.  DID YOU KNOW?  "Thormodsgard" is Norwegian for "WAR of 0.6 in 1977."

1978: Bombo Rivera.  Of course.  (Rob Wilfong, stymied again.)

1979: Hosken Powell.  My Topps baseball card collection from that year could have been called "20 Hosken Powells, no Rod Carews."

1980: Pete Redfern

1981: Lenny Faedo.  Somewhere, off the coast of Maine, there's a barren, windswept island with a small, weathered cabin on it.  In baseball's offseason, many utility infielders travel to the cabin to visit its sole inhabitant: Lenny Faedo.  They share stories of grit, hustle, determination, want-to, getting after it, and scrappiness.  They then depart, leaving Faedo sit on his sittin' bench, look out the window, watch the waves crash into the beach, and wait.  Always, the waiting.

1982: Paul Boris.  His is also the most likely Twins player name to be used ironically by an indie-rock band as the title of their new EP.  Pitchfork will give it a 6.1, the review will tell you nothing about how it actually sounds, and it will reference Bowie's Berlin trilogy.

1983: Tack Wilson.  Fell just 189 RBI short of Hack Wilson's single-season RBI record in 1983.

1984: Curt Wardle.  I'm as amazed as you are that this is a real person's name.

1985: Frank Eufemia.  Ditto.

NEXT WEEK: 1986-2010.  Is there any way that Junior Ortiz doesn't make the cut?