Minors Monday: The Middle Name

It's probably not a good sign if somebody other than your mother is using your full name.  Historically speaking, there just aren't a lot of folks who are known by both their first and middle names for anything...well, good.

John Wayne Gacy.  Lee Harvey Oswald.  The middle name is thrown in as a "let's make sure we don't mix up just who this is, cause this is a baaaaad dude." But it can go the other way as well.

Sometimes it's worth throwing in a middle name just to figure out who the heck we're talking about.  Heck, the Pirates managed to have two different Jeff Robinson's pitch in the Steel City within a few years of each other.

And then there's Dave Johnson.

No, not Davey Johnson, former manager of the year and all-star second basemen.  Dave Wayne Johnson.  By many standards, his career wasn't a complete bust.  Dave Wayne made the majors in parts of 5 different seasons, including putting up a 13-9 record for the 1990 Orioles.

But Dave Wayne is here for his 5 games as a Pirate in 1987, a stretch that was virtually impossible to find photographic evidence of.  But Dave Wayne hung around the Pirates AAA affiliate, the awesomely named Buffalo Bison, for a few seasons.  And while the photos confirm it was indeed not the same Dave Johnson who had managed the Mets to the World Series a year earlier, the card was a cool addition to my collection.

And luckily for Dave Wayne Johnson, there are probably only a handful of diehard Pirates and Orioles and his dear mother who think of him as Dave Wayne.  He's managed to escape enough infamy to truly justify the middle name.