Slate has an awesome sports podcast called “Hang Up and Listen” featuring Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca.  Every week they do a trivia question, and this weeks question was:

What current major league player’s first and last name are state capitals.

(The answer is one of my top all-star snubs, if you need a hint.)

Anyway, I got to thinking if there were any other players who had state capital names.  So I used R and the XML package to scrape baseball-almanac.com for a list of all major league players and then search each of their names for state capitals.

In alphabetical order of state I found:

•  Montgomery (Al, Bob, Jeff, Monty, Ray, and Steve)
•  Steve Phoenix
• There are 6 Little’s (Bryan, Harry, Jack, Jeff, Mark, and Scott) and 1 Rock (Les).  So I’m going to count that for Arkansas.  (I also found Rocky Stone who has been added to the Rip Torn hall of fame….)
• Denver Grigsby
• Bruce Hartford
• Gene and Mike Lansing
• There are 34 players with the last name Jackson, and one (Jackson Todd) with the first name Jackson.
• Jefferson (Jesse, Reggie, and Stan)
• Carson (Al, Kit, Matt, and Robert)
• Raleigh Aitchison and John Raleigh
• Juan Pierre, Pierre Roy, and Max St. Pierre
• There are 10 Austin’s.  6 with first name Austin (Jackson(!), Kearns, Walsh, Knickerbocker, McHenry, and Romine) and 4 with last name Austin (Jeff, Jim, Jimmy, and Rick)
• For Utah you’d have to go with Jarrod Saltamacchia, Salty Parker, or Jack Saltzgaver and one of the 4 Lake’s (Eddie, Fred, Joe, or Steve).  Although, that is stretching it a bit.
• Richmond (Beryl, Don, John, Lee, Ray, and Scott)
• Madison (Art, Dave and Scotti).  And of course Madison Bumgarner.

Cheers.