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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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OF THEM ALL  BILL MLKVY ...now 79 |
If your name is Mlkvy,
you appreciate a nickname
of TheColumnists.com
This week’s
discourse is on athletes’ nicknames. There are many outstanding
ones according to your taste.
Babe Ruth was The Bambino and The Sultan of Swat.
Ted Williams was The Splendid Splinter and Teddy Ball
Game. There was Red Grange, The Galloping Ghost, and
Joe Louis, The Brown Bomber. Crazy Legs Hirsch
and Twinkletoes Selkirk. Hugh (Losing Pitcher)
Mulcahy, Dr. J , Julius Erving and Boom Boom Geoffrion.
The Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner. George (The Iceman)
Woolf. Big and Little Poison, Paul and Lloyd Waner.
Poosh ‘em Up Tony Lazzeri and a mouthful, The
Round Mound of Rebound, Charles Barkley.
In some 60 years of writing about sports one nickname has stood out for me. I became aware of it early, in 1951. That would be the name hung on basketball player Bill Mlkvy of the Temple University Owls. Mlkvy was: The Owl Without a Vowel.
Mlkvy stood out in 1951 when he led the country in scoring. On March 13 against Wilkes, he scored 51 consecutive points before any Owl teammate scored. It is a unique record that, as far as anybody knows, still stands.
An item in The Philadelphia Inquirer recently noted that Mlkvy was still alive in the Philadelphia area. I contacted Temple and I was set up with Mlkvy, now 79. He seemed surprised, yet pleased, that after all these years there was somebody out there quirky enough to remember him fondly.
The name, Mlkvy, he explained, was Czech. “Many Czechs lack vowels in their name. You have athletes like the baseball player, Kent Hrbek, and the tennis player, Ivan Lendl, who had what might be called missing vowels. Also a Frnka with Tulane.”
The nickname was coined by Ralph Bernstein, a longtime Associated Press reporter in Philadelphia, now deceased. “He was moonlighting for Sport Magazine,” Mlkvy said, “writing about me. I was watching him as he typed with two fingers. He said, ‘This is a crazy name…let’s see.’ He pecked away and I saw it come out, ‘The Owl Without a Vowel.’ And that sucker caught on.”
The name, Mlkvy, was unusual enough to bother him as a teenager. “I said one day we should have a family meeting. I said I can’t live with that name. Well, my father gave me a lecture. What you do in life is important, what you do with your name is important," he said. “You have to live with it and be a good person. Well, I kept the name of course and I have lived up to my dad’s words. He said, ‘cast your bread upon the waters’ and I have. I have tried to be a good person, done charity work and tried to help people.”
Mlkvy made the all-state high school team at Palmerton, Pa. “That was a big deal in those days,” he said. “I had something like 300 offers. I went up to see Holy Cross, where Bob Cousy showed me around. I visited Columbia.”
Mlkvy as a Holy Cross Crusader would be a name with no particular rhythm. Nor would there have been anything special about Mlkvy, the Columbia Lion. He chose Temple because of his desire to be a dentist. “I had great admiration for my dentist, a Dr. Roth, and I got interested in dentistry. I chose Temple because of its dental school, and they arranged my schedule so that I could attend classes and go to basketball practice.”
After awhile he began to become aware of the nickname when reading other nicknames, like Stan the Man Musial. (That later inspired the name, Stan the Man Unusual for an eccentric pitcher named Don Stanhouse). There is a Louiville bookstore owner so taken with the name he sends Mlkvy a Christmas card every year. He hears from people in Nebraska because of the nickname.
As a basketball player, Mlkvy, 6-4, had an all around game. He could play in the backcourt where he had a two-hand set shot. He could take a smaller man into the pivot. The night he scored 51 points in a row, it soon became evident to teammates that he was onto something and they kept feeding him the ball.
Wherever he is introduced it is as “The Owl Without a Vowel.” At Temple’s final regular season game at home recently they honored Temple stars of the past. As he stood with the others, trim and bald at 79, spectators gave a loud cheer when the announcer boomed, “The Owl Without a Vowel, Bill Mlkvy.”
After his outstanding season in 1951, Mlkvy was affected by the heavy load, trying to balance dental school with basketball, and did not have a good senior year. Nor did he excel in a year of professional ball with the Philadelphia Warriors while in dental school. He was graduated from dental school in 1955, practiced dentistry for 25 years and has been involved with his medical business, Ultrasound Services in Newtown ever since.
The Mlkvys had two children. His wife played
field hockey at Temple U. but that was before she married him
so she couldn’t be an Owl without a vowel. “I’m
the only one,” he said with a laugh.
One more thing about the name. The New Jersey Cowgirls softball
team last year had a player named Meredith Hryczyk. A Jersey
sports writer gritted his teeth and called her, “The
Cowgirl Without a Vowel.”
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of Temple University. This column first posted March 15, 2010.
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