In the wide-eyed summer of 1954, that time of Willie Mays and Rocky Marciano and Brown v. Board of Education and the miracle of color television—there was a larger-than-life ballplayer in the Pecos River Valley of New Mexico named Joe Bauman. Nobody called him that. It was an era of nicknames, and they called him Boomin’ Bauman and Sluggin’ Joe, Jarring Joe and Joltin’ Joe and Jumbo Joe, the Man Mountain, the Mammoth Man, the Southpaw Swatter, the Roswell Rocketeer, and the Economy-Sized First Sacker.
The nickname that stuck was Ponderous Joe Bauman.
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