Why Nolan Arenado isn’t the Sandblaster for Players’ Weekend

DENVER – Earlier this week, Major League Baseball, in conjunction with the Major League Baseball Players Association, announced the second annual Players’ Weekend. It is a weekend that is more relaxed on uniform rules and regulations and allows the athletes to wear their nicknames (or whatever names they choose) on the back of their uniforms.

Last season saw some funny ones like Seattle’s Kyle Seager wearing “Corey’s brother” and this season has already seen few, Rich Hill of the Los Angeles Dodgers will wear “D. Mountain” and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Brad Boxberger will go all emojis … “📦🍔.”

The Colorado Rockies list of nicknames for this year is as follows:

Yency Almonte: “SHOWTIME”
Tyler Anderson: “MR. DUCK”
Nolan Arenado: “NADO”
Chad Bettis: “LETTUCE”
Charlie Blackmon: “CHUCK NAZTY”
David Dahl: “BABY DAHL”
Wade Davis: “WADER”
Ian Desmond: “DEZ”
Mike Dunn: “DUNNER”
Kyle Freeland: “TWO ONE”
Carlos Gonzalez: “CARGO”
Jon Gray: “GRAY WOLF”
Chris Iannetta: “C I”
DJ LeMahieu: “DJ”
German Marquez: “MARQUEE”
Jake McGee: “MACCHEEZ”
Ryan McMahon: “McDOOGLE”
Harrison Musgrave: “MUSKY”
Scott Oberg: “OBIE”
Seunghwan Oh: “오승환”
Adam Ottavino: “AO”
Gerardo Parra: “EL YOLO”
Chris Rusin: “RUSS”
Antonio Senzatela: “SENZE”
Bryan Shaw: “GEEK”
Trevor Story: “TREV”
Pat Valaika: “BARRELS”
Tony Wolters: “T-DUB”

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Now there were two notable ones for the Rockies for what they aren’t and those are Nolan Arenado and Kyle Freeland.

Last year on a magical night against the D-Backs, Arenado had two clutch hits and an unreal defensive play. Simply, he was Nolan. That night — by accident — #RockiesTwitter dubbed him the “Sandblaster” on a translation error. That stuck … but it’s not on the back of his jersey for players weekend. Why?

“Didn’t think about it,” Arenado said, smiling. “Maybe next year. That’s a good idea though.”

The other one that caught some eyes was also because of a meme was Kyle Freeland’s. Freeland has a fan club that calls themselves “Kyle Freeland Guys.”

Freeland said he didn’t want to put “I’m a me guy” on his uniform because those who might not get it could think a certain way about him. He did, however, want to go as “Flat Stanley” but MLB would not allow him. Freeland’s friends in high school called him that because he was so skinny then. While at college at Evansville, Freeland and his teammates went Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights and that’s how he ended up as “Two One.”

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