That's a lot of letters

 

Last month when the Reds called up Christian Encarnacion-Strand, he broke a record the minute he stepped onto the field.

Encarnacion-Strand became the major league player with the longest full name in history, 27 characters.

Encarnacion-Strand doesn't have many cards yet, it's mostly all Bowman, Panini Elite Extra and Pro Debut. But they've already got his name down in terms of squeezing it onto a card.

This one, I can kind of hear the panic in the graphic artist's voice -- it barely makes it into the name slot. It's pushing the Mighty Mussel guy a little more into the border than on other cards in the set.

But with graphic design programs, I'm sure fitting a name into a space is a lot easier than it once was, even with the longer and longer names -- as far as baseball is concerned anyway.

Encarnacion-Strand (whose uniform just reads "Encarnacion") broke a record that hadn't lasted very long, only a year.

The previous record-holder was Simeon Woods Richardson with 22 letters. The record had been 20 letters for a long, long time and then Woods Richardson gets to own the new record for just a year.

I can tell right away that the type in his name was squeezed to fit into the 1974 Topps design. I guess I'm just too familiar with that set.

There's a comparison with his teammate, Sonny Gray, to illustrate.

Before Woods Richardson and his double-barreled name came along, the record of 20 was held by seven players and almost all of them played within the last 30 years.

There are two notable ones. I'm sure you know them.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia might have the most cards of all of the long name guys. Every time I saw this guy's name I'd think, "well it could have been even more difficult, he doesn't have a lot of round letters in that last name."

 

Still, it was a bit of a challenge. I wonder if Topps chose this photo of Saltalamacchia so collectors would be so entranced by the uniform they wouldn't notice how teeny the foil name is.

 

There's a comparison with a player with a much shorter -- and larger -- name.

It's a bit amazing that Saltalamacchia's name fits in 2008 Heritage, which uses the 1959 design, with its large name presentation.

 

But a quick comparison shows the Cs and the M was squeezed.

 

The other 20-letter guy with a fair number of cards is 1990s pitcher William Van Landingham.

 

There's some definite smushing going on here but it doesn't look too bad. At least Topps didn't cheat Van Landingham out of a star.

 

On several of his early cards, Van Landingham is called "Bill" and maybe that's because card companies were working themselves up for getting William in there.

Most of the other 20-letter players didn't appear very long in the majors, but here is the leaderboard direct from MLB:

Note the guy from 1891.

Yeah, although there have been more frequent long names in the majors lately, it's a long-standing tradition of card companies to figuure out how to get all those letters in the little box.

That's why I'm assuming that each year, one of the first things determined about the design used is "will the player's full name fit?"

I mean, imagine if you had to fit Encarnacion-Strand into something like this:

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RIP to Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Famer, Pat Corrales.

First Alex Cole and now Corrales. It's been a rough month for the cardboard greats.