Mike Stanton’s birth name is actually Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton and apparently the 22-year-old Marlins slugger wants to be called Giancarlo from now on.
Steven Wine of the Associated Press writes that the Marlins now list Stanton as “Giancarlo” rather than “Mike” on their roster and also display “Giancarlo” on his locker and his paychecks. Of course, Wine also notes that Stanton’s own father still calls him “Mike.”
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Giancarlo is a much cooler name than Mike, and if nothing else the left-handed reliever who pitched from 1989-2007 would probably be happy to reclaim his spot atop the “best Mike Stantons in baseball history list.”
As for why he switched from Giancarlo to Mike in the first place, Stanton told Joe Capozzi of the Palm Beach Post that teachers consistently mispronounced his name in grade school and “it got really annoying having seven classes having to correct seven different people every single day.” He also has a brother named Egidio and a sister named Kairice, so “Mike” was never really a great fit.
