Last week Yankees reliever, Mr. Z. Britton, tweeted that he would, going forward, be known as “Zack” Britton and not “Zach” Britton as he has been known to the public for his entire professional career. I thought about posting something at the time then figured, eh, it’s pretty minor. I’ll just mention something about it the first time he’s in the news for something this spring. But this story is too fun not to share.
I and a lot of people had a chuckle out of Britton’s tweet, wondering if he was just changing it on a whim, but it turns out it was the correction of a long-running mistake that was perpetuated, it seems, by a small error, inertia and, it would seem, Britton not being too hung up about how one’s name is spelled.
The upshot: he’s always, legally, been “Zackary,” which is “Zack,” and all of his legal documents have always said “Zackary,” but his parents called him “Zach” and told him the proper way to shorten it was “Zach,” so in non-legal settings -- on the Orioles’ rosters, on baseball cards and places like that -- it’s always been “Zach.” His wife, who is an attorney, told him that it should probably be uniform everywhere so as to avoid potential confusion. So he and the Yankees agreed that he should now, properly, be listed as “Zack” everyplace.
As a “Craig” who gets called “Greg” an awful lot -- and as the father of a son named “Carlo” who is invariably called “Carlos” by others -- I can’t imagine being so blasé about it all, but I suppose Britton is just a way more chill dude.
