The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Cy Young, an Olympic javelin thrower who died at age 89. Wait a minute! That's not him -- this is Mr. Young:

Imagine growing up with the name Cy Young.

"Are you a pitcher?"

"No."

"Do you play baseball?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I just don't. Okay?"

And to make matters even worse, his father played minor league baseball. You don't suppose that put any additional pressure on someone with that name, do you?

"Come here, son, I want to teach you how to throw a baseball."

"Ugh."

From his obit in the Times (all emphasis mine):

Cyrus Young Jr. was born in Modesto, about 90 miles east of San Francisco, on July 23, 1928. His father was a farmer who played baseball for the minor-league Modesto Reds, and his mother, the former Thelma Gartin, was a homemaker.

Young Cy wanted to play baseball, but asthma restricted his athletic activities. 

So what did young Mr. Young do?

At Modesto Junior College, however, a coach suggested that he learn how to throw the javelin.

He became the first American man to win a gold medal in javelin, and when he died at 89 at his home in Modesto, Calif., on Dec. 6, he remained the only one.

That was in the 1952 Helsinki Games. Four years later his javelin career was over:

He told The Bee in 1996 that he had made a pile of his shoes, sweatsuits and javelins, poured kerosene over them and set them afire.

Yikes! (Sounds like he had some anger issues.)

“It was time to get on with my life,” he said.

After the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Young became a full-time farmer and rancher.

Kind of sounds like, "F*** you, everybody! Even if I didn't play baseball I still had a great athletic career. Now leave me the f*** alone!"

But I'll bet every time someone was introduced to him the first thing they said was something like, "Cy Young? Hey, did you play baseball?"