PCS 5.9: Solution

Hope you enjoyed this. First, the challenge was to identify the images, each of which refers to the nickname of a famous baseball player (this page is a good reference).

As a reminder, here's the image:

Here's the play by play (columns read in order, left to right):

Nickname	Player name
Bulldog	Hershiser, Orel
Inky	Incaviglia, Pete
Big D	Drysdale, Don
(the) Hawk	Dawson, Andre
Dewey (from Malcolm in the Middle)	Evans, Dwight
Puff	Nettles, Graig
Puck	Puckett, Kirby
Bender (from Futurama)	Lackey, John
Hammer	Aaron, Hank
Yaz	Yastrzemski, Carl
Eck ("Ecch")	Eckersley, Dennis
Iron Man	Ripken, Jr., Cal
Fat Toad	Irabu, Hideki
Tornado	Nomo, Hideo
Soup	Suppan, Jeff
Crime Dog	McGriff, Fred
Famous Amos	Otis, Amos
Rocket	Clemens, Roger
Killer	Killebrew, Harmon
(the) Bull	Luzinski, Greg
Trojan	Evers, Johnny
Big Hurt	Thomas, Frank
(the) Bus	Tejada, Miguel
Howdy Doody	Evans, Darrell
Scooter	Rizzuto, Phil

Some of these nicknames span more than one person, but hopefully the uniquely identifiable nicknames could point the way.

Taking the first letters of the last names, one gets "HIDDEN PLAYER IN SMOCK LETTER." Smock refers to the "prize" Mr. LA Sports Czar was awarded from winning the Assassins' Circle 2011. (Smock is not to be confused with Smonk, the original flavor sock monkey; a point I went back later and underlined in this recent post.)

So let's go look more carefully at that Smock post. Smock was awarded to Mr. LA Sports Czar in September 2011, and was accompanied with other prizes as well as a letter. If you go down and look more closely at the letter that accompanied Smock, there's a hidden name of a legendary Dodger running down the left-hand margin column (first letters of the first word of each row):

That secret word--a clue hidden and publicly posted almost a full year ago--is also the answer to this PCS puzzle: CAMPANELLA.

Congratulations to Golem, ubragg, and BCCSweet! And thanks again to SoSG Stubbs for letting me take the wheel for a PCS puzzle this season!