The List: Major league tattoos

By Ian Harrison, sportsnet.ca

In signing 6’11″ righty Jon Rauch to bolster their bullpen, the Toronto Blue Jays didn’t just add a towering, imposing presence to their pitching staff. They also made a big increase to their tattoo quotient. The tallest player in baseball history, Rauch is almost inked from head to toe. Flames ring his throwing arm, while the left has a thorny design around the bicep with a cross below. His wedding date (in Roman numerals) runs down his spine, broken up by Chinese symbols meaning “Tall Fire,” a nod to his size and hard-throwing style. And, showing off his softer side, he’s even got his daughter’s name, birth date and baby-sized footprints.

Rauch is hardly the first hurler of horsehide in Toronto baseball history to be covered with tattoos. No Blue Jay had more ink than former right-hander Justin Miller, who even has a tat on the inside of his lip. The deluge of ink even led to a rule change in his honour, with the league demanding he (and other inked-up pitchers) wear long sleeves while on the hill so his colourful arms didn’t distract batters. Fortunately for opposing hitters, they never had to lay eyes on Miller’s most disturbing tattoo, a small line of script on his buttocks that reads “I love Billy Koch,” the outcome of a $1000 dare.

Having an eye-catching haircut clearly isn’t enough of an attention-grabber for soccer star Djibril Cisse. The French-born striker has covered his arms, chest, hands and neck with all kinds of artwork, including leopard-like spots, a hooded skull and a cross. Huge angel’s wings spread across his back, his right elbow has a Carmelo Anthony-esque spider’s web and his left shoulder sports a skull and crossbones encircled by the words “Too fast to live, too young to die.” How about “Too crazy for words”?

Texas Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton has tons of tattoos, more than two dozen of them. But he got them during a dark time in his tumultuous, troubled life. Hamilton was inked up during his lengthy battle with drug and alcohol addiction, drawn into that world while hanging out at Florida tattoo parlours as an injured minor leaguer. Now cleaned up, and back on top of the game as the reigning AL MVP, Hamilton has said he regrets getting each one of his 26 tattoos.

The most famous tattoos in footy don’t belong to Djibril, but to Becks. David Beckham got his first tattoo in 1999, marking the birth of his first son, Brooklyn, by getting the name tattooed in Gothic script across his lower back. More than a decade later, there’s been no end to the inking. Both of Beckham’s arms are almost entirely covered (including a misspelled tat of wife’s name Victoria in Hindi on his left arm). The names of his other two sons have been added to his back, along with a large guardian angel and a winged cross on his neck.

Saints tight end Jeremy Shockey is a proud American. So proud, in fact, that in 2005 he sat for 21 hours of tattoo work on his right arm, including one stretch of 16 consecutive hours of inking, ending up with a huge eagle above a stylized Stars and Stripes. Shockey has since added other images to his arms, including a winged cross on the right and a Latin phrase on the left, “Sic vis pacem, para bellum”, meaning “If you want peace prepare for war.”

Mike Tyson’s body is adorned with tattoos of several famous faces, including tennis star Arthur Ashe, Marxist rebel leader Che Guevara and Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-tung. But it’s Iron Mike’s own face that features the former heavyweight champ’s most striking piece of ink. Tyson got a huge warrior symbol tattooed around his left eye in 2003, complete with spiral patterns that spin up onto his forehead and down to his cheek. Tyson took on Clifford Etienne just weeks after getting the tattoo, flattening his opponent after just 49 seconds. Maybe he was making sure Etienne didn’t land a jab to the face.

Basketball players have some of the most elaborate tattoos in the sporting world. Former guard Larry Hughes had two tiny teardrops tattooed under his eye to honour his brother, who died of a heart defect. Udonis Haslem and Marquis Daniels both have maps of Florida tattooed on their back, signifying their Sunshine State heritage. Raptors big man Amir Johnson has no end of ink, but one in particular is a bit puzzling: a barcode on the back of his neck. Can he be scanned at the supermarket checkout counter?

Dennis Rodman was never the type to worm his way out of getting a tattoo. Basketball’s bad boy had most of his arms, chest and back covered with ink over the course of his career. And in 2005, Rodman even teamed up with animal rights group PETA to send a message about not wearing fur, urging people to “Think Ink, not Mink” and showing off several of his tattoos by posing naked for an ad campaign.

Perhaps no team in basketball has more tattoos than the Denver Nuggets, with Carmelo Anthony, Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith all boasting plenty of body art. But even among Denver’s flock of over-inked ballers, Chris Anderson is a bird of a different feather. Known for flapping his arms after a big play, The Birdman actually has wings tattooed onto the backs of his biceps. Those are just two of the more than three dozen colourful tattoos covering Andersen’s arms, neck, back, chest and hands. What’s new to his human canvas this season? The words ‘Free Bird’ in lemon and lime letters wrapped around his neck, with purple flames underneath. Naturally.