IIRC, Jose Uribe came up with the Cardinals as Jose Gonzalez, his actual name. He was traded to SF in the '84-'85 offseason, but when he arrived in SF, he had become Jose Uribe (Uribe was his mother's maiden name.) He changed his handle to differentiate himself from another young Dominican named Jose Gonzalez, who was breaking in as a utility OF with the Dodgers.
Someone at the time mentioned Uribe was literally a "player to be named later" in that deal.
**I read somewhere a couple of years ago a report, using demagraphics, per-capita this-and-that, and some other criteria I don't recall which studied the relative risk of driving in various countries. The D.R. at the time was one of the most dangerous places on the planet to drive a car. Not only did it have a high rate of accidents, but a really high percentege involved fatalities This was right around the time a promising young Tampa Bay (now Yankee, I think) fireballer named Jesus Colome was involved an offseason accident in the D.R., a horrific two-car pile-up that he managed to walk away from (I don't believe he was driving the car he was in.) Three people in the other vehicle died. The report I read implied the problem in the D.R. was a lot of narrow, mountainous roads, relatively lax enforcement of speed limits, and a cultural tendency to drive really fast.
**My siblings and I used to think it would be really cool if Anglo culture would adopt the practice of tacking one's mother's maiden name on the end of one's handle. We weren't trying to make fun of anyone, we just thought it was 'cool'. So my oldest brother started signing his high school homework and school papers that way, and pretty soon the rest of us followed suit. Eventually some anal-retentive counselor made my "insensitive" older brother stop the practice, which in turn caused my parents to put the kibosh on it for the rest of us. I tried to tell my mom we were only trying to "honor" her, but she wasn't buying it.
