Where did Travis Shaw's ‘Mayor of Ding Dong City’ nickname come from, anyway?

Jared Carrabis is a pretty big Brewers fan now – though it’s amazing he has time for it.

He’s a full-time blogger for Barstool Sports, covering specifically the Red Sox but also Major League Baseball at large. He hosts a national baseball podcast called “Starting 9” with former MLB pitcher Dallas Braden and a twice-weekly Sox podcast called “Section 10." He also co-hosts the "Evening Yak" sports-talk radio program for Barstool, broadcast on Sirius/XM radio. And still, he said he’s seen roughly 90% of the Brewers games this year.

And Travis Shaw is his guy.

“We have superstars that come through Boston, but (Boston fans) like the scrappy guy that has a comeback story,” Carrabis said. “Or, ‘I have to prove myself because nobody believes in me.’ Boston takes to those type of players.

"There was really no logical explanation to why (Shaw) wasn’t a top-10 prospect. He was coming up with guys like Jackie (Bradley) and Mookie (Betts), and he performed decent enough to be in the conversation but just never got that recognition. So I said, ‘I’m going to slap a nickname on it and hope he sticks around.’”

That nickname is one everyone knows by now, wordy and silly as it may sound: Mayor of Ding Dong City.

It stuck, followed Shaw to Milwaukee when he was traded last off-season as part of a package for Brewers reliever Tyler Thornburg, and now takes bobblehead form with Sunday’s all-fan giveaway. The fictional Ding Dong City even has a logo now, as seen on the podium from which the “mayor” speaks in his bobblehead portrayal.

“I used it on Twitter; any time he hit a home run, I would say, ‘The Mayor of Ding Dong City strikes again,’ ” Carrabis said. “I started using it in 2015, but it didn’t take off until 2016. I started using Vine (a social media platform of 7-second video clips), and MLB will delete any video that you post that’s theirs. MLB would delete my Vine account, and I’d make a new one 10 minutes later.

"Every time he hit a home run, I’d make a video edit where the second the ball landed, I’d use a doorbell sound effect. That’s when people said this is pretty funny.”

But how did you land on THAT nickname?

As a kid, Carrabis would play wiffleball in the parking lot of a grocery store. For a twist of synergy, the grocer in question: Shaw’s Supermarkets. No relation.

“One of my buddies used to call me that,” Carrabis said, a riff on Carrabis's penchant for calling home runs “ding dongs.”

“A home run was off the wall (usually); the side of a Shaw’s is pretty high. I was the only one that was hitting them on the roof, and my buddy started calling me ‘The Mayor of Ding Dong City.”

Flash forward to 2015, when the Red Sox had a rare off year, going 78-84.

“It was just a dumpster fire,” Carrabis said. “It was my first season covering the Red Sox for Barstool; I had started my own Red Sox blog in 2006, but the Red Sox were never actually bad during any of those years. In 2015, they were just the worst. I was looking for any reason to keep myself (interested), so I started doing the nickname thing.”

Carrabis noticed Shaw, a lefty slugger capable of hitting 400-foot homers and re-applied his childhood nickname.

“It got to the point that when he hit home runs at Fenway, they were playing ‘Keep Their Heads Ringin’ by Dr. Dre. It caught on at Fenway.”

Even better, Shaw didn’t shy away from it, either. Carrabis had some T-shirts printed and made arrangements to meet Shaw before the 2016 season opener in Boston and present him with a shirt.

So yes, now Carrabis cheers for the Brewers, too

The National League-leading Brewers have benefitted greatly from adding the Mayor of Ding Dong City, part of a package that also included minor-leaguer Mauricio Dubon (now out for the year with an injury) and Josh Pennington (who recently retired) in return for Thornburg (who hasn’t pitched yet for the Red Sox with his own injury trouble).

Shaw, one of Milwaukee’s best players in 2017, belted his 12th home run of the season Wednesday and he owns an .841 OPS in his first 49 games.

Carrabis has also corresponded with Christian Yelich dating back to his Marlins days and has become a fan of Josh Hader and Lorenzo Cain, so the Brewers are an easy team to root for.

“It’s the best start in franchise history through 50 games; they’ve been quite impressive,” he said.