New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira was apparently quite the Nirvana fan growing up. As the excellent baseball blog Walkoff Walk points out, Teixeira even had a somewhat strange way of dealing with the suicide of the band’s lead singer, Kurt Cobain. Interestingly, the Yankees’ switch-hitting slugger took the loss so hard that he went so far as to briefly change his name to Kurt following the death.

Rob Iracane:

We all go through awkward stages in our early teens but Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira experienced a very special kind of awkward when his childhood hero died. Teixeira loved Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain so very much that after Cobain jammed a shotgun barrel in his mouth, the young high school student decided to drop the "Mark" and change his name to "Kurt".

This all came to light in an interview with MLB Network's Harold Reynolds that aired last night. During a sitdown at the Secaucus studios, Reynolds lobbed softballs at Teixeira interspersed with video snippets of interviews with Mark's parents.

The question, though, is this: if Texiera made the change back to Kurt, would it help him improve upon a terrible .225/.342/.406 batting line?

H/T to Walkoff Walk for uncovering a true gem.