Adonis Garcia is a third baseman/outfielder who plays for the Atlanta Braves.

He also is the first big-leaguer to answer to “Adonis” in more than a century, according to the database at the baseballreference.com site.

The previous Adonis was given the name not at birth, but some time after he became a professional baseball player — in 1884.

Apparently, William H. Terry was considered handsome by other players, or perhaps by journalists, and he was gifted Adonis as a nickname. If we was vain enough, perhaps he appreciated it. He was able to win 197 games, anyway.

Adonis Garcia seems to have had his name all along, which feels like a bit of a burden, given that pretty much none of us live up to the “strong and handsome” reputation of the Greek god Adonis who, as the expression goes, had the body of a Greek god.

For centuries, “Adonis” was a sort of shorthand for “seriously handsome”. Male-model handsome. Show-stopping handsome.

The modern-day Adonis who plays for the Braves is a pretty good baseball player, but he is a fairly squat guy, at 5-foot-9 and 205 pounds, and perhaps only his mother would suggest the Cuban ought to remind us of the beloved boy toy of the ancient world — who had Greek goddesses like Aphrodite and Persephone fighting over him.

(His baseball-ref page has a mugshot of Adonis.)

Without going into advanced-search mode, I can find only one other semi-prominent athlete active in 2017 whose name is Adonis. That would be the Haiti-born boxer Stevenson Adonis, who decided to swap his family name and his given name and compete as Adonis Stevenson. He also answers to the nickname “Superman”.

The fighter is now a Canadian citizen and has shown himself to be a top light-heavyweight; he formerly held the WBC edition of the championship and his career record is 28-1.

Our baseball Adonis is lagging behind a bit, at 32, perhaps because his MLB career was delayed by his inability to get out of his native Cuba.

He defected in 2010 but was unable to get to the U.S. until 2011, and then his residency was not accepted until 2012, when the New York Yankees signed him for $400,000.

The Yankees gave up on him just ahead of the 2015 season. He was a downright ugly defensive player, and he was not generating the big flies the Yankees expected from him.

The Braves then stepped in. They started Adonis with their Triple-A club but he was soon called up for his first MLB action, and before 2015 was over he had the good-looking total of 10 home runs in only 198 at-bats.

He became a regular in 2016, playing in 134 games with the Braves and hitting 14 home runs, while being paid $508,000.

Some fantasy sites, in their 2017 preseason predictions, thought he would be even better in his age 32 season. One forecast suggested he would hit 17 home runs, drive in 72 runs and score 64, albeit it with an unattractive .279 on-base percentage.

So far, the 2017 has been hard on him: He has one home run and nine hits in 56 at-bats over 14 games, which is probably unacceptable even for the rebuilding Braves.

The original Adonis was, at least in one telling (of the typically confusing mythology), killed at a young age by a boar.

The modern Adonis, then, has probably outlived the original. But if he doesn’t start hitting soon he will never rival him in fame.