I will try and keep this short, LoL. I have been around using "Nicknames" most of my life in some form or other. I grew up as a military kid and then myself I entered the US Army at 18 and served for 8.5years. So being around military and sports you end up having or using a lot of nicknames.
The most interesting nickname given to me came from my squad leader in the Army, I was notorious for being in really good shape and with that I would eat like 7 times a day. So he started calling me "Joe Willy Lunch Meat" do to the fact of eating so much. That was too long so most in the platoon just called me "joe willy" for short.
The A_game came from our manufacturing site in Canada. In my job I had to travel to Canada for 9mos and deliver a project to this site. In my role problem solving and troubleshooting are the money game, bring it and bring it big. With any new line start up you have a fair share of problems so the teams up there started saying dang Rick always brings his A-game to work with him, so it stuck. The # 43 is my High School football number as well so put the two together and you get A-game43.
Enjoy the weekend!