Brendan Libby somewhat expected that his prank could fall apart once he confessed online to duping the MBTA and Google into renaming a bus stop.
To some extent, it did. But not entirely.
Libby, a Brookline High School senior, detailed this week how he jokingly submitted a correction to Google Maps years ago that resulted in a driveway in West Roxbury being renamed after Rabbit Maranville, an early 20th-century baseball player with a particularly eye-catching name.
Libby, 18, said he was shocked to see the MBTA eventually rename a bus stop in the area after “Maranville Street,” apparently unaware that the street’s name on Google Maps was fake.
But after his story drew attention on Reddit and in the press this week, Google quietly withdrew the street’s name from its platform. At least on Google Maps, Maranville Street is no more.
The West Roxbury street wasn’t much to begin with — in essence, a parking area between Atrius Health and the Hancock Village apartments leading to the complex’s dumpster area.
“It’s basically just a parking lot,” Libby told MassLive in an interview earlier this week.
As a 14-year-old bored during the COVID-19 pandemic, renaming the insignificant stretch of pavement after an old baseball player seemed like a funny idea.
Maranville, a Baseball Hall of Famer and Springfield native, was known as one of “baseball’s most famous clowns” for his practical jokes. He played for the Boston Braves from 1912 to 1920 and was nicknamed “Rabbit” for his speed and small stature.
He “seemed like a chill guy, honestly,” Libby, a fan of baseball history, said. “He’s kind of a prankster, which I think is pretty fitting for the situation.”
For a while, Maranville Street remained an inside joke among Libby’s family. But in 2022, while riding the MBTA 51 bus through West Roxbury, Libby heard an automated announcement declare that the bus was approaching “Independence Drive at Maranville Street.”
Evidently, the MBTA consulted Google Maps when updating its bus stop names. “Maranville Street,” as it appears online, was the only cross street in that area. Two bus stops — “Independence Dr @ Maranville St” and “Independence Dr opp Maranville St” — were born.
“I think it’s funny that something that small can slide in and basically sit there for two years without being noticed,” Libby said this week.
“I don’t know if the city will ever find out (they probably will now) and change it, or raid my house (lol), but for now, I’m the only non-municipal person I’m aware of to have personally named a bus stop,” he wrote in a Reddit post detailing his prank.
While Google has erased Maranville Street from its platform, the bus stops still bear the fake street name. The MBTA did not say on Friday whether it plans to change the names.
Libby’s account “appears to be plausible,” an MBTA spokesperson said earlier this week, as the story circulated on the r/Boston subreddit under the title “So … I accidentally named a MBTA bus stop.”
The agency occasionally consults Google Maps to update bus stop names, the spokesperson said. The two stops in the area had their names updated in the summer of 2022 to reflect the change on Google Maps.
Libby also this week submitted a complaint to Boston 311, noting that Maranville Street — “an important cross street for the MBTA” — was missing a street sign. The 311 submission reached a second stage of review, Libby said.
