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The dysfunction regular season is over, and baseball’s 2020 version of expanded playoffs are well underway, (ugh..I think “home run derby” is a better name for what we are witnessing), with the World Series looming just over the horizon. So here’s something a bit different for your enjoyment.
This week, Bill Schaefer sends us an interesting essay dealing with the many ways in which the baseball jargon has found its way into everyday English. We all know of the many sayings Yogi Berra has contributed to American speech (as the featured photo attests), but Bill has a different angle: he enumerates some common baseball expressions that have taken on new meaning in the Americanization of the English language. By the way, Yogi’s famous quote above isn’t exactly what Bill had in mind with this essay, but it’s close enough that I think you’ll get my drift…
Anyway, I think you’ll enjoy Bill’s outstanding essay. Feel free to add some baseball expressions of your own:
BASEBALL’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEXICON
Well—it’s our game, that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution’s laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life—-Walt Whitman
The term national pastime was first recorded in 1856. But at that time the term really meant baseball as played by a new code of rules introduced by the New York Knickerbocker Ball Club in 1845. As the game grew increasingly popular, the expression the national game implied that baseball was the nation’s favorite sport. The variation, The National Pastime, was introduced in the 1920’s to indeed mean that baseball was the most popular sport in the country.
Arguments rage constantly about which sport really is the county’s favorite; many feel basketball and football rank above baseball in popularity. But there can be no argument about which sport has produced the most phrases into the lexicon of the English language. This may be true because the real baseball fanatic in his or her zeal for the game literally hangs on every pitched ball and can recite statistics about the sport at the drop of a hat. For many, baseball becomes life in microcosm and, therefore, its terminology naturally spills over into the language in general.
A ball hit outside of the fair playing area in baseball has been called a foul ball since the 1860’s. By the 1920’s, the term was being used generally to describe any contemptible person. The great American word inventor, T. A. Dorgan is said to be the first person to use the expression in this extended sense. We’ve all known one or two “foul balls” in our lives!
The term from out of left field comes straight from the diamond also and means from out of nowhere unexpectedly. It can also mean unorthodox, weird, unconventional—even crazy. The reason for left field, as opposed to right or center field, is because left has long had negative associations of radical or eccentric behavior. Sorry, southpaws!
Getting to first base in baseball is the first step in scoring a run and it long ago suggested the slang expression get to first base, to take a successful first step or to begin well in anything. In relationships with the opposite sex, of course, “I didn’t get to first base” means failure in the old mating game pursuit. Or, as Marilyn Monroe said to the gentleman who introduced her to Joe DiMaggio, “tell your ballplayer friend he struck out!” Obviously, Joe made a better impression the next time he went up to bat with the luscious MM. But, after September 1954, nobody used the word subway in Joltin Joe’s presence ever again! [Ed. Note: Check out MM in the photo gallery!]
The term home run in baseball was first recorded in 1856, although a cricket term before it was used in baseball, and has come to mean a great accomplishment in any field. In bridge, a grand slam is the taking of all 13 tricks in a deal—and the phrase in that sense dates back to about 1895. By 1940, it became baseball’s home run with the bases loaded, the sports ultimate home run. In general use, a grand slam is the quintessential peak of anything. During my wild and wooly
bachelor days, the Grand Slam breakfast at Perkin’s Pancake House was the apex of gustatory delights for me (life in the fast lane).
Baseball’s double play, a play in which two put outs are made, was recorded as early as 1858 and has long since become a term Americans use when referring to any two accomplishments made at the same time.
By the end of the 19th century, grandstanders were players who played to the grandstand, by making easy catches look more difficult to better show off their skills. The term was soon applied to a show-off in any endeavor.
During the 1905 major league baseball season, the term squeeze play became consciously used when a batter tried to “squeeze in” a run by laying down a bunt in a no-out or one-out situation when there was a runner on third base. Squeeze play in American English also means to apply pressure on a person in order to gain an advantage or force compliance in a specific situation.
To surprise someone in a negative way, deceive or mislead, or ask a tricky question is to throw someone a curve. Of course, the expression has its roots in the curve pitch of baseball, which comes directly toward the batter and then breaks away, often surprising him. It is not an optical illusion as some misguided physicists once claimed. They never batted against Bob Feller, Sad Sam Jones, Bert Blyleven, Sal Maglie, Dwight Gooden or Adam Wainwright (just ask Carlos Beltran!).
The term Screwball can be traced back to the days of the New York Giants lefthander, Carl “King Carl” Hubbell, in the early ’30s, when he introduced the left-handed pitch that corkscrewed crazily as it approached the batter. It was inevitably compared with an unpredictable, erratic, eccentric person, helped by the expression “he has a screw loose” common in the 1860s. (Actually, the first famous screwball was thrown by another legendary Giants pitcher some 30 years earlier. The immortal Christy Mathewson threw the same pitch right-handed but called it a fadeaway.)
In 1902, the term pinch hitter came into use to indicate a player who bats in a pinch for someone else. The expression has wide general use for any substitute or understudy in any endeavor. There are others: A ballpark figure-an estimate; batting a thousand-maintaining a perfect record; play hardball-extreme measures to ensure success.
Baseball fan or not, I guarantee the game has had some influence on the way you speak, like it or not!
[Ed. Note: Here’s a few others from Bill Schaefer that have become part of the lexicon: “Can I have a rain check?” “I’ll touch base with you,” “It’s a whole new ballgame,” You’re definitely out of your league,” “You’re really off-base with that comment.”]
Bill Schaefer
Sources: Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game-George Vecsey; Baseball: An Illustrated History-Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns; Google-Baseball Idioms for Everyday English; Wikipedia, The Seven Year Itch.
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