The Sports Lexicon
Peter V. Conroy Jr.
February 5, 2007
The Chicago Literary Club
Our culture is permeated with sports and
almost any and every thing related to sports. A large portion of the short
nightly news on television is devoted to sports; newspapers that have little or
nothing about international news have extensive coverage of local and national
teams; on cable we have channels broadcasting nothing but sports. This invasive
presence is felt also in our language, in how we speak. Here I suggest that we
look at words and expressions that have moved back and forth between sports and
our everyday speech and in doing so have undergone some interesting semantic
transformations.
Golf offers us a number of examples of how
meanings change as words migrate from sports to speech. One of the most obvious
is the term par. Par means that a
player has hit the number of shots considered normal or usual for a particular
hole. Most pars are four, but every course throws in a few threes and fives,
just for variety. For eighteen holes, par is usually 72. The finest
professionals competing in championship play usually shoot par, which is an
excellent score. At their best they can shoot under par, which means
they needed fewer than 72 shots to put the ball into the 18 holes. Over par
is, of course, the opposite, and not to be desired; to win, you must not just
shoot par but also have a number of holes under par. Under par or birdie is
very good, over par or bogey is not.
However, in daily speech, when we say that
“things are par for the course,” we grudgingly admit that things are OK, there
are no problems to worry about. Par here means acceptable, but it fails to
convey that key suggestion of excellence. Sometimes it expresses our
disappointment. For example: Wife to husband: The mailman didn’t deliver the
mail again today. Husband: Well that’s par for the course. Par in everyday
speech indicates a negative judgment. If a worker is performing badly, we say that his work is under par. As you can see,
the concept behind the word par has been completely reversed, stood on its
head. Par on the golf course is a laudatory, noteworthy achievement, and only
the finest players can shoot par regularly. Par in the work place is hum-drum,
average, nothing to write home about. Under par or birdie is cause for
celebration on the links, even for championship players, but it comes close to
cause for dismissal at work. The terms involved are short and simple, but they
veer off in wildly different semantic directions depending on where they are
spoken.
Another interesting word from the realm of
golf is gimme. In ordinary parlance, repeated three times, it incarnates
selfishness. People who want everything and who constantly strive to grab all
they can say “gimme, gimme, gimme.” A gimme society is one that constantly
consumes and immediately demands more and more to consume. Kids trying to get
what is refused them scream the word. Adults use the word as an angry command,
an imperative that cannot be denied. “Gimme the keys to the car” is the
teenager’s cry, “gimme your wallet” the thief’s.
In golf, on the other hand, gimme is a
most courteous and generous notion. A gimme putt is a concession, a gift
on the part of your opponent. Instead of forcing you to hit that two-foot putt,
which under pressure gets longer and longer and can easily be missed, the
obliging player considers the shot automatic and the putt made so you don’t
actually have to do it. Golf’s generous and polite gimme is transformed by
everyday speech into solipsism.
In life a handicap is a disability that
prevents an individual from performing physical or mental tasks that others can
do normally. In golf, having a handicap is an advantage since it provides an
adjustment in score that permits poorer players to compete with more skillful
ones. Closer to the standard signification, racing handicaps penalize horses
with the best records by requiring them to carry more weight than their
competitors.
A expression we frequently hear used for
emphasis is slam dunk. In basket ball a player dunks when he stuffs the
ball into the basket rather than shooting it in from a distance. The slam dunk
is an extremely violent form of dunk: the ball is thrown with great strength
and velocity through the basket. A slam dunk is intended to be a most
intimidating shot. It is a statement whose purpose is to demoralize opponents
and thrill fans. No one tries to block a slam dunk because of the force
involved. Attempting to do so would be useless and even dangerous to the
defender.
Common usage makes slam dunk a synonym of
inevitability but without the factors of physical force or intimidation. A
decision is a slam dunk when there is no alternative. The choice is evident,
requires no discussion, is as plain as the nose on your face. “Which movie will
win the academy award? That’s a slam dunk …” No need to ask really, we know the
answer already. A slam dunk is a no-brainer.
The singles bar scene, where every guy
wants to score, has adapted some
baseball vocabulary. A young man strikes out (not with Huck Finn for the
western territories) when he fails to get to first base or establish any
kind of rapport with a young lady. If their little tete-a-tete does develop a
bit only to fizzle out later, he has been shut out, as when a team fails
to score even a single run. Speaking of missed opportunities, a whiff is
a swing and a miss, often at a third strike: “he whiffed” is a miss compounded
by insult. A person whiffs when she fails miserably to complete a deal,
especially if there is no second chance. A home run swing, as a noun,
describes a powerful swing, an enormous cut at the ball. Unfortunately,
this mighty effort is often unsuccessful. If the batter had hit the ball, he
would have had a home run. Too many swings like that and you whiff. The verbal
formation is slightly different: to have a home run swing is most laudatory. It
identifies a player as possessing mojo, power, potential. Having that home run
swing is one predictor of the talent necessary to succeed. In baseball as in
jazz, if you ain’t got that swing, it don’t mean a thing.
Basketball slips a word or two into this
romantic context. When a fellow decides to approach an unknown female and
introduce himself, he is putting a move on her. A guy who has all the
moves is glib and smooth in his efforts to converse with the opposite sex.
More poetically, a basket ball player can kiss it off the glass when he
deftly banks a shot off the backboard and it falls softly into the basket. A
baseball announcer will say that you can kiss that one good bye when a
player hits a towering home run deep into the seats or even out of the stadium.
Love in tennis means zero. Some trace the word’s origins to the French l’oeuf
or egg. In English we would say goose egg. Others claim the etymology is from lover,
a French verb meaning to coil a rope in an oval shape which would also resemble
a zero.
Baseball has given us a number of terms
that we use in normal conversation to describe critical and dramatic situations.
Although baseball can be quite slow moving, it nonetheless is able to develop
tense situations all through the game and not just at the end. Bases loaded
is one of these tense situations. Any hit by the offense, any error by the
defense will produce runs. Bases loaded two out is even more critical:
the next thing that happens (a hit or an out) will be definitive, either ending
the inning or producing runs. Bottom of the ninth indicates a team’s
last chance, its final hope. The only time the home team bats in the bottom of
the ninth is when it is losing. So the phrase succinctly indicates that they
will lose unless they score some runs immediately. Tensions can of course
accumulate when we combine the phrases: bases loaded, two out, bottom of the
ninth, two strikes on the batter … even better, full count. That is the
ultimate critical situation. Football creates tension in situations like third
and long. Anyone facing a daunting third and long is in trouble: the
attempt is rarely successful and usually calls for desperate and thus dangerous
action.
Since most baseball players are right
handed (at all levels and across the nation; however, left handed hitters are
much more numerous in the big leagues and constitute a much larger percentage
there), they tend to hit the ball to left field. The best hitters, however, can
also go to right, which means they hit in the opposite or wrong
direction. Our idea of wrong is of course totally inadequate and inaccurate:
any hit is good. Sports do not judge by intentions or aesthetics, only by
results. Winning ugly is a sportsman’s concept and has nothing disgraceful
about it.[1] These hits to right field are usually
defensive hits, since it is hard to be aggressive and generate power in the
off-direction. Someone who can go to right is therefore someone who can
improvise, do the unexpected, make the best of a bad situation, and confound
expectations in the bargain. Going to right is something of a compliment, not a
major endorsement but still the recognition of an important accomplishment.
Being out in left field, on the other hand, is all negative. The
leftfielder is indeed the busiest of all the outfielders, but being out in left
is to be lost, dazed, confused. This goes back perhaps to little league where
outfielders have next to nothing to do and often let their minds wander.
Curve balls are the bane of a batter’s existence because they are difficult
to hit. Michael Jordan is one of the premier athletes of modern times, yet his
baseball career was cut short because he couldn’t hit the curve. In theory, if
you don’t learn to hit a curve by 15, you never will, just like learning to
speak a foreign language without an accent. Curve balls incarnate guile and
deception because they move unexpectedly
and unpredictably in two directions (up/down and in/out) simultaneously.
Throwing someone a curve is then doing the unpredictable, trying to fool,
intentionally deceiving. The curve looks as if it is going one place when it
suddenly changes direction. People who throw us curves are hard to decipher; we
can’t read what they are doing and conclude that they are tricking us. A young
lady with curves is however something else again, even if she is also throwing
them.
There are other pitches that are equally
intriguing and equally deceptive. A knuckleball is a goofy pitch which
is not thrown with the knuckles (a physical impossibility), but with a special
grip so the ball does not rotate. If the ball rotates, the pitch will follow a
regular trajectory even if it curves or hops like a fastball. Lacking rotation,
a knuckleball is unpredictable and can go anywhere. Some catchers are kept on
major league rosters just so they can catch a knuckleballer. If catching the
ball is difficult, imagine how tough it is to hit. We commonly describe a
fellow as a knuckleball or knucklehead because he is so unreliable and strange.
We never know how a knuckleball will behave. A similar but not identical pitch
is the screwball. By definition, a screwball is a reverse curve that
breaks in the wrong or opposite direction, and thus augments the ball’s devious
and deceptive nature. It is extremely difficult to throw because it requires an
unnatural motion, with the arm and hand going inside rather than outside the
throwing arc, as with a normal pitch. Hence, an individual is a screwball
because he seems to do everything backwards or in a reverse manner. A screwball
is odd, strange, and bewildering; it cuts against the grain. Unusual and
eccentric individuals are often called screwballs. Similarly we have movies
described as “screwball comedies.” I am
thinking of those with Kathern Hepburn and Spenser Tracy which played with
stereotypes and stood them on their head. Both screwball and knuckleball are
then even more deceptive and eccentric than a curve. Few pitchers can throw
them and those who can do it well have their fortunes assured.
Play ball is the home plate and
chief umpire’s traditional call to start each inning of the game. Logically in normal conversation it
means “let’s begin.” But it also conveys the sense of let’s cooperate, let’s do
something of mutual interest together. When buyer and seller are playing ball,
they are continuing to talk, to discuss, to negotiate. Additionally, playing
ball with someone can connote deviousness or underhandedness, hinting at
collusion with a whisper of illegality. Playing ball with the mob is a
dangerous enterprise.
Baseball is an unusual sport in that each
offensive player confronts the defense alone. The entire team does bat, but
one-by-one and in a fixed, unchanging sequence. The best hitters go first in
the line-up (not the one familiar to us from television police dramas),
while the weakest come at the end, in the eighth and ninth slots. It is
therefore difficult to depend on one individual to produce all the runs, to carry
the ball all the time as a running back might in football. Baseball divides
offensive responsibility while basketball and football concentrate it. Like
football, basketball has a go-to guy, the player who takes most of the
shots, the player everyone else gives the ball to. So is there an equivalent
term for baseball to designate its clutch hitters? When a business or
trade has different teams or individuals working on a single job, the best of
them are acknowledged as the top of the order. We might also designate
them as first string even if they are not playing music.
As I just explained, a baseball player
goes to bat only every ninth time, so every at bat or offensive
opportunity is important. You’re at bat when it is your turn to do the job, to
perform. A substitute can however bat for another player, and this is a simple
question of replacement. Going to bat for someone in daily talk has a
different sense, however. It means you are taking up another’s cause, not
replacing her. You become her advocate, her champion, advancing and promoting
her as best you can. You exert your influence on behalf of the person you go to
bat for. Stepping up to the plate is a related concept. When a person
undertakes a difficult task, when she accepts her obligation to perform well,
she steps up to the plate.
A subtle game of sudden movements in multiple
directions that can resemble ballet for some fans, baseball requires that
infielders shift their positions on every hit ball. On extra base hits,
especially with runners on base, they engage in an elaborate yet spontaneous
choreography: each man must, separately and on his own, predict what will
happen, decide what his responsibility will be, and then run to the proper
position. If any single one makes a mistake and fails to do his job, a runner
can take advantage of that mental error and advance. Covering all your bases
is consequently a common injunction to make sure that you have planned for all
eventualities, that you have all the details under control, and that there are
no parts missing from your project. Similarly, a runner has to touch every base
as he runs from first around to home. If he fails to do so, he can be tagged
out. Hence you must touch all the bases and cover all the essential
material or your project will suffer.
While I have been focusing on words that come
to daily speech from sports, some terms follow the opposite path.
Interestingly, a few of the most well known have religious connotations,
without I am sure any hint of disrespect or blasphemy. They do point to a
simpler world of times past when such expressions were not fraught with
political implications and did not offend delicate sensibilities.
One of the most famous is football’s hailmary,
(I assume without any capitals), echoing the words of the angel to Mary that
she was to become the mother of Jesus. This is a long pass thrown far downfield
in the forlorn hope that somehow the receiver will catch it. If he does, what a
surprise! Hello Mary, catch that! The New York Giant’s quarterback in the 50s,
Chuck Connelly, made these his specialty. Surprise and desperation, the hope
that God is smiling on you, all that is part of the prayer. The hailmary is
then a unique combination of despair, luck, and wishful thinking. If it is not
thrown in desperation like a hailmary, a long pass is called a bomb
-–the military influence we will examine shortly-—because it is, when
successful, such an exciting, explosive play. When it works, it can blow open a
game and spell victory.
Speaking of prayers, there used to be a
phrase no longer heard, a punt and a prayer. This was another desperate
tactic, used by teams that had little or no offense. When they failed, as
usual, to get a first down, they would punt the ball away and then hope they
would get lucky, that the other team would fumble or get caught in bad field
position. Someone who is down on his luck and without any prospect for
improvement doesn’t have a punt or a prayer.
Another famous religious reference is the Immaculate
Reception, a strange and seemingly unmotivated reference to the Immaculate
Conception, the Catholic doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived
and born free from the original sin that all men inherit from Adam and Eve.
According to this doctrine, which is implausible, inexplicable, and wondrous,
Mary was untouched by any sin. In the 1972 AFC Divisional Playoffs between the
Steelers and the Raiders, Pittsburgh was losing in the closing minutes. On
third and long, at their own 40 yard line, Terry Bradshaw threw a pass to
Frenchy Fuqua, who was tackled just as the ball reached him. The ball popped up
into the air. Everyone thought the ball would drop to the ground. Then the pass
would be incomplete, and the play over.
Miraculously, fullback Franco Harris appeared out of nowhere and made a
spectacular catch, grabbing the ball a few inches off the ground. He ran
untouched down the entire field and scored the winning touchdown. According to
the rules in effect at that time, this was an illegal reception: if one
offensive player tips the ball into the air, it has to be touched by the
defense before another offensive player can catch it. No one saw who touched
the ball, the offense or the defense, Frenchy or his tackler Jack Tatum. The
debate still rages. The referees on the field ruled it a legal catch and a
touchdown. The Raiders lost the game on this almost inconceivable (as well as
unbelievable for Oakland fans) and totally implausible (the ball and the
receiver Harris were both untouched and thus immaculate) reception that
produced a miraculous result for Pittsburgh.
As with religion, so with war. The military
has furnished sports with more than a few vocabulary items. Let us not forget
that it was on the playing fields of Eton and the other British public schools
that the principles and the spirit of empire were impressed on what became the ruling
classes. In baseball, a third baseman or shortstop with a strong throwing arm
is said to have a rifle. A similarly talented outfielder, who has to
throw the ball much further than an infielder, is described as having a canon. As a verb, to rifle a ball is to throw it
hard and fast along a straight trajectory. Similarly, a well-hit line drive is
rifled into the outfield. A second baseman might gun a quick throw to
first. In football, the game is won in the trenches, that is to say
along the scrimmage line where 300 pound behemoths struggle to win a few
inches, feet, or yards of territory for their team. Their back and forth
struggle recalls the advances and retreats of the trench warfare in 1914-18.
One common offensive strategy recalling Grant attacking Lee in the Wilderness
of Virginia is to grind it out on the ground, that is to run the ball.
If unsuccessful there, the next option is to go to the air and use the
passing game. A team marches downfield when it advances the ball
consistently and methodically. We have already mentioned the bomb, the
long forward pass. A back who runs quickly through a blocking hole explodes
through the line.
As football became more and more popular in
the postwar 50s, the term blitz was coined to indicate when intense defensive
pressure was put on the quarterback. An overwhelming number of defensive
players would rush the quarterback, hoping to tackle him before he could pass
the ball. The reference of course was to the German military strategy of Blitzkrieg
(lightening war or overwhelming force used to attack a single defensive point)
and the “Blitz” of London. The term that football made popular remains with us
when we talk of a media blitz. One of the counter strategies against the blitz
is the shotgun. The arms in question might seem disproportionate, but
the shotgun is effective, placing the quarterback well behind the line of
scrimmage, away from the blitzing defenders, and thus more able to throw his
passes quickly.
In the infantry, the point man takes the lead
position in a marching column, chooses the path to follow, and usually is the
first to make contact with the enemy. In basketball, the point guard is
not the one who scores points; rather he brings the ball down the court and
stands at the apex of the offensive formation. His job is less to shoot than to
pass, select plays, and function as the field general of the offense. In
business, the point man takes the lead in presenting a new product both to
clients and to the public. More than a spokesman since he participates in the
project itself, this point man is the most obvious member of the team, both
visually and vocally, and thus the easiest target for critics.
Metal technology and improved design have
revolutionized golf clubs. In the past, drivers had a wooden head; today they
are composed of complex metal alloys and have a much larger striking surface
which entails a much larger “sweet spot,” the area of the club face that
delivers maximum power. Because of their large sweet spot, these new clubs are
forgiving and can compensate for poor shots. One of the trademarks for these
new clubs is Big Bertha, a name that emphasizes its promise to give
greater distance to the drive. The original Big Bertha was a massive World War
I artillery piece that was so huge it had to be transported by and fired from a
specially designed flat-bed railroad car.
Downtown comes to us from
basketball. Although I have heard it countless times, I still ask myself what
it means. Obviously downtown is a section of a city, and possibly a desirable
one. Nonetheless, depending on the city we are talking about, uptown might be a
more prestigious address and downtown a shabbier part of the city.
Consequently, our normal expectations for uptown/downtown, whatever they may
be, do not come into play here.
What then does downtown mean? Perhaps or
partially it means in the paint which indicates the area close to the
basket (down low or down in the pivot) where a shorter shot has a
greater percentage of success. Alternatively, it is used to mean a long shot
taken from behind the three-point line (about 26 feet from the basket) which is
more difficult than a close in lay-up. Taking a defender downtown is the
color man’s way of explaining that an offensive player has just put a fancy
move on his opponent. Downtown here has several addresses: cutting without the
ball to get free for a shot or a one-on-one drive off the dribble. Going
back door, which is a tricky move that exploits an overly-aggressive
defense, is one of the flashier ways of taking your man downtown. A number of
years ago there was a player named Freddie Brown who was dubbed (I think by
television announcer Brent Mussberger) Downtown Eddie Brown. The rhyme of those
three vowels made it a moniker you couldn’t resist. But I have no memory of what
Freddie did to deserve the downtown epithet, what special moves or shot he had
that merited such a melodious description. Downtown is thrown around so much
nowadays that I can only conclude that it is a synonym for any dramatic basket,
any clutch score, any shot that one team desperately needs to stay in the game.
When the announcer runs out of words to signify drama, tension, or excitement,
he can always fall back on old faithful and sing out “downtown!”
When it is trailing the competition, a
business company might call for a full court press. This is a desperate tactic that requires a
maximum effort but that runs a maximum risk. An all-out effort that mobilizes
entirely the firm’s forces, it applies all the pressure it can muster on its
catch-up objective.
Sports have a large vocabulary describing how
one waits to participate. Relief pitchers wait in the bullpen until
being called upon to replace the guy who has lost his stuff and who is being
taken out of the game or yanked. At the work place the bullpen contains those
employees ready and waiting to be assigned to a job or to replace those being
benched. Those not playing right now are on the sidelines, or on the
bench, more poetically “riding the pine.” Slight variations denote serious
deflections in meaning. The verb to be sidelined or benched signifies a
punishment, usually for poor play. At work, an individual is or may feel
sidelined when she is excluded from a project or information about one. Being
benched at work, which is a notch higher than sidelined on the negative scale,
means that you are being replaced because the boss is not happy with your
performance. To be benched (passive voice, past participle) should then be
distinguished from just being on the bench (active voice, present participle)
when a player is taking a rest or a breather.
Baseball has the next batter outside the
dugout, usually resting on one knee, on deck, in a special area
specifically marked on the field. That phrase has nautical implications. A
sailor’s notion of preparedness and getting ready for action (“all hands on
deck”) is the same message as in baseball. Only in baseball is the head coach
or manager referred to as skipper. A basketball floater is a soft
underhand running lay up by a small man from 8 or 10 feet out (which is rather
far for a lay up) that arcs very high to avoid being blocked by a big man. It
usually drops softly through the basket, swish, all net. An
onomatopoeia, swish is the sound the ball makes when it goes through the basket
without touching the metal rim; it hits nothing but net and hence is all
net. Both expressions designate excellent shots.
One way to avoid being benched is to keep
your eye on the ball. This is a hortatory expression, an invocation to pay
attention, to focus on what is happening now. With kids it is more often than
not a helpless plea to a player with a wandering mind who has forgotten about
the game at hand. That player, of course, is out in left field. In such
a case, the coach is likely to follow up with another command, keep your
head in the game. While somewhat synonymous with the first phrase, it does
invoke an anatomically interesting dilemma. In the realm of anatomy, we have
other cross-over expressions. Hard
nose describes a tough, aggressive, and unyielding competitor -- hence, we
speak of a hard-nosed defense. The physical violence of football is captured by
its smash-mouth defense. By a
nose is an infinitely small unit of measurement used at the race track to
indicate the slightest margin of victory. To me women’s basketball seems to
confuse anatomy when it plays man-to-man defense.
Tennis does not provide much grist for my
sports-talk mill. Nonetheless, we easily speak of having the ball in your
court when you are presented with a situation that demands a response, that
you have to deal with. The crescendoing enumeration point, set, match, and
game is an emphatic and sophisticated punctuation mark that indicates when
a project is over and done with, finished, completed. And does so in a most
dramatic and definitive manner. No runs, no hits, no errors is baseball’s
way of saying that nothing, but nothing of importance has happened. These are
the three bits of information featured on every scoreboard and updated every
half inning. While apparently simple, rhetorically this is a nifty ternary
construction: the same negative repeated three times, each one followed by a
single noun, the first two with one syllable each, the last two syllables. Taut
and well paced, the phrase conveys so much more than it actually says.
Three strikes, you’re out has
migrated from baseball to our judicial system, where three convictions can
produce an extra, supplemental punishment. Three has always been a powerful,
symbolic number. Having three strikes against you means that you are
battling against heavy odds and that you don’t have much chance of prevailing.
To conclude my excursus through this
sports dictionary, I would like to look a three general concepts that reveal
interesting linguistic play. These concepts are depth, hardness, and color.
Depth perception is an elastic and
flexible concept in the sports lexicon. A team can be described as deep
or as having a deep bench when it has a number of equally excellent players,
especially at one position. Although on level ground, a batter is deep in
the hole when he has no balls and two strikes against him. A pitcher,
meanwhile, high on the mound goes deep in the count when the batter
forces him to throw more than the usual number of pitches. A batter goes
deep when he hits a home run. A shortstop goes deep into the hole to field
a grounder backhand. The strategy of depending on home runs is called long
ball. It is to be distinguished from small ball (regardless of the
fact that the ball is always the same size and the terms in question are not
symmetrical), which depends on singles, stealing bases, and the hit-and-run.
The latter two are not crimes but legal plays. A football team deep in its
own territory is in danger. When it is deep in the opponents’ territory, it
is threatening to score. In basketball, deep in the paint is the same as
a low post or down low; both mean close to the basket. A deep shot,
however illogically, identifies one taken from far away, from beyond the three
point arc. When a quarterback drops deep or takes a deep drop, he
moves backwards in order to go deep, to throw a long forward pass down
field. Going deep is an aggressive move that is similar to throwing the bomb
and completely different from the desperate hailmary. Just to complicate
matters, the quarterback drops back into his own pocket.
Down is a sports term closely related to
deep. A basketball players downs the ball when he scores a long jump
shot; if the ball has little arc, he drills it. In football drill is a
hard tackle. Downs are the game’s unit of measurement, roughly synonymous with
a play. Downfield is an absolutely relative notion because it indicates
whichever direction the team with the ball is going, although backs and
receivers always turn upfield in order to go further downfield. A defensive
football player downs the ball when he falls on his own team’s punt in
order to prevent the offense from running it back; an offensive player downs it
when he catches a kick-off in his own end zone and chooses not to return the
ball or run it back. When the player carrying the ball is tackled, he is down.
A ball can be downed (passive voice), a player is only down (active,
intransitive verbal phrase). Taking a basketball defender downtown is not just
about scoring points, but doing so with enough flash and panache to humiliate
him. Down and out describes a boxer who has been knocked unconscious.
The phrase is less drastic in common speech where is indicates an individual
short on luck and experiencing hard times.
Like depth, hardness has multiple meanings
in sports. While basically the same game, softball is different from
baseball, also known as hardball. A softball is not really soft, but it
is less dense than a hardball and much larger. Softballs are 12” or 16” in
circumference, baseballs 9”. Hardball enters our common speech as an attitude.
A television show featuring political discussion and commentary was named Hardball.
That title meant to show that the commentators did not dodge tough issues and
enjoyed animated disputes. Playing hardball in any business describes
aggressive actions and an unyieldingly tough attitude. Reporters are sycophants
when they toss softballs to politicians, easy questions that the latter can
knock out of the park and thereby impress the voters. Swish and all
net are soft concepts, even though a player may drill, or down, or drain
those shots. Decidedly not soft, however, a power forward will take it hard
to the iron (the metal rim of the basket). Such hard moves often result in
a slam dunk, the ultimate hard shot. A hard line-drive or a hard ground ball
have speed and velocity; they are not necessarily difficult to field. Indeed,
even a hard hit grounder can take a charity hop that makes it easy to
catch. Baseball has a number of terms to describe how hard a ball can be hit:
wallop, crunch, crush, clobber. Ever contradictory, baseball puts a soft term
in this same semantic category: he creamed that ball. To punch a
ball means hitting it between infielders, through the hole and into the
outfield. A baseball goes through the hole into the outfield, a football player
runs through the hole when he hits the gap, a shortstop goes deep into the hole
to field a grounder.
Based on a sense of hardness, stick is a term
with multiple meanings. As a noun, it is a metonymy, that is a figure of speech
which replaces an agent or a result by the instrument used to get that result. Good
stick in baseball is a cry that greets a successful turn at bat. It refers
both to a good hitter and a good hit. In football stick can be used as a verb
to mean a hard tackle as when a linebacker sticks the quarterback
While they have not yet become ordinary
vocabulary items, colors used in sports talk have established themselves as
stable signifiers. A base runner has the green light when he can steal a
base on his own, without waiting for the coach to give him the OK. A hitter has
the green light when he is free to swing at a pitch other batters would have to
take. One golfer is officially declared the winner of the Masters at Augusta
when he dons the green jacket, while a yellow jersey identifies
the leader in the Tour de France bicycle race. White washing a team is a
synonym for shutting them out. The black-and-blue division, where the
Chicago Bears play smash-mouth football, has the reputation of playing the
toughest, most hard-hitting, and most bruising games in the league. While no
longer used, the red dog was an alternative term for the blitz. Being in
football’s red zone means a team is twenty yards or less from the goal
line and has a high percentage of scoring. A player is red-hot when he
is performing at an optimal level: in other words, he is on, in the grove, in
the zone. Another measure of distance, red tees in golf mark the ladies’
course. Red of course makes us think of hot. Third base is the hot corner.
A fastball pitcher throws heat; when he has good stuff, he smokes
the batter who cannot hit his pitches. A really good fast ball is described as blazing.
Any ball that is hit hard smokes, leaving, I assume, a tell-tale but imaginary
vapor trail that attests to its velocity. A fireman is a relief pitcher
who comes in from the bullpen to extinguish the blaze that fuels the
other team’s scoring rally. While not truly a color yet surely evoking both
black and white, zebra designates the umpires and referees in football.
Similarly, the checkered flag waves to point out the winner in car
races.
That same checkered flag announcing the
end is now waving at me, telling me that my brief race through the sports
lexicon is over. Hopefully, I did score a few points and you enjoyed the game.
Peter
V. Conroy Jr.
February
5, 2007
[1] Pace Tony Laroussa who first used
the phase “winning ugly” when he was the manager of the Chicago While Sox.