Throwing The Book At Them

Fittingly for the timeless sport whose language he brings to life, Paul Dickson’s book began between innings. While waiting for the pitcher to warm up. With a conversation between a father and his sons.

“I’m sitting there with my two boys and they start asking me questions about the strange words they heard,” he recalled of that day in Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. “They asked things like, ‘Why do they call it a bunt?’ ”

Strange words, unimaginable meanings. People talking about a fly ball being a can of corn. A left-hander being a southpaw. A blooper being a Texas Leaguer.

Then there was that oddly christened place beyond the outfield fence called a bullpen.

A bullpen?

“I told my boys I honestly didn’t know any of the answers, but I would go to the library the next day and find out,” Dickson said.

Paul Dickson soon discovered, there were no answers. There existed no book explaining why baseball people talk the way they talk.

So he compiled one. Two years later, in 1989, more than a century after its inception, America’s talking game finally had a glossary.

It is called “The Dickson Baseball Dictionary,” a reference book that today has become a mystery.

It is impossible to buy, difficult to locate in libraries, dog-eared and dusty when you do.

But as our most enduring sport has come alive again this summer, so have the nearly 5,000 delightful accompaniments found in one of its most enduring books.

You think Mark McGwire is the new Sultan of Swat?

Maybe you should know that there actually used to be one, and his name was not Babe Ruth. In the late 1800s, there was an Indian state of Swat that once had a leader known as a sultan.

The sultan’s death inspired a poem that may have been read by a New York sportswriter, who then did what we all do best. He stole the phrase.

Can’t wait to see if somebody trades for that wild southpaw Randy Johnson?

Maybe you should know that this odd term for left-handed pitchers dates to the 19th century, when ballparks were designed with home plate in the west corner of the diamond, so hitters would not have the sun in their eyes during afternoon games.

This meant that left-handed pitchers were facing west and throwing from their southern side. If that nickname is coined at Dodger Stadium today, Scott Radinsky becomes an eastpaw.

Wondering if the guys in pinstripes can finish with the best record in baseball?

Don’t forget that the New York Yankees would never have introduced that baseball fashion if it hadn’t been for the vices of their best player. In 1929, management began using pinstripes to make Babe Ruth look thinner.

And what about that bullpen?

Most agree the phrase originated early this century when, to escape the midday sun, relief pitchers would warm up in the shade of the outfield fence. At the time, many of those fences contained advertisements for Bull Durham tobacco.

Everybody up, time for the seventh-inning stretch. Oh, you don’t. . . ?

In 1910, when President William Howard Taft stood up midway through the seventh inning during a game in Pittsburgh, the entire crowd stood with him because the fans thought he was going to leave. When he sat down, a tradition was born.

The best Dickson dictionary in town can be found in the briefcase of--who else?--Dodger announcer Ross Porter. It is torn and marked and keeps him wonderfully warm on the long nights with the listeners of “Dodger Talk.”

“Every once in a while, somebody will call with a good question about what seems like the simplest of terms, and I go to the book,” Porter said. “Baseball has its own language. Baseball is special like that.”

Most football terms have been invented by film-room scientists in the last five minutes--escapability?--while basketball is a game of show, not tell.

Only in baseball would you have a hot corner. Which is third base. And only because early this century, with this country suffering a phobia about left-handed children, most of the stronger hitters were right-handed, so the hardest hits were down the left-field line.

Realistically, today with equally hard shots down both lines, third base would not be a hot corner. But this is baseball, and so it will never be anything else.

It was an appreciation of this culture that drove Dickson, an author of 43 other books on a variety of subjects, to travel one day to a library in the village of Belfast, Maine.

It was there, in 1872, that a touring team from Boston came up to play a local group containing many sailors.

In those days, with no scorecards, the batting lineups were announced in threes, for example, “Jones up, Smith and Franklin next.”

However, in that one game, when the sailors came to the plate, their announcer added a nautical touch, saying, “Jones up, Smith on deck, and Franklin in the hold.”

Yep, it stuck. Well, all except the hold part, which our lazy tongues changed over the years to “hole.”

“I became fascinated by this sport with an entirely different way of talking,” said Dickson, 59. “You can search and search and there is still mystery to it.”

Like with fungo bats, those thin sticks used by coaches to hit fly balls to players before games. Dickson still is not certain where that term originated, although his best guess is that it comes from an old street game where a batter hits fly balls to players chanting, “One goes, two goes. . . .”

Although it could be named after a long-ago description of the bat, so soft it appears to be made of fungus.

Or maybe it comes from the Scottish verb fung, meaning to pitch, toss or sling.

Stranger things have happened.

The big bad grand slam? Stolen from the big, bad game of bridge, where a grand slam applies to the taking of all 13 tricks.

When a player is accused of dogging it? Originally that was not applied to a player acting lazy like a dog, but a fielder who lifted his leg to avoid a hard ground ball.

Doubleheader? Adapted in 1897, a term that previously described trains that had two engines or two trains that ran side by side.

Rotisserie League? It’s in here, but who cares?

There’s so much in these 438 pages--which are being revised for a new dictionary to be published next spring--that those who don’t like it are out in left field.

Oh yeah. Out in left field. That’s also here.

Some say it was initially an insult directed toward kids who, during the Ruth era at Yankee Stadium, were silly enough to buy left-field seats while Babe was constantly joking with the kids in right.

Others say it came from the 19th-century West Side Park in Chicago. Behind the left-field fence was the Neuropsychiatric Institute. You get the picture.

If two baseball people were to get in a heated disagreement about all this, it would not be a fight, but a rhubarb.

A term made popular by announcer Red Barber. Taken from the early days of radio.

Directors, trying to create an impression of an unruly crowd, would gather a group of actors together and order them to murmur, “Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.”

But you knew that, right? Can of corn.

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Terms of Endearment

A look at the derivations of some of the most popular phrases or words in baseball:

CAN OF CORN: An easy catch; refers to the ease with which grocers used to tip cans of corn form the top shelves into their aprons.

SOUTHPAW: Ballparks were once laid out with home plate facing west, so the sun would not be in the hitter’s eyes during games. Therefore, left-handed pitchers threw from the south.

SEVENTH-INNING STRETCH: In 1910, when President William Howard Taft stood up midway thought the seventh inning during a game in Pittsburgh, the entire crowd stood with him because the fans thought he was going to leave. When he sat down, a tradition was born.

UMPIRE: From Middle English word “Nomper” or “Noomper,” meaning an extra person brought in when tow individuals disagree.