"baseball english"

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        While test-driving a database called "Poolesplus", that gives access
to various 19th century indexes to magazines and newspapers, I found
in the index to the New York Tribune (covering 1875-1906) an entry
headed "Baseball English", from 1894.  This turns out to be a
philological disappointment, being merely a spoof on the absurd and
clumsy circumlocutions sportswriters wallow in, while trying to find
clever ways to avoid using the words "hit", "throw", and so forth.  I
note three comments on words or expressions likely to have been
also used by human beings, however.

The next [batter] did not do anything so tame and antique as to send
a fly to centre field or fly out.  he got real demoniac, and "fungoed
to centre."
        Dickson, New Baseball Dictionary, notes that "fungo" used as a verb
has been found as early as 1892.  Otherwise, it is found as a noun or
adjective, from 1867.

Yet he was perfectly tame and tractable when not "larruping
scrapers," or "slapping out dandy singles," or "lacing an easy one,"
or "slashing out a peach."
        OED has "larrup" from 1823, but none of the sources seem to be
American.  DARE has numerous 19th century sources, from 1824.

[Referring to a base-stealer:] His career of crime was checked,
however, for when he tried to "embezzle the plate," he was "nailed,"
though to what is not on record.
        RHHDAS has "nail" in the baseball sense from 1888, *1892, 1910 and
1950, etc.

Those interested in reading the full story will find it in the New
York Tribune, June 17, 1894, p. 16, col. 6.  In fact, I have a
photocopy I'll gladly send to the first to request it.

GAT

By the way: since summer I have been receiving the messages to this
list in the digest format.  Earlier this morning I sent off a comment
on a message immediately upon reading it, then found, a few minutes
later, that the comment had already been made by someone else.  Sorry
about that, and in the future I will try to hold back my impulses
until I have read the whole digest.