Trash Talk - Help.

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Dave Wilton wrote:

> > In baseball a person who "disses one's opponent etc." is
> > called a "bench jockey".  I have no data on how old the
> > term is, but I'm pretty sure it antedates Jackie Robinson.
>
> "The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary" dates it to 1939: Gordon S. 'Mickey'
> Cochrane, "Baseball: The Fans' Game, 1939."

ProQuest Historical Newspapers has it in the New York Times, 5 Oct. 1935.
I don't currently have access to the historical Washington Post, so I
don't know whether the Post, which seems to be a superior source to the
Times for baseball, has it earlier.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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