living in a tree

[Greg Pulliam]

Actually, the two Sox announcers said the players used it
specifically to refer to fielding, not hitting.  So, either the Sox
announcers just got that wrong (entirely possible, though Ed Farmer
is a former MLB player), or the Sox players are using this expression
in a narrower sense than the rest of baseball (unlikely, given the
nomadic nature of players' lives these days), or the overall use of
the expression in baseball has narrowed.  Or is there another
possibility?

Greg


>At 2:08 PM -0400 4/19/01, Drew Danielson wrote:
>>From
>>http://www.sportserver.com/newsroom/ap/bbo/1996/mlb/cin/game/archive/051996/cin.html:
>>
>>"Have you ever heard the term 'living in a tree?"' asked Chipper Jones,
>>who was 4-of-5 with two RBIs for the Braves. "That means your playing so
>>far above your head it's not even funny."
>
>aha!  so if Chipper (or Laaarrrrry, as the Mets fans call him) is
>right, this has been around for at least 5 years and isn't restricted
>to describing a hot fielder, but anyone playing over their [sic]
>head.  This makes sense.  I didn't think it was related to "sitting
>in the catbird seat", which Red Barber popularized to describe a good
>vantage point for observing a game, not a position of dynamic
>excellence for a player.  And it's comforting to know that no
>squirrels or chimps have been harmed in the manufacture of this
>metaphor.
>
>larry