Rhubarb, the Heave-O (baseball, 1946)

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Thu Oct 4 22:40:28 UTC 2001


   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 28 September 1946, pg. 15, col. 7:

VIEWS OF SPORT
by Red Smith

..Garry Schumacher soon will leave "The Journal-American" sports staff to join the board of strategy of the baseball Giants.
(...)
   _Father of Rhubarb_
(...)
   Without trying to make language do backflips, he has minted some words of his own.  That is, they were his own until everybody else appropriated them.  "Rhubarb," meaning a tangled sort of stew consisting mostly of loose ends, was his coinage and Red Barber gave it the circulation which made it a part of the language.  That is, a part of the Brooklynese language.
   _He Goes Back to McGraw_
YEARS ago Garry was the first to announce that an umpire had given a manager "the heave-o."  The expression has been worn thin and corrupted by borrowers.  It isn't "heave-ho," which is something stevedores might shout hoisting a cask.  (Word illegible--ed.) Brooklynese insists on "heave-o" just as Mayor William O'Dwyer's name across the bridge is "Bill-o."



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