Origin of "jazz"--Hickman is unreliable

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>         2.      Is there any other evidence of a crap-shooting use of
>"jazz"?  (Not in OED; I don't have DARE or RHHDAS, so haven't checked them.)

A very good question. If "jazz" was an idiosyncratic personal expression
used by one single crapshooter, then the word can be said to have cropped
up out of nowhere, essentially: this 'null hypothesis' is virtually
indistinguishable from the hypothesis that the word was simply invented as
a nonsense sound, since the person overhearing the incantation could not
have guessed its denotation, even if there was one in the gambler's mind
(maybe his girlfriend Jasmine used to bring him luck? who knows?).

What might the crapshooter be calling for? "Jazz" = "luck"? "Jazz" =
"magic"? "Jazz" = "divine intervention"? AFAIK, no word like "jazz" was
used in any such sense.

More likely he would call for his point. For example if he needed an eight,
he could say "Come on, [the old] eighter from Decatur", for a twelve "Come
on, [the old] boxcars", etc., and there are many of these expressions,
which are modified at the gambler's whim.

Here is a possibility which I don't really believe (but show me a more
likely one!). One way of calling for a nine is "What killed Jesse James?"
[Answer hoped for from the dice: "a forty-five", i.e., four+five, i.e.,
nine] ... try abbreviating Jesse James > James > Jas. ... pronounced "jazz".

My own sincere best guess (from a position of ignorance and naivete,
admittedly): regardless of what the crapshooter said, regardless of whether
the crapshooter even existed in reality, the baseball "jazz" was based on
"jasm".

-- Doug Wilson