Baseball lingo in Michael Lewis' _Money Ball_; item #2: "dust" someone

Cohen, Gerald Leonard gcohen at UMR.EDU
Thu Nov 27 17:07:28 UTC 2003


My thanks to Laurence Horn for his comments on item #1; here now is item #2 (I don't have my books handy to check these items; "dust", by context, means "surpass easily" and I suppose derives from the idea of leaving a competitor in the dust--here in a footrace). Maybe it's been around a while, but I never heard or saw it before.

p. 5: 'Darnell Coles, Cecil Espy, Erik Erickson, Garry Harris, Billy Beane.  One of the scouts turns to another and says: "I'll take the three black kids [Coles, Harris Espy; these names are bracketed in the book passage]. They'll dust the white kids.  And Espy will dust everyone, even Coles.  Coles is a sprinter who has already signed a football scholarship to play wide receiver at UCLA.  That's how fast Espy is: the scouts are certain that even Coles can't keep up with him.
    '...and as straightforward as it seems--what ambiguity could there possibly in a sixty-yard dash?...'

Gerald Cohen



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