poundage and others

[Jim Parish]

Bill Mullins wrote (with much snipped):
> hippo (slang for a fat person; not in OED)
> "Glimpses of the Game" Wm. A. Phelon, _Baseball Magazine_, June, 1915, No.
> 2, p. 38/2
> "When he became a hippo, and learned how to bend the extra bulk into the
> force of every blow he struck, he came back to fast company and became a
> whale, a terror to all pitchers."

There was a pitcher by the name of Jim Vaughn, nicknamed "Hippo", from about
that period. He came up briefly in 1908 and returned to stay in 1910. I don't
know when he acquired the nickname, but investigation might yield a slight
antedating.

Jim Parish
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