1895 item with slang (Fwd)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

   This is the second time I'm sending this message (It was rejected the first time by listserv).  Maybe it will have better luck this time. -----------
Today I received a posting from the 19th century discussion group of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research). Some of the items in the 1895 article reproduced here may be of interest to ads-l. My thanks to Joanne Hulbert for sharing it.

Gerald Cohen

> ----------
> From:         19cBB at yahoogroups.com on behalf of Joanne Hulbert
> Sent:         Wednesday, August 31, 2005 11:44 AM
> To:   19cBB at yahoogroups.com
> Subject:      [19cBB] Verbal Pyrotechnics of an Eastern Sporting Writer
>
>     The following gem of baseball language, too good to remain obscure, is
> taken from the Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1895:
>
>      "The possibilities of the English language have frequently been taxed to describe the great American game of baseball, but for striking illustrations, this from the Herald of Quincy, Ill., has rarely been equaled:
>      The glass-armed toy soldiers of this town were fed to the pigs yesterday by the cadaverous Indian grave-robbers from Omaha. The flabby one-lunged Rubens who represent the Gem City in the reckless rush for the baseball pennant had their shins toasted by the basilikeyed cattle drives from the west. They stood around with gaping eyeballs like a hen on a hot nail, and suffered the grizzly yaps of Omaha to run the bases until their necks were long with thirst. Hickey had more errors than "Colin's Financial School," and led the
> rheumatic procession to the morgue. The Quinceys were full of straw and scrap iron. They couldn't hit a brick wagon with a pick-axe and ran bases like pall-bearers at a funeral. If three base-hits were growing on the back of every man's neck they couldn't reach 'em with a feather duster. It looked as if the Amalgamated Union of South American Hoodoos was in session for work in
> the thirty-third degree. The geezers stood about and whistled for help, and were so weak they couldn't lift a galss of beer if it had been all foam. Everything was yellow, rocky and whangbasted, like a stigtossed full of
> dogglegammon. The game was whiskered and frostbitten. The Omahogs were bad enough, but the Quincy Brown Sox had their fins sewed up until they couldn't hold a crazy quilt unless it was tied around their necks."
>
> Yeah. . . stigtossed full of dogglegammon  . . . I've seen  a game like that. . . . . .
>
> Joanne Hulbert
>
>