FW: [19cBB] "league" (the linguistic bit)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

I'm forwarding the item below from the 19th-century section of SABR  (Society for American Baseball Research).  I don't have OED2 handy to check on the application of  "league" to sports teams as a possible innovation of 1876.

In haste,
Gerald Cohen

________________________________

From: 19cBB at yahoogroups.com on behalf of Richard Hershberger
Sent: Mon 8/7/2006 10:04 AM
To: 19cBB at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [19cBB] "league" (the linguistic bit)



--- Paul Wendt <pgw02472 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Here I am quoting three successive sentences from
> Richard Hershberger,
> "RE: [19cBB] Major League versus Minor League."
>
> . . .
> > Part of the source of this confusion is
> linguistic.
> . . .
> > In some cases this is because baseball has
> retained an
> > old term even when the meaning changes.
> . . .
> > This is not the case with "league".
>
> Richard,
> Do you mean both that baseball (William Hulbert and
> colleagues) coined a
> special sense of 'league' and that there has been no
> significant change
> in the special baseball sense since then?  (And
> perhaps none in the team
> sports sense or the big-time professional team
> sports sense.)
>
> And in this, league differs from club and
> association and maybe other
> words from ordinary English?

This is a two-part reply:  a discussion of the
linguistic aspects and a discussion of organizational
history.  They are distinct issues and the replies are
long, so I am splitting this into two replies.

Starting with the linguistics:  yes, I am 99% sure
that applying the word "league" to associations of
sports teams was an innovation of 1876.  (If anyone
has an antedating, I would very much like to see it.)
The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary
is from 1879 and refers to the NL.  (This obviously
can be antedated.  I just found a cite from the
Chicago Tribune from February 7, 1876.  It is quoting
the Philadelphia Times, so presumably it can be taken
a day or two further back.)  The older use of the word
was for things like military or economic alliances
(e.g. the Hanseatic League, a trade network of
northern European cities from the 13th to the 17th
centuries).  I know of no use in the sporting sense
prior to the NL.  The sporting sense is not that big a
leap from older uses, so given that Hulbert et al.
were looking for an alternative to "association" it is
not hard to see how they decided on "league".

Why were they looking for an alternative?  Why didn't
they go with the obvious name of "National Association
of Professional Base Ball Clubs"?  This is just a
guess, but I think they wanted to distance themselves
from the National Association of Professional Base
Ball Players, likely as part of the PR campaign about
honest play.  The name would inevitably be shortened,
and they didn't want to be called the "National
Association".

But why stick with "National" instead of changing that
bit?  Because the "National" part of both the NL and
the NA was not merely a name.  It was a claim that the
NL champion was one and the same as the national
champion.

I contemplated writing an essay at the point on the
semantics of proper nouns, but then I came to my
senses.  When I am not playing with baseball history I
dabble in amateur linguistics, but this isn't
everyone's cup of tea.

The short version is to consider the modern Texas
League.  No one would call the champion team of the
Texas League the champions of Texas.  The "Texas" in
"Texas League" is mostly just a name.  But there is (I
assume) some sort of state-wide inter-varsity high
school association, whose champions are indeed
considered the champions of the state of Texas.  This
organization undoubtedly has the word "Texas" in its
name, and this is not semanticly the same as the
"Texas" of the Texas League.  The upshot is that the
"National" of the National League today is like the
"Texas" of the Texas League.  In 1876 it was more like
that inter-varsity association.

So given a choice between finding an alternative to
"National" and one to "Association", Hulbert et al.
changed "Association".

Part II will be on what constitutes a "league".  Don't
say I didn't warn you!

Richard Hershberger


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