"Big Apple" & recent Wikipedia change

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

     While checking the Wikipedia entry for "Big Apple," I clicked the link for the entry in German. Oy veh! In discussing the racetrack usage, it says that the nickname referred to 'the NY racetracks Belmont Park and Aqueduct where in horseracing "Big Money" was to be earned.  For the horses which did not received the money, there was parallel to the "Big Money," the "Big Apple."'  (I present the relevant German excerpt below, after my signoff).
 
      My reply:  "the big apple" (written with lower-case letters) referred to ALL the New York City racetracks, not just Belmont and Aqueduct.
Secondly, the statement that the horses which didn't win the "Big Money" received instead the "Big Apple" [fruit] is entirely erroneous, a fiction, a piece of nonsense that I've encountered nowhere else.  
 
   Another piece of nonsense appears in the Wikepedia entry quoted in Barry's message below: "Its earlier origins are the result of the name jazz musicians gave in the 1940's to the section of 52nd Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, which they called the Apple." --- "The Big Apple" could not possibly 
derive from a nickname that originated in the 1940's, since it is already well known that "The Big Apple" and "The Apple" were used by jazz musicians of the 1930s to refer to NYC in general and Harlem in specific, where the greatest jazz in the world was being played.   Also, btw, in all my research on "The Big Apple," I never came across mention that "The Apple" referred  to the  52nd street between 5th and 7th Avenues.  
 
     Bottom line: Wikipedia's treatments (German, English) are a jumble of some things that are correct and others which are misleading in various degrees (if not flat-out wrong).   Wikipedia's treatments of the origin of "The Big Apple" are simply not reliable.
 
Gerald Cohen
P.S. Here is the German excerpt from Wikipedia that I mentioned above:
 '...Der Spitzname bezieht sich auf den Stellenwert der New Yorker Rennbahnen Belmont Park und Aqueduct, wo im Pferderennsport "Big Money", das große Geld, zu verdienen war. Für die Pferde, denen das Geld nicht zugute kam, gab es parallel zum "Big Money", den "Big Apple", den großen Apfel....'

________________________________

From: American Dialect Society on behalf of bapopik at AOL.COM
Sent: Sat 7/22/2006 5:40 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Big Apple" & recent Wikipedia change



This is another reason that I don't like the Wikipedia (besides giving out scholarship for free).
...
It appears that someone changed the "Big Apple" entry. The "Big Apple" origin is now "the result of the name jazz musicians gave in the 1940s." The definitive 1920s horseracing evidence is "another, less plausible explanation."
...
People can change your work with crud overnight, at any time. You have to be alive and on 24-hour alert. I don't have time to change Wikipedia right now; BTW, some of the links don't work.
...
...
...
(WIKIPEDIA)
The "Big Apple" is a nickname or alternate toponym for New York City. Its popularity since the 1970s is due to a promotional campaign by the New York Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Its earlier origins are the result of the name jazz musicians gave in the 1940's to the section of 52nd Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, which they called the Apple. If a jazz musician had reached the big time, he played in clubs on the Apple or Swing Street.
Another, less plausible, explanation, cited by the New-York Historical Society and others is that it was first popularized by John Fitz Gerald, who first used it in his horse racing column in the New York Morning Telegraph in 1921, then further explaining its origins in his February 18, 1924 column. Fitz Gerald credited African-American stable-hands working at horseracing tracks in New Orleans:
________________________________________________________________________

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org