Skin In The Gane

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:40 PM -0400 4/15/07, Alice Faber wrote:
>Doug Harris wrote:
>>>>From today's LA Times, in an article re the shrinking number of people
>>paying US income tax:
>>
>>"Many people would think if you are a citizen, you ought to have skin in the
>>game, and we have more and more people with no skin in the game," said Scott
>>Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, conservative-leaning
>>research group. "From a social perspective, we ought to be concerned about
>>that."
>>
>>I am not really interested in sports, and I make no attempt to keep current
>>on sports terms or clichés. But I have noticed with some alarm (!) a
>>creeping increase, over the past couple of decades, in the number of sports
>>terms, FAR too often unexplained, or self-evident, sneaking into 'general
>>speak' -- the way most of us speak most of the time. 'Hat trick,' a term
>>borrowed by hockey from soccer (where it actually _has_ a meaning), is a
>>good example. 'Skin in the game' could be another.
>>I certainly hope not. Hat trick sounds like something fun. Skin in the game
>>smacks of violence, to one's own body or someone else's. Perhaps sports
>>speak inventors' creed should, like doctors, include the concept 'do no
>>harm'.
>
>
>Well, as a sports fan (and observer of sports language), I suspect that
>sports metaphors have long been creeping into the language. Even if the
>expression "out of left field", say, has nothing to do with crazy
>bounces in the Fenway Park outfield, the expression clearly has
>*something* to do with baseball behind it. (As an aside, "hat trick" has
>as clear a meaning in hockey as it does in soccer.)

Agreed--it's just three goals by the same player,
not too obscure.  There's "natural hat trick",
which is a bit trickier, but still not terribly
profound.

>
>But, "skin in the game" not so much. If it has a sports source, it's not
>baseball, hockey, basketball, football, or tennis. If I had to guess at
>a recent gaming source, in the absence of any specific information, I'd
>look to poker, the hottest and fastest-growing "sport" on television.
>
Actually, I think poker has peaked on TV.  And I
don't know of any relevant "skin in the game"
reference within poker, which I do follow and
play (unlike the other sports, which I follow but
don't play).  Jesse?

Of course poker lingo ("ante up", "the buck stops
here", "drawing to an inside straight", "keep ___
honest", "sweeten the pot", "four-flusher", maybe
"put up or shut up") has been creeping in since
before ESPN started telecasting the WSOP...

LH

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