"bald-headed"

[George Thompson]

The OED has this definition of the adjective "bald-headed" in its American colloquial sense:
 b. colloq. phr. (orig. U.S.) to go bald-headed (into, for, at), to stake everything, to disregard consequences, to attack without care or thought; also to go it bald-headed.

A passage from the Chicago Tribune submitted to a SABR group shows a bit of a twist:

[Reprint from unknown paper in the Chicago Tribune (20 Jan 1878). "There are some things that women can’t do. The teachings of centuries have established the fact a woman can’t play base-ball. None but a perverted and baldheaded advocate of female suffrage would permit the assumption to daily in his mind that a woman could throw a ball underhand or attempt to catch one without shutting both eyes just when she should see biggest.  ***

So here, "uncompromising".

When I was a kid, to "throw like a girl" meant to be unable to throw overhand, not underhand.

This was submitted to to 19th Century baseball group of SABR by Deb Shattuck.

SABR = Society for American Baseball Research.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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