"go for the downs"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:25 PM -0400 8/26/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Not only is it not in HDAS, I've never heard of it before.
>
>How common can it be?  Did it once refer to actual place near a ballpark
>called "The Downs"?
>
>I watched Yankees baseball on WPIX for ten years in the '50s and '60s, and
>the Mets on WOR for years after that and never noticed its use.
>
>JL

It's familiar to me, especially as "swing(ing) for the downs".
(Maybe The Downs are where all the marbles can be found.)  It seems
to me it's used mostly as a criticism; a player who ought to be just
trying to get on base or hitting a single or a ball into the gap in
going for/swinging for the downs is swinging from his heels and
likely missing the ball or popping up.

LH

>
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>On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:17 PM, George Thompson
><george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
>>  Subject:      "go for the downs"
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I recall my father using this expression, to describe a baseball batter who
>>  has taken a very vigorous swing: "he was going for the downs with that
>>  swing."  I have just heard Al Leiter say it, on a rerun of a Yankees
>>  broadcast from earlier this month.
>>
>>  My impression is, that it only refers to a vigorous swing that misses the
>>  ball, or at least, that fails to produce a home run.  I have never heard it
>>  in statements like *He went for the downs in the 5th inning, or *Batters
>>  have gone for the downs against him 17 times this season.
>>
>>  I don't see it in OED, nor in HDAS.
>>
>>  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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>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>
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