"Throw the Bums Out"

[Alison Murie]

On May 6, 2010, at 11:14 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Throw the Bums Out"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Since childhood I've associated "Throw the bum [sic] out!"
> especially with
> baseball.
>
> Confirmation:
>
>
> 1941 Richards Vidmer, N.Y. Herald Tribune, in _Wisconsin State
> Journal_
> (Oct. 10) 20: The World Series can be summede [sic] up by a story that
> circulated in the press box as the scene shifted to Ebbetts Field....
>
> A stranger wandered into a Brooklyn bar feeling no pain and good
> will toward
> all....
>
> Then with a magnificent gesture he lifted his glass and with a beaming
> smile, in a loud voice, he said:
>
> "May the best team win."
>
> Whereupon the mob leaped upon him with snarls of anger and shouts of
> "T'row
> de bum out!" And when he woke up in the hospital he realized that even
> Brooklyn had no doubts about which was the better team.
>
>
>
>
> IIRC, the phrase was more typically applied to opposing players.
>
> GB indicates that the Communist _Daily Worker_ ran an anti-McCarthy
> editorial in 1954 under the headline, "Throw the Bum Out!"
>
> No complete or direct view of a source is offered.
>
> As a political byword, "Throw the bums out!" sounds to me like
> something
> from only [sic!] the last fifteen or twenty years.
>
> JL
>
~~~~~~~~~~~
My guess would be more like fifty or sixty.  Definitely asssociated
with the Dodgers' games.  (BC: before CA)
AM

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