"Throw the Bums Out"

[Dan Goncharoff]

There is a great story in the NYTimes:

http://bit.ly/a0eEIB
August 4, 1929, Sunday
Section: Arts & Leisure, Page X13, 608 words

"Ladies Days are becoming a feature in the Western circuit of the big
baseball leagues. William Wrigley started the revival of a custom which
was tried out twenty years ago. At that time few ball players held
college degrees; play was more brutal; players and fans were
uncomfortable among women spectators. Bleacherites felt that they could
not shout "kill the pitcher" and "throw the bum out" with women around
to render "ahs" and "ohs" after each colloquialism..."

DanG

On 5/6/2010 6:17 PM, Alison Murie wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alison Murie<sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Throw the Bums Out"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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