play pepper

[Dan Goncharoff]

Pepper is normally a drill where a batter hits ground balls at fielders, who
catch and throw the ball quickly back to the batter, who hits another ground
ball, etc.

I don't know how you play pepper with a wall -- perhaps you throw the ball
against the wall and field it, and throw and field, etc.

DanG

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 11:07 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      play pepper
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In my sheltered existence, I've never heard the expression or been
> aware of the underlying ball drill. So, when I heard a comment during
> the Yankees-Red Sox broadcast (ESPN) that Adrian Gonzales will "play
> pepper with the Green Monster", my ears perked up. My understanding is
> that "playing pepper" is mostly associated with baseball and
> volleyball drills that involve continuously distributing the balls
> between players. I am assuming that there was some game that involved
> tossing a hot-pepper prop (or a pretend-hot-pepper), at some
> point--sort of a version of "hot potato", but what's the idea with
> Gonzales? Is the implication that he will bounce a lot of doubles off
> the wall?
>
> VS-)
>
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