play pepper

[Joel S. Berson]

Well, the OED3 has a definition -- but I wonder if it's ... um, a
little off base (too specific):
7. Baseball. A training exercise or warm-up in which a batter hits a
ball pitched at close range by one of a number of other players, one
of whom fields the ball and quickly pitches again to the batter.
Orig. and chiefly attrib., esp. in pepper game.

The earliest quotation is 1914, which refers to "the *old* pepper
game" (emphasis added).

Variation?  The fielders throw to a receiver standing next to the
hitter, who relays the ball to the batter, who tosses it up and hits it.

And if John Thorn's recently published (and reviewed in he NYT Book
Review) has a good index, we can check the definition and the date.

Joel

At 4/10/2011 11:32 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>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
> > -----------------------
> > 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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