play pepper

[victor steinbok]

I've been trying to put together a long post on this, particularly on
the 1914 bit. But it's taking more time than I expected.

VS-)

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> 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

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