The Whole Six Yards of It

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

Well, since Fred Shapiro has just brought up "the whole nine yards" and
Geoff Nunberg has just mentioned (potential) baseball apocrypha ...

Any thoughts on what's at the following link?  You'll find an article
published 7 May 1921 describing, inning by inning, a just-completed
baseball game between the Spartanburg Spartans and the Greenville Spinners.
 The article is titled "The Whole Six Yards of It."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cmMsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8skEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3787,2164793&dq=whole-six+yards-of-it&hl=en

Here are a few things we do know.  Both South Carolina squads were in the
six-team South Atlantic (minor) league.  Further, another description of
the ballgame can be found in the upper left of the whole page.  And,
finally, this doesn't appear to have been the title of a regular column:
 as far as I can tell, "The Whole Six Yards of It" was used just once in
issues of the *Spartanburg Herald-Tribune* appearing in Google's news
archive.

What, if anything, do we make of the paper's use of "The Whole Six Yards of
It"?

-- Bonnie

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org