[Ads-l] "Stuff" in baseball

[George Thompson]

Can I really be the first to point out to you all that the NY Times this
morning had an article on the current and historical use of the word
"stuff" to describe an indescribable excellence in pitching.  Are the other
Times subscribers among us all slug-a-beds?

The article is "Baseball Talk, And All That Stuff", by John Branch,  NY
Times, October 4, 2015, A section, p. 1, cols. 1-2, continued in the Sports
section, p. 2, cols. 1-5The article quotes a number of current players
using the word and then floundering at trying to explain what they mean by
it.
Branch then turns to a dictionary for help:
"Merriam-Webster has many definitions of stuff, from tangible materials
(move your stuff) to ethereal knowledge (know your stuff). Its eighth
definition — “spin imparted to a thrown or hit ball” — mentions baseball."

Meanwhile, the OED has a definition very like the one from M-W:
 9 b  N. Amer. In various sports, the spin or ‘work’ imparted to a ball in
order to make it vary its course; the type of control which effects this.
Also fig.
Its list of quotations begin in 1905:
1905   Sporting Life (U.S.) 9 Sept. 1/1   If I tried some of the stuff that
certain pitchers use and escape bumping, I have an idea that the fielders
would never stop..hitting.
1913   Harper's Weekly 13 Sept. 21/2   Weilman, the giant Brown, is another
[pitcher] who has the ‘stuff’.
1927   Daily Tel. 21 Feb. 13/6   T. A. Workman, their captain, was in
wonderfully good form against Commander S. W. Beadle, finding an almost
perfect length for an American service which had plenty of ‘stuff’ on it.
Beadle could not do anything with it, and was kept on the defensive
throughout.

Branch offers an antedating, and then several other very early passages,
all from the NYTimes:
In 1896, The New York Times wrote about the bleak prospects of Yale’s team,
writing of one infielder, “It is thought that he has some genuine baseball
stuff in him, though it is in an immature state, and will require a great
deal of coaching to develop.”
By the turn of the century, the word started applying specifically to
pitchers. One creative Times reporter in 1908 gave voice to Giants Manager
John McGraw in an imaginary conversation with pitcher Doc Crandall.
“They’ll never get to that stuff of yours, and even if they did, we can hit
anything they can bring out,” McGraw probably did not say.
In early 1911, in an article written for The Times about the best pitchers
of the era, Boston Manager Fred Tenney provided a rare definition when
describing Christy Mathewson. “I consider him the greatest pitcher that
ever was in the game,” Tenney wrote. “He has more ‘stuff’ than any other.”

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

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