When do you know you’ve been a baseball writer too long? It’s when you’re out for a walk with your wife, see ducks in a pond, and think, “Ducks on the Pond,” which is baseball lingo. Here’s what that saying means, together with several other of my favorite baseball metaphors.
Ducks on the Pond: Runners on second or third base, especially when the bases are loaded. The origin of the term for baseball is believed to have come from Arch McDonald, an announcer for the Washington Senators in the 1930s-1950s.
Baltimore Chop: A ball hit forcefully into the ground near home plate produces a bounce high above a fielder’s head. This gives the batter time to reach first base safely before the ball can be fielded. An essential element of Baltimore Orioles coach John McGraw’s “inside baseball” strategy, the technique was popularized during the dead-ball era when teams could not rely on the home run.
Butcher Boy: A strategy where the hitter first shows he intends to bunt, pulls back the bat when the pitcher begins the delivery, and quickly swings at the pitch. Stengel coined the term, inspired by the motion a boy in a butcher shop would use to cleave meat.
Bullpen: The area, generally located behind the outfield fence, in which relief pitchers warm up before entering the game. The origin of the term as used for baseball is unclear. Here are some theories: 1) It references the pen in which rodeo bulls were held before being released into the ring. 2) The term comes from 19th-century holding cells, which were often called bullpens — inspired by the bullish features of police officers. 3) It originated in the Polo Grounds, where relief pitchers warmed up near a stockade just behind the left-field fence. 4) Casey Stengel suggested that managers came up with the term. Tired of listening to relievers “shoot the bull” in the dugout, the managers sent them off beyond the outfield fence where they wouldn’t be a distraction.
Can of Corn: A high, easy-to-catch, fly ball hit to the outfield. The phrase is said to have originated in the 19th century. Clerks at grocery and general stores were looking for an easier way to reach canned goods — like corn — on high shelves, so they started using long, hooked sticks to pull them down. After dropping the cans toward them, they would catch them in their aprons — just like a fly ball.
Eephus: A slow, high-arcing lob pitch. The pitch first popped up in the 19th century but never entirely caught on. But Rip Sewell, a starter for the Pirates during the 1930s and 1940s, revived the pitch. After taking 14 shotgun pellets into his right foot one winter, Sewell had to make profound alterations to his delivery. With his velocity diminished, he devised the lob pitch to keep hitters off-balance. When he busted out his new pitch the next spring against the Tigers, Detroit outfielder Maurice Van Robys said. “Eephus ain’t nothing, and that’s a nothing pitch.” No one knows what Van Robys meant by “eephus” — the best guess holds that “eephus” was really “efes,” the Hebrew word for zero.
Mendoza Line: A batting average around .200, named after former Major Leaguer Mario Mendoza, who posted a .215 career average.
Pickle: When a baserunner gets caught between two bases and besieged by infielders trying to tag him out, he’s in a pickle. William Shakespeare used the phrase “in a pickle” in The Tempest to refer to someone drunk. When the term made its way to the States, the meaning shifted to signify that you’re in trouble.
Texas League single: Outfielder Ollie Pickering is credited with giving baseball the term “Texas Leaguer,” a pejorative slang for a weak pop fly that lands between an infielder and an outfielder for a base hit. According to the April 21, 1906, edition of The Sporting Life, John McCloskey, founder of the Texas League and then-manager of the Houston Mudcats, signed the 22-year-old Pickering to play center field on the morning of May 21, 1892. That afternoon, Pickering strung together seven consecutive singles in one game, each a soft, looping fly ball that fell in no man’s land between the first baseman and right fielder or the third and left fielder.
Walk-off: A hit that wins the game for the home team in the last inning. Dennis Eckersley said that he originated the term, but, as he told the Boston Globe, “It was always a walk-off piece. Like something you would hang in an art gallery. The walk-off piece is a horrible piece of art.” So the term was intended to describe a pitcher’s dejected walk off the field after giving up a game-losing home run, but it soon grew into its phenomenon.
Whammy: An evil influence or hex. It originated in the USA in the 1940s and is associated with various sports. The first reference to it in print appears to be in the Syracuse Herald-Journal in October 1939: “Nobody would have suspected that the baseball gods had put the whammy on Myers and Ernie when the ninth opened.” Or, as Stengel said, “You put the whammy on him, but when he’s (Sandy Koufax) pitching, the whammy tends to go on vacation.”
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This column first appeared in The Vacaville Reporter on April 20, 2021.
