Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304030190
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LIZ BARRETT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
LANGUAGE OF BASEBALL
SLUGGER Joe slides the doughnut off his bat and steps up to the plate. The game is riding on him. Two on, two out, bottom of the ninth.He wriggles his butt, twirls his bat in the air, digs his spikes into the dirt and waits for the pitch. Strike one! A curveball off the table.
Wriggle, twirl, dig. Strike two! Cheese in his kitchen. He starts to sweat.
Wriggle, twirl, dig. Strike three! He smells a Peggy Lee fastball.
What does it all mean?
In baseball parlance, a "doughnut" is a ring-shaped weight. A curveball is "off the table" when it drops suddenly. "Cheese" is a fastball. The "kitchen" is the high inside area of a batter's strike zone. And a "Peggy Lee fastball" is a pitch that travels more slowly than expected thus leaving the mystified batter to mutter, "Is that all there is?"
Assume for a moment that Slugger Joe broke his bat trying to hit that cheese. The proper assertion is that the pitcher "got in his kitchen and broke his dishes."
Anyone trying to master baseball as a second language will do well to observe that locker-room linguists draw a lot of their idioms from home and hearth.
A "meatball" is a pitch that is easy for a batter to hit (right across the middle of home plate). A "soup bone" is a pitcher's throwing arm.
If a pitcher's soup bone gets tired and he throws too many meatballs, he might "set the table" (put runners in scoring position). Then the manager will have to "stick a fork in him" to see if he's done for the day.
After all of this cooking and eating, somebody has to clean up the mess. Baseball is very specific about who does what in this regard.
The "cleanup" man - often a hero - bats fourth. His job is to hit the ball so hard that the three previous batters can score, thereby "clearing the bases."
The "mop-up" man is not so exalted. He is usually an aging relief pitcher whose task is to come into the game when his team is so far behind that the only option left is damage control.
Not everybody who plays baseball is stuck in the kitchen or broom closet.
Once in a while a batter is lucky enough to get "room service," a pitch so easy to hit that he may as well have ordered it.
When that happens, he hopes to get it on the "joy spot," the part of the bat that, when it connects with a 90-mph fastball, tends to smack it out of the park.
Understanding baseball lingo is only part of mastering the language; to really be fluent, you must learn how to speak it as well.
You'll need insults and alibis. Pick a team, then blindly defend them - and put down the other team - no matter what.
If one of your players gets called out on strikes, say that the umpire is "blind," a "bonehead" and belongs in the "Braille league."
If a player on the other team argues with the same umpire, he is a "crybaby."
However, when you're talking baseball, there are a few observations that etiquette suggests are best left unsaid.
Are you amused by the fact that every pitcher who takes the mound scratches the dirt around with his cleats and spits all over it like a tomcat spraying his territory?
Does it strike you as odd that pitchers hike half their butts toward the batter?
Do you wonder why players wait until they are in front of the camera to adjust their crotch cups?
Don't mention it. You'll be pegged a novice.
Just remember that to be part of the big-league world of "shin burgers," "fork balls," "cream puffs" and "taters," you need only keep your focus on the "kitchen."