People like talking about the future of baseball. Some say baseball will slowly fade into obscurity as the younger generation lacks the attention span to endure three-hour chess matches. Others say that baseball will be okay forever because it’s our national pastime whatever that means. They’re all wrong. Baseball will thrive for eternity because it has the best terms and phrases.

Baseball experts and fans, more than any other sport I’ve come into contact with, operate with a unique language of terminology, metaphors, and descriptors that haven’t been updated since the turn of the twentieth century, and never ever will be. The jargon is instinctive to the point where baseball fans hardly ever stop to really appreciate the transatlantic robber baron lingo they’re spewing on a daily basis.

Lucky for you, and unlucky for my daily responsibilities, I think quite often about how awesome these words are, and with the World Series starting tomorrow I can’t think of a better time to put some finger to button and grind this thing out.

 

Early P.S.: The Boston Red Sox………….. in five games.

 

15. Dugout and Bullpen

These two aren’t all that crazy but they’re definitely appropriate to start on. Dugout is very self-explanatory, but I still think it’s a cool word and the fact that like 90% of MLB dugouts are still below field level is also cool. But even in lower league baseball where the bench area is completely above field level everyone still calls it a dugout. I love it.

Bullpen is a top-tier baseball term because from the Civil War through to World War II, the term “bull pen” or “bullpen” was given to the most fucked up and deadly prison camps we had going in the U.S.of.A.. Yet somewhere in the middle of that fun time period, the twirly-mustached gentlemen who were calling baseball games decided to give that same name to the relatively humane, often non-deadly place that relief pitchers go to sit and maybe warm up. The term was deemed fire, and we’ve ran with it ever since. It’s so fire that the cops stole it.

 

14. Eephus

What a combination of letters, first of all. Everyone knows the eephus, that stupid lob pitch that one kid tries to throw in wiffle ball just so he can argue it actually fell in the strike zone. Fuck off kid, throw a pitch.

Maurice Van Robays apparently named the pitch, which was popularly invented by Pirates pitcher Rip Sewell in the 40’s. When asked, my man MVR said “eephus ain’t nothing, and that’s a nothing pitch”.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I must respectfully contend that eephus is something: an awesome word.

 

13. Slugger

The idea of “slugging” a baseball with a baseball bat is about as cool as it gets, so when you flip that into one of the more complimentary descriptors for a baseball player you’re dealing with something very special. Slugger just has such strong connotations, you think slugger and you’re thinking about a big ol’ dude, treetrunk arms, barrel chest, slapping a no-doubter and trotting around the bases like nothing just happened.

Also doubles as a condescending thing for an adult to call a kid.

 

12. Around the Horn

Pretty simple, but undeniably strong. A horn would probably be choice like #237 if you asked me to describe the path from third base to second base to first base but it fits perfectly.

The show’s been on forever and the name can’t have nothing to do with it.

 

11. Bunt 

Nothing to add here, A+ word.

 

10. Farm System

It’s just so funny that everyone still uses this one like it’s at all relevant. I can’t imagine there are many minor leaguers at the bar dropping “yeah I’m part of the Rockies farm system” unless they want to sound like they install irrigation equipment or some shit. Yet, if you start talking about “the farm system” to a Red Sox fan, their first thought is gonna have to do with Pawtucket, where it’s too gross for farms.

 

9. Batting Cleanup

As a kid who’s offensive peak got him up to fifth in the lineup, I often wonder(ed) what it would be like to know you’re “batting cleanup”. You’re the cleanup hitter, there are a mess of colleagues bouncing around the basepaths and you got sent in to tidy things up. With a bomb. Because you’re batting cleanup, you’re the cleanup guy, the bases are gonna be so clean once you’re done.

God dammit that would be so cool.

 

8. Shortstop

I never got to be the shortstop either because I’m a friggin’ lefty. Everything about the shortstop rules. The name, the range of plays they can make, usually the person playing the position, and most importantly: being the one dude in the infield core who isn’t defined by duty to his base. Who knows where the shortstop’s really supposed to stand, there could be a short-stop anywhere.

 

7. Bush League

Wasn’t originally on the list because this is kind of just a general awesome term that I don’t really associate with baseball at all. It’s being included because the term can be dated back to 1906 baseball talk, where some dudes probably trying to play a clean nine in top hats and monocles called the “mean, petty, unprofessional” minor league players “bush league”. Bush is an old British term for ‘the sticks’ essentially, and that’s where minor league teams (used to?) play, so there you go.

I always thought calling something “bush” was funnier than calling it “bush league”. I still do think that.

 

6. Can of Corn

Some stupid phrases become less funny when you understand the origin of it. This is not one of those phrases. “Can of corn” dates back to the nineteenth century, and it’s supposedly referring to old-timey grocery store clerks getting hard to reach cans with some kind of stick-with-hook tool that we should’ve graduated from in the dark ages. They’d tip the can of corn slow over the edge of the shelf like a vending machine, catch the can in their apron, and then go to do that dumb shit all over again with the canned beans and pears and whatever because nobody was tall or had ladders I guess. So yeah that’s can of corn, so stupid, yet so perfect.

 

5. Manufacturing Runs

Find me a more 1890’s way of saying “smallball”. You can not. I can’t hear the term without thinking about deadball era baseball players getting off their assembly line shift at the pollution mill and heading straight to the ballpark so they could grind out sacrifice bunts and go for every hit-and-run opportunity.

 

4. Grand Slam

This is a term that falls through the cracks in the grand scheme of good baseball terms, but it’s about as magnificent as it gets. It’s such a great term that I’ve never ever heard someone utter the term “four-run home run” or any variation in my entire life. Grand slam is quick, sounds great, rolls off the tongue, and fits the situation perfectly.

 

3. Suicide Squeeze

A “squeeze play” sounds fresh enough as it is, but a “suicide squeeze”? man what a term. The actual play that it’s describing is one of the coolest in baseball, it never happens anymore, and the term “suicide squeeze” describes it to a T. It any other context it’s a super gross and unappealing term, but the baseball lexicon is one place where the most questionable of word combinations can take on an honorable context.

 

2. Retire the Side

This is the one that got my mind churning on this list in the first place. It took me like 20 years of watching baseball to finally think about the phrase “retire the side” and just how amazingly perfect it is. Another quick little one that sounds lovely, just a perfect announcer phrase. You can say it super calm and casual, you can get loud and rowdy with it, either way it sounds smooth as hell.

Retire is a word that only really has one definition nowadays, and it’s good to see the old “I must retire to my quarters” definition still getting some play.

 

1. Inning

Has anyone ever wondered what the the hell an “inning” is? Or how our baseball forefathers could’ve possibly settled on “inning” as our unit for game completion? Do I have to ask all the questions here? Do I have to answer them too? Yes!

Well short story short, it’s a British term that they started using in cricket around 1735. If you know anything about cricket, which I don’t, you’d know that each time at bat is called an “innings”. You read that right, no singular “inning”, just “innings”, cricket might have even wilder terms than baseball but that’s a discussion for another day. I do know that a period in polo is called a ‘chukka’ which is a absolute god-tier sports term.

Anyway,

This word absolutely mystifies me because at the end of the day, like many of the aforementioned terms, it fits perfectly in its context, despite being such an obscure word in our everyday English. According to the internet, the proper old English definition translates to “a putting in”, “a getting in”, and/or a “taking in”, which makes only a slight bit of sense but I’m forever appreciative that the cricket-then-baseball communities decided to adopt this sweet little word and give it a loving home for all of time.

 

Honorable Mentions: Payoff pitch, bloop, on deck, no mans land, the alley.

Wholly inappropriate phrases I discovered in my research that were apparently pretty relevant baseball terms for a while: Chinese home run, shoot the cripple.

Look them up yourself I’m not your dad.