Remember being a kid and yelling things like “We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!” or “We want a batter, not a broken ladder!”? Or there’s the great scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Ferris and his friends are at a baseball game yelling things at the players. Anybody who’s been around baseball or softball has heard plenty of unique sayings that you don’t often hear for other sports, little gems that convey a meaning to the listener without always coming right out and saying what you mean.
Here’s an example: Ducks on the pond. Now, if you were attending your very first ballgame and heard that, you might look around for a pond or up at the sky for some ducks. However, even amateur observers soon figure out this is reminding the batter that there are base runners in scoring position. This is your chance to drive in some runs!
I had a teammate in high school who, in this situation, called to the batter, “Potatoes on the porch!” Everyone stopped what they were doing to turn to this character with confused looks on our faces. Ducks on the pond we could understand; if you’re a hunter, this is your chance to score a duck. But who puts potatoes on their porch? And if you do, it’s not as if it’s difficult to retrieve them for supper.
However, that stuck with me over the years, and I would get those same confused looks from my players when I would call it out at times.
Pitchers are fragile creatures. If things start to go sideways, they often need a mental restart. That’s why you’ll see managers go out to talk to a pitcher, sometimes even in the middle of an at-bat. Since you can only do that so often before having to remove the pitcher, I took to calling out, “Take a breath. Throw a strike.” This was a reminder to slow down and reset.
Pitchers also aren’t pleased when they throw what was thought to be a strike but was not called so by the umpire. As an umpire myself, I know that chirping about balls and strikes doesn’t get you very far. Here are some acceptable things to call out when you thought the pitch was a strike:
“Throw it there again!”
“Tough to take twice!”
“Right around there!”
“Good height!” (I heard that plenty from Nate Jensen when he thought the pitcher had hit the corner but didn’t get the call. And it was okay because he wasn’t *really* questioning!)
By saying things like this, you let the pitcher know you’re in their corner. But you also show that you have restraint from questioning our ever-dwindling supply of umpires.
Pitchers also hear things like “Throw the gas!” when a fastball would be best served. “Give him the stinky cheese!” is another reference to a nasty pitch meant to strike out the batter. “Throw it right down the pipe!” might be heard when the pitcher just needs to get a strike. “Throw him the dark one!” refers to what is hoped to be strike three coming from the mound. Maybe it will be so hard to see that the batter will miss?
If an out would be huge in this situation, you’ll sometimes hear “Put him in the book!” in hopes that the player’s spot in the official scorebook will be filled in with that out. “Throw him a seat!” is another reference to a potential strike three that will put that player back on the bench.
On a lazy fly ball to the outfield, you might hear someone refer to it as a can of corn. It simply means that the ball should be easily caught. I’m not sure how corn came into the equation. I do know that a baseball or softball is easier to catch than a can of corn though!
A seeing-eye single is a slow-moving ball that just finds its way between two infielders. A Texas-leaguer is a little bloop that falls just behind the infield and in front of the outfield. The seeing-eye part I understand; I can only imagine the reference to Texas is planted in the history of the minor leagues.
Batters sometimes get strikes called on them that they think did not find the zone. At one game last week, I heard three lines that referenced that. One was, “You didn’t want that one anyway.” Another was, “Not yours.” Maybe not, but it was a good one for the pitcher. The last was, “That’s why you get three.” This referred to having three strikes to accomplish something, even if the last pitch didn’t help in that goal.
At a couple games recently, I heard some new phrases that I found quite good as well as educational. At a softball game, the bases were loaded with two outs and the coach called out, “Tag a bag!” I thought that was awesome - it told the infielders they simply needed to touch the closest base to end the inning, and it rhymed!
At one of my son’s baseball games, the opposing coach, after a called strike at the knees, said, “Build a house from there.” That was a new one! I’m pretty sure he was suggesting that the pitch was a great foundation from which to build on and throw a good game. Something new and insightful!
Next time you’re at a ballgame, I’m sure you’ll tune in to these and more. And maybe, like Ferris Bueller, you’ll find yourself shouting, “Swing, batter, batter, batter, suh-wing, batter!”
Word of the Week: This week’s word is zugzwang, which means a position in which one is forced to make an undesirable move, as in, “The coach found his team in a zugzwang with the best hitter in the league stepping to the plate and the bases loaded, so they had to throw him strikes.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!