The bleachers in a baseball stadium are the unshaded benches that get bleached by the sun. The word stands, on the other hand, derives a 17th-century use of stand meaning a place for spectators, who either sat or stood, and is an etymological relative of the word station. The grandstand is an area of pricier seats, covered by a roof. The term grandstanding derives from the practice of baseball players showing off in front of the highest-paying spectators sitting there. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Origin of Baseball Bleachers and Stands”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Rick from San Diego.
Hi, Rick. How are you doing?
Hey, Rick.
I’m doing well. How about you guys?
All right. What can we help with?
Well, you know, it’s baseball season, and for some reason it had me thinking about the words bleachers and stands as in the sentence. You get a home run into the left field stands, and stands especially does not make sense for a place where people are sitting.
But even bleachers to me seems like an odd word, so I’m wondering if you can give me some background on those.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, bleachers is pretty easy. The place where you sit and sort of bake in the sun. Where you get bleach. All the color leaches right out of you, and red comes in instead.
Yeah, those uncovered benches where you don’t have reserve seats. The cheap seats, in other words. So it actually does kind of make sense.
Yeah. Like if you leave clothes on the line too long, they’ll bleach out. Or a poster in the window where it gets some sun, that’ll bleach out. That kind of bleaching.
And I believe that does come directly from baseball, 19th century descriptions of stadiums and the places where people sat. A stand is a little bit different. Stand is a weird word in English. It takes so many different meanings. And as far back as the 17th century, a stand was where spectators often stood to watch things like horse races and that kind of thing.
But stand is weird because, you know, we have bandstand, we have witness stands, but people don’t stand there anymore. So it’s, I guess, kind of hard to know exactly how it transitioned, or is it just a coincidence, I guess, that we sit in stands?
That we sit in stands.
Yeah, well, the stand has long been a structure that literally stands there. That’s what it has in common with bandstand, with speaker’s stand, with witness stand. It’s like a station, yeah.
Yeah, so it’s a physical structure usually that sits in place. Now, whether or not it encloses seats or it encloses just an area for spectators, that’s another whole thing, but the stand refers to the structure and not what the people are doing.
Okay, so it’s just circumstantial to the various uses of the word stand.
Yeah, that’s right, because like as Martha said, stand is a super complex word with lots of diverging meanings and a great etymological tree.
Right. Then, of course, there’s grandstand, and the verb we get from that grandstanding, the grandstand being in baseball, the place where you sit under the roof.
Oh, okay.
Pay a little extra.
Yeah, yeah, pay a little extra. Not the bleachers.
Yeah. Not the bleachers.
Oh, great. That’s all very interesting. And I don’t know why words like that sometimes come into our minds, but it was haunting me slightly for some reason.
Understandable. Well, thank you so much for calling.
Thank you.
OK, have a good day.
All right. Bye bye.
Bye bye.
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