Baseball Bunt

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jeff from Chino Hills, California.

Hey, Jeff, what’s up?

Well, I’m from the Los Angeles area, and I grew up a Dodgers fan and listening to the legendary Vin Scully.

And on one of the broadcasts, he was talking about a player trying to bunt.

And then he got into this thing saying, well, gee, no one can tell me where the origin of bunt came from.

And he speculated that it was because of baby bunting around a crib.

And so since a bunt is like a baby hit, he said, well, he speculated, well, maybe that’s where the term came from.

Oh, my, that is real speculation.

Yeah, it’s a real speculation.

And the NPR program station where I’m from used to have on these pocket programs,

Things like a moment of science and stuff.

And so one of the programs was Word for the Wise.

And so I wrote in to Kathleen Taylor, who is the host of Word for the Wise.

And so she actually put my question on the air, and she said,

Actually, the word bunt preceded bunting, so it couldn’t have been a derivative from that.

And so she said her researchers kind of looked around,

And they really couldn’t figure out where the derivation came from,

But they speculated that maybe it’s a derivation of the word butt.

So like, you know, two rams butting each other or something.

Yeah, yeah. The word butt and bunt have both been used for hundreds of years to mean strike or push.

And interchangeably as well.

There’s something about that UT that invites nasalization,

Which kind of you might see the word butt but pronounce the word bunt.

Yeah.

Well, that’s interesting. So that speculation is probably correct then.

Yeah, as far as we know.

It’s a really solid history.

When did you hear Vin Scully come up with this specious etymology?

How long ago was that?

Oh, it was probably 15, 20 years ago or so.

Okay, that would explain, because I think most newscasters these days in the baseball field

Have a copy of Dixon’s Baseball Dictionary, which is very reliable and has an excellent entry on bunt.

And not only talks about this etymology of it, but the history of the usage of the term

And how bunts used to be considered a kind of thing that only terrible players did and so on and so forth.

Yeah, and in fact, that dictionary includes speculation that it may have come from railroading.

Do you remember that part, Grant?

It says it may have come from the term bunt in railroading,

Which is when you push an uncoupled car to get it going.

Bunt, in that case.

Well, not come from, but related to the same use of bunt in railroading, right.

Right.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much for the program.

Jeff, you’re a gem.

We appreciate having you here.

You can call us again sometime, all right?

Okay.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye, Jeff.

Bye.

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