Grant gives a brief review of the new third edition of Paul Dickson’s The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, all 974 pages and 4.5 pounds of it. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Baseball Dictionary”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
A nice part of working in language is that I get to help in small ways on the work of colleagues. For example, I contributed a few terms to the brand new edition of Paul Dixon’s Baseball Dictionary. It’s just been published. A tiny few terms, and I was one of hundreds of people who helped him, but still, it feels good to be a part of something great.
I have a copy of the Dixon Baseball Dictionary right here. It’s stupendous. This is probably, Martha, the best specialty dictionary I’ve seen in years. The coverage is complete, the scholarship is excellent, and the subject matter is deeply American. You read it and you can’t be anywhere else but the United States.
There are terms like to bang a game, which means to stop it because of the weather, and Bugs Bunny change-up, which is a fastball that appears to stop right in front of the plate. It’s named after a pitch thrown by Bugs in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons. It’s so slow that a batter can get in all three strikes on a single pitch.
There are old terms, too, like skull, a free ticket of admission, and newish terms like scullion, a very ugly player, which is probably another form of mullion, which means the same thing. I’m not a sports fan. I know very little about baseball, but I know a lot about dictionaries, and the Dixon Baseball Dictionary has slud into home plate for a big win.
Well, it sounds great, Grant, but slud?
Slud.
Slud?
Clearly not a baseball person.
No, I’m afraid I’m not. It’s a fake past tense of to slide, and it’s often attributed to Dizzy Dean, who talked about somebody who had slud into home plate.
Oh, really?
I had no idea.
And I remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon, too. I always wondered how he did that.
It’s a cartoon.
Yeah, it took me a while to figure that one out.
You were 30.
Yeah, back then.
Oh, my. Well, it sounds great.
And the name of the publication again is?
It’s the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, third edition.
Okay.
Got to get it.
Well, anyway, if you want to talk about baseball slang or any other kind of slang or just words in general, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
