Baseball Wheelhouse

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tony. I’m in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hey, Tony.

Hi, Tony. Welcome to the program.

Thanks.

What can we help you with today?

Well, I’ve been hearing a word that, an expression that I find interesting,

Which is right in our wheelhouse, right in my wheelhouse,

To mean that something is, you know, perfectly calibrated for my skill set or our skill set.

It seems to be sort of used in the plural, like we as a group,

You know, this is perfect for, this is in our wheelhouse.

And I wanted to know, you know, I understand the meaning of it, but I wanted to know where it came from.

So you hear this when you’re running the steamboat paddlers on the Mississippi?

That’s right, when I’m wearing my steamboat Willie hat.

Funny you’re cat, because they’re blowing the whistle is the fun part.

Apparently I hear it when I put on my Yogi Berra hat, too.

Well, there we go. It sounds like you’ve done some of your own research. What have you found?

I’ve done a little bit of research, yes.

Well, tell us about it.

Well, I’m a translator, and so I’m pretty used to trying to pin down the way that words work and what their context is,

You know, all the baggage that comes along with them when I’m trying to do my research.

I’ve got to tell you, that sounds perfect. You can fill in for me if you want.

So I did a little bit of research online, and it seemed to me, I mean, I was attracted by kind of the sound of it.

It kind of sounds like you’re in your dungarees with a heavy wrench,

And you’re real competent when you’re in your wheelhouse.

Oh, nice. I like that image.

You know, kind of the steamboat thing.

But then I looked at it online, and it seemed to kind of transform or evolve over time,

Like it came out of baseball.

But I couldn’t find anything prior to baseball.

So it seems to me like it came out of steamboats, went to baseball,

And then kind of migrated to the executive suite so the people in marketing and the media say,

That’s in our wheelhouse, we can do that.

Yeah, that sounds like the arc that I know for wheelhouse.

But the baseball connection is really interesting.

Did you find Paul Dixon’s baseball dictionary?

No, I didn’t.

I found a quote from Joe Torre.

Okay.

Paul Dixon, really, this is the definitive work of baseball language.

And if you read this work, and I should just say, for a matter of record,

I was a consultant on it and contributed to it.

It’s great.

It is probably, it’s such a very American book.

It’s not even funny.

And you will be surprised how much of regular baseball language is now in your own vocabulary,

Even if you don’t care a whit about sports or baseball.

And in there, Paul and his team of researchers, they quote a fellow by the name of Peter Tammany.

And he’s well known in language circles as a guy who accumulated language.

He would just hear it or see it and would write it down.

And there’s a gigantic collection of his notes at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in Columbia, Missouri, called the Tammany Collection.

And in that collection is information about wheelhouse.

And Peter Tammany says he believes the whole idea is that the wheel part is about swinging the bat.

And it’s similar to roundhouse.

It’s literally about the action of turning your torso as you swing the bat.

And I’m doing it now as that ball comes across the plate.

The wheelhouse is, so the house is the home because you’re at home plate, and the wheel of the roundhouse is the place where you actually make the physical wheel shape of your body.

You are turning a wheel when you’re in there.

And the thing is that maybe it sounds too simplistic, but it’s not a bad explanation.

And certainly, as you’ve found, most people can’t antedate it in this particular use prior to baseball.

Of course, as we were joking at the beginning of your call, there is a wheelhouse that refers to part of a ship or a boat.

It just depends what kind of boat it is or what era you’re talking about or even what country.

But there are a variety of different structures on top of boats that can be called wheelhouses.

Yeah, that’s so interesting.

I would have assumed it would have been that, you know, the sort of central part where all the boat gets, you know.

It could be, but we don’t really find this term pop up in American English until the early 1960s.

So we can’t really antedate it prior to baseball in terms of referring to something being your specialty.

Anyway, this is great.

How interesting.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, wheelhouse is a, thanks for the question.

It’s wonderful.

Baseball has contributed so much to our language, and this is just one of those terms.

Great stuff.

Thanks, Tony.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Tony.

Yeah, in Dixon’s dictionary, he compares it to the crush zone or the kill zone.

So to have something in your crush zone is where you can really wallop it.

Ooh, that’s interesting.

You can just knock it, right?

I like that one.

Yeah.

In my crush zone.

Well, language questions are in our crush zone, and slang is in Grant’s wheelhouse.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.