A baseball yakker is a curveball with a dramatic break, the kind that seems to swerve in defiance of common sense. The slang term apparently comes from yawker, a nickname for the yellowhammer bird, whose swooping flight offers a tidy image for the pitch’s sudden dive. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Yakker” Means a Big-Breaking Curveball in Baseball”
Another bit of baseball slang, Grant, do you know what a yakker is?
The guy in the booth on the radio going, two RBIs, bases loaded.
I don’t know.
That’s a very good guess, but it’s a curveball.
And here’s the cool thing about the term yakker.
So Y-A-K-K-E-R means curveball.
Yes.
And this is so great because there’s a term, yawker, Y-A-W-K-E-R, which is the name of a kind of bird that does that same kind of swooping flight.
Isn’t that great?
Oh, interesting.
So the yawker comes from the yawker the bird.
Yeah, the yawker is a nickname for the yellow hammer bird.
Can I ask you, do you remember the first time you actually saw a curveball curve?
And were you as amazed as I was?
Yes.
I remember going to Bush Stadium.
I grew up as a Cardinals fan.
And seeing the ball in real life going like, the physics of that didn’t look possible.
How does that ball curve like that?
And then later as an adult, you start to look up things about the stitching and the delivery and the roll and all that.
And you start to figure it out.
But when you’re a kid, the curveball is amazing.
An astonishing feat.
Yeah.
See, you were in the stadium.
I was playing baseball with Keith Sutton and my other buddies.
Except for gym class.
Elementary school.
The stadium is as close as I usually get to sports.
