baseball rat
n.— «As he became more sure with the bat, as he became the player who hit .300 at every stop, as he settled down on the field and in the clubhouse, his personality came out. Not just the one whose competitiveness can overwhelm veteran teammates, but the serious one, the one Alex Cora refers to as a “baseball rat.”» —“Regained edge, sharper play” by Amalie Benjamin Boston Globe Oct. 2, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
That little button on top of a baseball cap? Some people call it a squatchee or a squatcho, the latter popularized by comedian Rich Hall’s book Sniglets (Amazon), which features apt but made-up words that aren’t in any dictionary. This is part of a...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...