Transcript of “The Old College Try Comes from Baseball”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hello.
Who is this?
This is Megan from East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Hello, Megan in Pennsylvania.
What’s going on?
Hi, Megan.
Hi.
Hi.
So I have a phrase for you guys. I work in physical therapy, and the one day I was trying to get my patient to do an activity, and I said, let’s just give it the old college try. And it kind of dawned on me, like, that’s kind of an odd phrase. And I was just wondering if you guys happened to know, like, where it came from. Like, did I hear it in a movie sometime?
Well, Megan, you’ll be interested to know that this phrase goes all the way back to the early days of baseball. When a baseball player would try to make a spectacular play, one against all odds, like chasing a fly ball way into foul territory, that was referred to as the old college try. And in fact, in the 1920s, Babe Ruth himself defined the old college try as playing to the grandstand or making a strenuous effort to field a ball that obviously cannot be handled. Isn’t that interesting?
Yes, and that is not what I expected at all.
Of course not. Well, what’s also interesting about this, Megan, is that in the early days of baseball, there was a certain tension between the few professional players who were college educated and all the other guys who simply picked up the game on the sandlots, you know, and had been playing it forever. And so in the early 1900s, you’ll see reports of these grizzled old baseball managers or teammates just kind of sarcastically saying, well, you certainly gave it the old college try, or that’s the old college spirit, or the old college effort. And then over time, that phrase kind of ameliorated. It became more positive. And so people like physical therapists will use it to get somebody to do a certain kind of movement. Give it the old college try. But it goes back to baseball. How cool is that?
Oh, wow. That is very cool.
Well, Megan, thank you so much for the question.
Oh, no. Thank you guys for answering it for me.
Take care now.
Bye.
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