Sarah from Leyden, Massachusetts, wonders about the many ways baseball commentators and sportswriters use the word stuff, as in “The stuff is there, but the command is off,” or “The kid’s got great stuff, but he’s only...
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...
The idiom thrown for a loop most likely derives from boxing and the image of someone knocked head over heels. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Origin of “Thrown for a Loop”” Hello, you have A Way with Words...