Stuff in Baseball

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah. I’m calling you from a little town called Leiden, Massachusetts.

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question for you. It’s a baseball question.

I’m a huge San Francisco Giants fan living in Red Sox country.

Oh, boy.

And one of the things about being a Giants fan that’s great is we have the greatest commentators in the world, and so I actually listen to a lot of games.

Like the way they make a story. And one of the things that I notice is that people in baseball talk about pitchers. They talk about their stuff. It definitely has to do with like a pitching package, but it seems sort of like from broadcaster to broadcaster, there’s like a subtle shift in what they’re talking about when they’re talking about stuff. And I’m not quite clear if there’s

And agreed-upon meaning of that word when broadcasters use it.

And I also don’t know where it came from or when and why stuff.

Such a boring word for such, like, malleable, skiller linguists.

And can you give us some examples of how you’ve heard it used?

Sure.

Like somebody would say, oh, Bumgarner’s back from the DL, and the stuff is there.

The stuff is there.

But the command is off.

Or they’ll say, you know, they just had the draft, and the kid’s got great stuff, but he’s only got one pitch.

Or he’s got great stuff, but, you know, his curveball is off.

I don’t even know.

Like, they just say, they talk about a pitcher’s stuff.

But are they talking about just their velocity or their fastball?

Are they talking about the entire package of all the different pitches they throw?

It’s a little bit of all of those together.

Like a lot of words, the baseball stuff has more than one meaning.

In the Dixon Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dixon, he breaks it down into four basic meanings.

But the top one is the one I think you’re probably hearing most, and it refers to the repertoire, the kind of what are the different pitches that this pitcher can throw?

What are the different, you know, what’s his breaking ball like?

What’s his fastball like?

What’s his curve like?

That sort of thing.

Is he a lefty or is he a righty?

How does he do against certain kinds of batters and certain kinds of, is he a daytime pitcher, an evening pitcher?

Can he go for a long game?

Do you bring him in as relief?

That sort of stuff.

Stuff.

But what we’re looking at here overall is why you think of stuff as an ordinary word, but think of it differently when you think of the stuff of life.

And so it kind of refers to the essence, the older kind of more established meaning before it was this word that is referred to the daily detritus that we surround ourselves with.

It was really more like something about the core of a thing.

It’s essential nature. It’s fundamental truth as a real thing in the universe, that kind of stuff.

Was there a broadcaster who’s credited with first bringing the word to the game?

Well, you know, the writing field, they’ve been writing about stuff in baseball since at least 1905.

So this is well before baseball was established as something that you would hear on the radio.

So it’s been a sports term for over 100 years.

Sports writing has always been this really expressive form of English that breaks a lot of new ground when it comes to coming up with new ways to say old things and taking what could be an ordinary game, as you were saying about your favorite commentators for the Giants, taking what could be an ordinary game, but because of their brilliance as wordsmiths, spinning it out into something impressive.

And stuff certainly has a place in that.

Sarah, do you have that dictionary, Paul Dixon’s baseball dictionary?

I don’t.

This needs to be on your gift list.

All right.

When’s your birthday?

Tell all your friends that you need this dictionary.

Yeah, it’s a good dictionary.

Okay, my birthday’s coming up not that far away.

There you go.

There’s two other meanings that I think you referred to that are definitely used,

At least in the baseball commentating that I hear,

And it’s about the stuff on a ball.

And it’s kind of like the way that we refer to the English on a ball in billiards,

Which is the kind of spin that it has.

What has he done with his knuckleball to give it that certain spin

That makes it drop at just that point where the batter strikes?

And there’s also the reverse is used.

What is the stuff on the ball after the batter hits it?

That’s also the stuff.

It’s so interesting because there’s so many things now in modern baseball

That they can measure, like the spin rate or the launch angle

Or all the ways that you can talk about metrics.

Yeah, the saver metrics, right?

Yeah.

It’s really different to hear people talk about the game on the radio now than it used to be.

Well, Sarah, I tell you, you’ve given us a lot to think about here,

And I do recommend Paul Dixon’s Baseball Dictionary.

It’s a big tome that, as a diehard baseball fan like you, would really enjoy it.

Yeah, you need it.

Okay, I wrote it down.

Okay.

Again sometime. It was really nice to talk to you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Sarah. Take care. Bye.

You know, your life

Is filled with hobbies and pastimes.

Some of them are sports. Some of them are other things.

And I know there’s a lingo attached to it.

We know that there’s something that you say

That you’ve always wondered.

Why does everyone

Who does this thing, why do they all use

This word? This is the place to get the answer.

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9673.