And so another week of baseball has gone by -- a week filled with what we used to call "bombs" and "dingers" and "taters."
That, of course, is what we used to call home runs back in the olden days of baseball -- by which we mean: before last week.
Yes, it was just last week, you'll recall, that the legendary tandem of Mike Piazza and Jon Miller declared those old, longstanding home run terms to be officially obsolete. Or, to put this in a home run kind of context, those terms, friends, are now outtaaaa here.
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How about a good, 'Fuhgeddaboutit?'
How about a real Sopranos thing? I should have
used that one on Sunday Night Baseball when the
Sopranos were in season, when we were going
head to head. ” |
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— Jon Miller, ESPN baseball announcer, on how to better rename
home run balls |
So we then invited you, the linguistically inclined baseball fans of cyberspace, to help us replace that old, outdated terminology with new, cool, hip, trendy, new-millennium type terminology.
Well, you tried, all right. Boy, did you try. You swung for the fences in more ways than one. And we've spent the last few days sorting through the "fish squishers" and the "big kahunas" and the "balls of mojo" to try to narrow your submissions to just the best and most creative.
So here once again, to review your brainstorms, is the dulcet voice of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball (and, the rest of the week, of the Giants), Jon Miller.
First off, you were very newsy and up-to-date. Alan Carpenter, of East Bend, N.C., suggested that hitting a home run could now be described as ...
"Cashing a rebate check"
We're not sure if this would apply only to homers by players with the middle initial, "W," or to homers by Homer Bush. But it was extremely current.
"It's definitely current-events-related," Miller said. "I just think you might have to do a little too much explaining to ever use it. Would you say, 'Just like so many of us are taking advantage of the new tax-rebate plan, he's cashing his rebate check?' I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is, it's current, but I don't get it."
Uh, actually, what he's saying is ... next!
OK, we also suggested you try a little space terminology. So many of you launched right into your "Best of the Shuttles" vocabulary manuals.
Josh Sullivan, of Maggie Valley, N.C., offered up the term ...
"Satellite"
Now we'll concede we've used that one ourselves once or twice. But Miller said he thought it might be tough to actually work it into a sentence.
"How would you do that? 'That one sleeps with the satellites?' " he wondered. "How about: 'That one orbits with the satellites, says Don Corleone?' "
Sure. It can be a scene from "Godfather 4 -- The Hanging Splitter You Can't Refuse."
Or there was Don Judd, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., who took that space idea once step further. He boiled an entire action space-age scene into one two-word phrase:
"Comet Crasher"
If Big Mac, for instance, really got into one, you could imagine him crashing it into his very own comet. Couldn't you?
"Well, the thing is, the ball would be crashing into the comet," Miller said. "It would not be an action the comet could avoid. You'd have to say: 'And the comet won't be able to avoid this one. It's a comet crasher.' I just don't know about this. Maybe not 'comet crasher.' Maybe, 'This one soars with the comets,' something like that."
Well, we've got the right altitude, anyhow. These balls are now sleeping with the satellites and soaring with the comets. But it's terminology we're looking for, not the perfect orbit. So how about one of many suggestions by Morgan Williams, of Montclair, N.J. ...
The "Big Bang?"
"That's a good cosmos-type term," Miller said. "But again, how would you put that if you were going to put it into a home run call? 'Big Mac's Big Bang?' "
That works for us. But what Jon Miller is getting at here is, these terms may have something to do with space but they don't just float there in space. They need context. You have to be able to use them -- in real sentences, uttered or written by real people, people kind of like us.
For example, Morgan Williams also fired out there the descriptive and poetic term ...
"Bleacher Reacher"
This one has a lot going for it. It rhymes. It has a real-life baseball connotation. And you could have a bleacher reacher caught by a bleacher creature -- who, if the home run was historic enough, could then be the subject of a bleacher-creature feature on this bleacher reacher.
But some expressions work better as part of the written language than the spoken language. This, said Miller, was one of them.
"My friend, Josh Bamberger, used to use one: 'Bash the symbols, bang the drums. Look out, bleachers. Here it comes,' " Miller resonated. "This kind of reminds me of that. I kind of like it, but I'm not that excited about it. I see you using it (i.e., typing it). I just don't see me using it."
Because home run balls do a lot of traveling, we also had some transportation themes. The best was probably one of a slew of ideas by Tony Larson, of Los Angeles -- the evocative ...
"Homebound Train"
"I like trains," Miller said. And who doesn't? Unless they derail near Camden Yards, that is. But even derailing trains can have redeeming humoristic value, as you'll see later in this very column.
"The only problem," Miller went on, "is that I don't recognize the phrase. It would be cool if it was like an old folk song, like the "Rock Island Line" or something. And to me, a train sounds more like the guy pitching the ball than the guy hitting the ball -- like 'The Big Train,' Walter Johnson, or 'The Ryan Express,' Nolan Ryan.
"Home runs are just not train-like. They're too fast. Maybe if it was the Metroliner. Or the Bullet Train. I actually think Bullet Train is worthy of consideration. I'm just not good at it. I'm only good at, 'It's gone.' Or, 'Adios, pelota.' I guess I have to work on that."
Yeah, we've often said Jon Miller could learn a thing or two from the real broadcast experts out there, the ones who have only been forced by ignorant broadcast executives to repair carburetors and wash dishes. It's about time we gave him a lesson or two, huh?
Meanwhile, the baseball-related terms came flying in, too. John Gasink, of Kennebunkport, Maine, said he and his buddies have long referred to home runs as ...
"Hanks"
This, obviously, would be in honor of the home run king himself, Hank Aaron. And if anyone ever passes Aaron, the term then could update automatically -- to "a Mac" or "a Junior." Or whatever.
We're all for homage. But this term works better in some environments than others, Miller said.
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I
still think we need to call NASA. I'd like to hear
what NASA has to say. I was really hoping somebody from NASA would get involved, so
we'd get some really cool astronaut submissions. ” |
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— Miller |
"A Hank, huh? I guess you could say: 'He yanked a Hank,' " Miller mused. "That's a good newspaper idea, or a Baseball Tonight idea. But for me? I don't know. 'That ball is on its way. It's way back there. It orbits with the satellites. Get out the rye bread, grandma. It's a Hank.' I don't know. I just can't imagine myself using it."
Well, we'll think about it. We should have a bumper sticker: "Honk if you like 'Hank.' "
But we didn't limit this search to nouns, either. Verbs were permitted by all the proper authorities. And all the way from Tokyo, Lynn Rice-Evans sent in two great home run verbs.
One was ...
"Tigered"
We're assuming that's a tribute to Tiger Woods, as opposed to the zoo or jungle connotations.
"Hey, that's a good one," Miller said. "I guess you'd use it for low pitches. Extremely low pitches."
Yeah, either that or on British Open weekends.
And Lynn Rice-Evans had another tremendous new verb, in honor of those baseballs in San Francisco that land in McCovey Cove . . .
"Coved"
"It's great," Miller said. "The only problem is that when the ball leaves the bat, it's tough to know if he 'coved it' or not. You can use that on Baseball Tonight, when you already know if he coved it.
"And, of course, you'd also be limited to places where they actually have a cove. But I can see going with 'coved it,' when we do that game Aug. 19 in San Francisco. Let's see: 'Here's Bonds. He popped out in the first. He walked in the third. And in the fifth, he coved it.' "
Excellent. Miller also liked the longtime Dominican home run expression ...
"Para Calle"
That one was submitted by loyal reader David Hallstrom. Or we could go with the version used on ESPN Desportes on Sunday nights by Ernesto Jerez -- "por la calle." One means: "in the street." The other means: "for the street."
The hitch is you'd need a street, so a place like Wrigley Field would be a requirement. But Miller said that if you had a ball land in a body of water -- or "coved" -- you could say, "Por las tiburones," meaning: "for the sharks."
Then again, what makes those expressions better than, say, "fish squisher?"
"I don't know," Miller said. "It's just so much cooler in Spanish."
We could go on and on here, since we had enough submissions to wallpaper every ESPN office building in Bristol, Conn. But much as you, too, would no doubt love some home run terminology wallpaper of your very own, we need to pause now for this week to reflect on what we've learned.
We asked for space terms. We got space terms. We just have a feeling we can do better.
"I still think we need to call NASA," Miller said. "I'd like to hear what NASA has to say. I was really hoping somebody from NASA would get involved, so we'd get some really cool astronaut submissions."
So if you happen to be an astronaut, or know one, or play one on TV or anything, this is your chance. Astronaut home run terms: The time has come.
And let's think more popular culture. Where are the "Sopranos" references, for instance?
"How about a good, 'Fuhgeddaboutit?'" Miller wondered. "How about a real Sopranos thing? I should have used that one on Sunday Night Baseball when the Sopranos were in season, when we were going head to head.
"You know, I used to work with (Cheers script writer) Ken Levine in Baltimore. And he used to use, 'To the moon, Alice,' from the Honeymooners. But if we're going to be more current, we need some Sopranos, some Survivor."
No doubt. So round up your badda-bings, put out your torches and get busy on that one.
Or what about musical references, Miller wondered. Where were they?
"Something from a good jazz record," Miller said. "That would be good. Or some rap. Then we'd be really cool."
Yeah. Exactly. What better way to rap a home run than with a cool rap lyric? Get with it, folks.
This was a fine effort for week one. But as Jon Miller put it:
"I think it again illustrates why guys like Harry Caray and Russ Hodges and Bob Prince and John Sterling and Eric Nadel are highly paid professionals. This kind of stuff is best not left to amateurs. It's not that easy."
Comet crasher of the week
Now the very reason it's important to the health and welfare of our nation (or at least this column) to have items like that home run terminology topic above can be summed up in two words:
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| Encarnacion |
Juan Encarnacion.
Tuesday night in Yankee Stadium, the Tigers came to town, and Encarnacion hit the first home run since the 1975 reconfiguration of Yankee Stadium to land in the unoccupied 87th floor of the Empire State Building.
Whoops. Sorry. That wasn't really where it landed.
That's just where it would have landed if the unoccupied black seats behind the bullpens in deep, deep, deep, deep deeeeeppp left-center field hadn't gotten in the way.
When it had finished traveling and Encarnacion had finished trotting and the Yankees had stopped staring at it and the crowd had finished gasping, there was only one question that mattered:
Howwwww far was it?
Well, the Yankees don't have any of those computerized tale-of-the-tape home run estimation charts. So we don't really know for sure. But just for fun, they got out a ruler, a calculator and an old abacus once owned by Babe Ruth -- and ciphered this one as having been hit about 477 feet, give or take a couple of hundred.
That wasn't quite scientific enough for our tastes, though. So we went looking for a better estimate.
"You could go to the Dominican and back on that thing," Tigers coach Juan Samuel told Week in Review, "without going through customs."
Ooh. That's far.
"That was a nonstop subway ride from Shea to Yankee Stadium," said Tigers reliever Todd Jones. "That one didn't even have to go through Grand Central."
Ooh. That's far and fast.
Of course, we probably shouldn't even be asking questions like this of the Tigers. They play in Comerica Park, a ballpark bigger than the entire state of North Dakota, where Tigers outfielder Wendell Magee Jr. hit a ball last weekend that seemed on its way to Ann Arbor and didn't even leave the premises.
So when Week in Review emissary Danny Knobler, Tigers beat writer for Booth Newspapers, asked Bobby Higginson where Encarnacion's homer would have landed in Comerica, Higginson replied: "I don't know. If it was like that day Wendell hit his, it might not even go out."
OK, so take the word of the Yankees, a team that knows all about home runs, especially at the old House That Ruth Built.
Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams, whose only movement after the ball left the bat was to look over his shoulder, called Encarnacion's ball "a Nintendo home run."
"That was probably one of the hardest balls I've ever seen hit," said Williams, who actually had just hit a batting-practice home run two days earlier that soared clear out of Yankee Stadium. "That was out there in McGwire Country."
Except the boundaries of McGwire Country have never included this spot where Encarnacion's ball came down. It's an official, historic first. We know that because it was certified by America's ultimate authority on long-distance home runs, Bill Jenkinson.
Jenkinson has studied just about every historically long home run ever hit. So what we have here, he said, is a ball unlike any other launched in this home run cathedral in the last quarter-century.
What gets hard, though, is trying to compare it to home runs hit before the Stadium was redesigned, because the park had several different configurations before '75.
In the period from 1937 to 1974, home plate was in a whole different spot -- about 20 feet further from those bleachers. So while the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Moose Skowron hit balls into this general vicinity in the olden days, before the Stadium was redesigned, all of them landed closer to dead left field and further from dead center than Encarnacion's.
The only homer from that era to come down in these seats nearly as far out toward center as Encarnacion's bleacher reacher was Mantle, who hit a ball 19 rows up into those bleachers, but more toward left field, on June 4, 1958. Jenkinson's research shows that ball was estimated (and probably measured) to have gone 478 feet.
But before 1937, in Babe Ruth's day, the fence in center field was 490 feet from home plate. And even the left-center field alley was 466.
"So if Ruth or Jimmie Foxx had hit this ball," Jenkinson said, "it was not a home run."
Nobody hit a ball into those left-center bleacher seats back in those days, if only because rocket fuel hadn't been invented yet. But Ruth did smoke one in 1924 that hit the fence in those parts on two hops. (How do we know? Even that was an event back then.)
The Babe was eventually thrown out trying for an inside-the-park homer -- on four relays. It went 7 to 8 to 6 to 3 to 2 if you're still scoring those games from 1924.
So that, friends, is how hard it used to be to hit a home run in 1924 that would have interrupted programming on "Baseball Tonight," the telegraph edition.
Just because it couldn't be done in 1924, however, doesn't mean it wasn't a super-cool event in 2001.
Jenkinson estimates Encarnacion's blast as having traveled a legitimate 475 feet or so. And in an age in which the distance of all home runs is routinely overestimated, that's a serious Big Bang.
"I once gave up a home run to Bobby Bonilla in 1997 that went over the right-field roof at Tiger Stadium," Jones said. "And Ernie Harwell said it was the longest ball he'd ever seen hit at Tiger Stadium. But this was further.
"If I was Ramiro Mendoza (the pitcher who gave it up), I'd be proud of that one. You've got to be a hell of a pitcher to give that one up."
Tag team of the week
As long as you're all busy sending in home run terms, we've got another project for you.
Out in Arizona, we have a strikeout tag team unlike any we've ever seen in our lifetimes.
There's Randy Johnson, currently on a pace to pile up something like 380 strikeouts.
And there's Curt Schilling, currently on a pace to whiff somewhere in the vicinity of 300.
We just want you to appreciate what that means:
No two teammates in history have ever struck out 300 hitters apiece in the same season.
And over the last half-century, which essentially comprises baseball as we know it today, only three sets of teammates have ever struck out 250 or more apiece in the same season:
There were Nolan Ryan (327) and Frank Tanana (261) of the '76 Angels. There were Sudden Sam McDowell (283) and Luis Tiant (264) of the '68 Indians. And there was the last National League tandem to pull this off -- Sandy Koufax (306) and Don Drysdale (251) of the '63 Dodgers.
But Schilling and Johnson are poised to blow by all of them -- on the way to what could be the all-time record for most combined strikeouts by two pitchers on the same staff: 624, by Ryan (383) and Bill Singer (241), of the '73 Angels.
In other words, these men are about to turn into living legends right before our eyes. Or right before our K's, at any rate.
So what they need, obviously, is a name. Or at least a nickname. They're the strikeout tag-team champions of the world. So what's a fitting nickname for them?
"I don't know," Schilling told Week in Review. "Maybe Dumb and Dumber?"
Naw. This one needs to start with a K. Doesn't it? The K-Makers? The K Klub? We don't know. You decide. Send in those nominations to the link up there in the home run section, and we'll run the good ones by Schilling, if he chooses to participate.
"I don't know if I even want to start," he said. "Not in our clubhouse. We've got too many bright imaginations."
Nevertheless, the karnage wrought by Schilling and the Unit over the last week and a half has been pretty much ridiculous.
And it all started with Schilling dribbling a little foul ball down the first-base line in San Diego. Next thing he knew, the light tower in left field started shooting sparks. Which wasn't in the script he'd read.
"I thought I was supposed to hit a moon shot, and then the lights were supposed to explode," he said. "Then I was supposed to take a slow-mo trot or something like that. I thought that's how it was supposed to work. I kind of took the drama out of it by barely squibbing an 0-2 curveball six feet down the third-base line."
All right, so it was a lousy remake of "The Natural." But it sure produced some great baseball theater.
The next chapter was the resumption of Schilling's at-bat the next day -- except with Brian Anderson at the plate, inheriting an 0-2 count. For about two seconds.
Then he froze on a big breaking ball from Woody Williams. And that gave Schilling credit for a strikeout he had to witness from the dugout.
"Brian was warming up for the AB at like 9 a.m.," Schilling reported. "I told him to trust his hands and keep the stroke short. Instead, he gets painted with an 0-2 hook on the first pitch of the restart -- and I get the K. Not that I wouldn't have K'd anyway, 'cause I would. But I mean, to wait 16 hours ..."
Yeah, well, things picked up from there. Johnson then came in there in relief, carried the combined perfect game into the eighth and struck out 16 of the 22 hitters he faced. Schilling went out two days later, took a no-hitter into the seventh and threw a 12-strikeout one-hitter for seven innings. And then Johnson came back Tuesday and spun 7 1/3 more one-hit innings, punching out 14.
So over those three games, their combined line looked like this:
23 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 5 BB, 43 K.
They faced 85 hitters altogether. Eight of them reached base. And more of them struck out (43) than put a ball in play (42). Absurd.
Naturally, then, Schilling said he was a little disappointed Johnson didn't come in again and relieve him after he allowed his first hit of the day last Saturday, to Armando Rios in the seventh inning.
But he had bigger questions about the way baseball scored the previous game, when the stadium broke. And he should. Let's look at the facts here.
Schilling pitched two hitless innings, interrupted through no fault of his own. Johnson pitched seven one-hit innings in relief of him. So what did Schilling say to the Unit after the two of them, plus the Qualcomm Stadium electrical system, had combined for that legendary 17-strikeout one-hitter? He said what any starting pitcher would in that situation.
"I asked him who was getting the win," Schilling said. "I mean, he gave up the hit. Yeah, he struck out 16 of the 21 hitters he faced. But he did give up the hit. Didn't he?"
Training camp of the week
We may not work for the National Transportation Safety Board. But one of our mottos in life is still: Train wrecks are bad. (Try to argue with that one.)
But since nobody got hurt in that derailment in Baltimore last week, our favorite maniacs from Baltimore -- David Hill and Jim Sundra, of the tremendous Baltimore baseball magazine, "Outside Pitch" -- have opted to look on the sunny side of this situation:
It meant that for three straight evenings, the Orioles went undefeated -- because they didn't play.
But the more these men investigated, the more they found there were other positives that came out of that railroad snafu. And you know what that means. It means it's time for the ...
Top 10 advantages of a train wreck at Camden Yards
10: "Train wreck" and "The Orioles" used in the same sentence without the usual insult.
9: Finally breaks Sid Fernandez's long-standing record for discharging gas at Camden Yards.
8: New microbrew: Hydrochloric Pale Ale.
7: The plumes of choking smoke causes cravings for Boog's Bar-B-Q.
6: Large numbers on Warehouse count down the number of burning cars remaining in the tunnel.
5: Excess No. 88 jerseys sold to soak up toxic waste.
4: O's white home uniforms instantly turned into black alternates.
3: Players seemed to enjoy the midseason break. Regional environmental disaster to be worked into the home schedule every year.
2: For a few days, no overpriced veteran player can be shipped out of town on a rail.
And ... the No. 1 advantage of a train wreck at Camden Yards: New flavor of pretzel at Uncle Teddy's Cinnamon 'n Soot.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com. Week in Review appears each Friday.
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