The wonderful language of baseball must be quite extensive for author Paul Dickson to create a dictionary of nearly a thousand pages! Here are more of my favorites.
CANCEL CHRISTMAS. To have something bad happen, or to acknowledge failure. For example, Mo Vaughan once said, “If you give Pedro Martinez a big lead, you can cancel Christmas.”
GREEN LIGHT. A coach’s sign to a batter giving him permission to swing, or a baserunner to steal. Batters sometimes are given the green light on a 3-0 pitch.
SUBMARINER. Nope, this isn’t about Captain Nemo. A pitcher who throws a ball much lower than a usual sidearm delivery is thus dubbed a submariner. He’s also called a subway slinger. The pitch itself was once referred to as (I’m not making this up) a scrotum ball.
Pedro Martinez
PERFECTO. Synonym for a perfect game, where a pitcher retires all 27 batters without allowing a baserunner. It is a rare feat, with only 24 of them thrown in MLB history. The last perfecto occurred in 2023 by Domingo German of the New York Yankees against the Oakland Athletics.
VULTURE. A nickname given to a relief pitcher who is credited with a win in which another pitcher had performed better. For example, the pitcher comes in to protect a lead, allows the game to be tied, but finishes the inning. His team goes ahead in their next at-bat, and he gets the win. In 1966, Dodgers pitcher Phil Regan was dubbed The Vulture by teammate Claude Osteen when he picked up 14 wins in relief.
PEA SHOOTER. A small baseball bat. San Diego Padres great Tony Gwynn (my personal favorite) referred to his bat as a pea shooter. It was 32½ inches long and weighed 31 ounces.
RAG MAN. A pitcher whose sleeve on his pitching arm is frayed or loose, which can distract a batter. We don’t see much of that anymore, because it is against one of the Official Baseball Rules.
LOLLIPOP. A weak pitch that is relatively easy to hit. Credited to San Francisco Giants announcer Russ Hodges who, during a broadcast in 1963, said, “He hasn’t got the fastball anymore, he throws lollipops.”
NOON-TO-COCKTAIL-HOUR CURVE. A synonym for a 12-to-6 curve ball, one that starts up high and finishes low. L.A. Times sportswriter Steve Henson once wrote, “Barry Zito’s noon-to-cocktail-hour curve—slang for a pitch that breaks downward like hands on a clock moving from 12 to 6—gave the Dodgers fits.” (Personally, I’m on board with anything that gives the Dodgers fits.)
“LET’S PLAY TWO!” The exuberant cry of the late, great Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs, who absolutely loved the game of baseball.
That’s it for now. As of this writing my beloved San Diego Padres are on the verge of qualifying for the postseason, so I’m off to watch some more games. We’ll do this again in the future.