Baseball Slang: The Game has a Language All to Its Own

A guide to baseball lingo for your players

"So I come up to the dish with the sacks packed just hoping to avoid a twin killing. Their guy is throwing real high-octane gas so I'm hoping to get a blooper, a dork, a duck snort, anything but a "K". A bomb is out of the question. I'm looking for heat and he comes at me with the deuce. I'm fooled, but somehow manage to get my lumber on it and rip a pea to right. I'm thinking I just got me a base knock with a couple of ribbies, but their right fielder has a cannon and he guns me down at first. Major bummer."

Make any sense? Unless you're a baseball fanatic, it probably doesn't. Baseball people have invented their own language over the long history of the game. It can be confusing to the beginner. Let's review the crazy dialogue above with an eye toward a better understanding of our great game.

"So, I come up to the dish..." Dish is another name for plate, right? A platter is also a dish. Both these terms have been used to refer to home plate. Make sense? Let's continue...

"...with the sacks packed just hoping to avoid a twin killing." A base is often called a sack or a pillow. They look like pillows, don’t you think? If all the bases are full they could be thought to be packed full. So, when the sacks are packed, the bases are loaded or jammed. "A twin killing" is two deaths or two outs in one - in other words, a double play.

"Their guy..." this always refers to an opponent "...is throwing real high-octane gas ..." High-octane gas makes a car go fast. It's powerful stuff, just like a fastball. Their guy throws hard if he's got high-octane gas.

"I'm hoping for a blooper, a dork, a duck snort, anything but a K." All right, a cheap single comes in many flavors, all of which have some negative meaning. A ball that barely makes it to the outfield grass sort of bloops over the infielders. Dork, gork, bleeder, flare all refer to an embarrassing base hit, usually a mis-hit single. A seeing-eye single barely gets past the infielders. It somehow finds a hole to bleed through. A Texas Leaguer is a cheap single, too. It refers to a minor league quality base hit. As for duck snort, well who knows? A K is, of course, the symbol used in score keeping for a strike out.

"A bomb" is a huge home run. Being the glamour act in baseball, it has lots of names: dinger, round tripper, blast, or moon shot. You can take the pitcher deep or go yard, meaning you hit the ball out of the premises -- a very good thing. When you're expecting heat (a fastball) and get a deuce (the number two is often referred to as deuce, like in cards. When the catcher calls for a curveball, it is usually with two fingers down), you're in trouble. A curve ball - or deuce -  moves slower than heat so you’re likely to be off on your timing. Based on its shape, the curve ball is also known as a bender, a hook, a breaking ball, or even as Uncle Charlie.

Slow pitches with movement (curves, changeups, knuckleballs) are often called "junk pitches."

"Putting lumber on a pitch" means getting wood on it or hitting it. Back before the introduction of aluminum, bats were called lumber from the material they were made from. Other terms for bats might be more practical now: weapon, stick, or club.

A line drive is a seed, a pea, a laser beam, a frozen rope or simply, rope, a rocket, or a base knock. How seed and pea became associated with line drives is anyone's guess. The others describe balls moving in a straight line without apparent regard for gravity. Some of these can even be used to describe thrown baseballs. An outfielder might throw a rope from left field to nail a runner.

"A base knock" (line drive single) with ribbies means you accumulated RBI's or runs batted in. "Ribbies" for short. Anyone who can throw really well from the field looks like he's got "a cannon" out there instead of a throwing arm. If he "guns you down," he threw you out. Maybe he got you with a pea. Or he hosed you.

There's almost no end to the baseball terms used by fans all over the globe to describe our colorful game. It's one of the great things about the sport. So, get used to hearing wacky terms from baseball people. Learn and use them yourself. Think of it as sort of a secret code only you and your teammates might understand.

It's the greatest game on the planet. Why shouldn't it have its own language?

 

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