Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1905-07-08
LINGO OF THE BALL FIELD.
Breezy Language Used by Sporting
Writers Finds a Defender.

Writers Finds a Defender.
A captious Eastern editor asks pet
ulantly what the baseball writer OF
the Journal means by the following:
Tinker led Off for the cubs and
ozoned. Evers slammed a clean sin
gle to left and went TO third on
Kings solitaire TO the same place.
King purloined second. Pfeffer saun-
tered on four wide ones and the To
Let signs were pulled down from all
the bases"
this Eastern editor as he is. OF
course he wears whiskers, and they
are probably red and cut Van Dyke.
He parts his hair in the middle-if he
has any hair-and wears big, round
glasses. He was the pet of the fam
lily and spent his early youth in some
nice, refined Boston nursery and
never, never played 'old-old-cat" in
the alley with boys OF his own age.
He never climbed telegraph pole to
witness the home team pedal the
bags" for a winning game and could
not have experienced the triumphant
joy of chasing foul ball outside the
fence which, when garnered, entitled
him to seat on the bleachers
AS the years OF bis adolescence
passed this editor always kept at his
work during the long, sultry days Of
summer and never longed for a
breath Of fresh air, the blood-stirring
.sf.r % I.. If Tf.t nd nd
the blessed privilege Of ''rooting" for
the home team and hurting pictur-
esque maledictlons at the robber UNI
pre The editor was studious and
carefully avoided sneaking out to the
ball park on Saturday afternoon and
telling his confidng wife afterward
that the reason she could not reach
him at his Office was because his tele-
phone was out Of order. Oh, no. Our
captious brother editor was n model
The result is that he has allowed the
world to go by him. lie sits in iso-
lated ignorance of the greatest Amer
lean stitution-baseball.
The absolute poverty of written Ian
guage to express human emotions
was probably first exemplified when
the paleozoic sporting writer with his
stylus and his papyrus pad tried to
describe the first cocoanut twirling
game between the "Megatherlum Mud
Eaters" and the "Megalosaurus
Giants From that time to this the
language of sport has always been in
advance of the ages 1t has out
stripped the classicalists, who are
bound by rote and rule. The baseball
writer, with his sleeves rolled up and
his trusty typewriter eating on a roll
of paper, is n maker of language. His
is natures own method. He gets
close to his readers because he is sub
timely free from hampering grammau.
cal form and his vocabulary Is evolved
as he goes along. 1t weaves Itself
from the wool of encircling smoke
from his malodorous pipe, and as he
gayly sails out into the boundless
realm of his red and green magma
ton he coyly picks the choicest
idioms and fits from flower to flower
in the glorious gardens Of budding
synonym and blooming metaphor.
The baseball writer writes for thos'
who understand his linguistic vagariei
and revel in the seeming confusion Of
his complex phraseology. He is thu
journalistic free lance who denies tht
: right of precedent and rides roughshoC
over the stickler for literary finish. HI
knows his readers ana they know
him. When he says. tinker led of
} for the cubs and ozoned," every legit
innate, thirty thlrd-degree fan" grasp
Immediately the graphic picture thu
, painted.
b Let the baseball writer alone. II
his very frenzied phllology he contrib
utes a vivid and refreshing contras
to the monotonous news pages and tn
wearying precision of the nice, roun'
editorial sentences. And we who ais
write for living must confess to
sneaking admiration for his boldness
his originality and the easy familiar
ity of his style-Kansas City Jom
nal