Talk:Glossary of baseball terms

message: I believe that the phrase (which was probably once spelled "in the hold"), like many baseball terms, comes from sailing, not cards.  It continues the analogy with "on deck."  Sympleko (Συμπλεκω) 15:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the hole 

message: At what point do we think "Steroid era" stops being media slang for the current controversy and becomes a genuine period in the game? Is it clear already, or should we wait for George Mitchell's investigation conclusions? 128.243.220.22 14:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Steroid era" 

message: Current definition:
"slice foul - When a fly ball or line drive starts out over fair territory, then curves into foul territory due to aerodynamic force caused by spinning of the ball, imparted by the bat. A slice which curves to the right is not to be confused with a hook which curves to the left."
A slice only "curves to the right" when hit by a right-handed batter.  If a left-handed batter hits a ball that curves to the right, it's a hook.
Potrod 20:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in "Slice" definition 

message: That term is specific to the Yankees' TV announcers. It has no meaning to anyone outside of New York. I also removed "infielder," which had no definition. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I restored this term since the previous writeup was mistaken. It has nothing to do with Michael Kay. Woodshed 04:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed "on the interstate"

message: I gave a definition but wish I knew the origin of the term (not least of all because baseballs don't have screws).  Can anyone help on this?Mack2 03:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hit the ball on the screws

message: I wanted to add this one but am not really sure if it has a single meaning.  Is it the same as a quick pitch?  Can anyone help on this? Mack2 03:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Slip pitch

message: Need a good definition of a stopper. Thanki you. Mack2 03:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stopper

message: I'm not expert enough on these issues, but we need definitions for "revenue sharing," "Rule 5 draft," "contract year," "option year," "trading deadline," and other terms that a fan may hear on a broadcast or read in the sports pages.  In general, terminology involving finances and the business of baseball.  Thanks a lot.--Mack2 17:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Financial, contract terminology needed

message: I'm less sure about this one but I think there's some room for terms such as "paid attendance"; "under the dome"; "bleachers," "bleacher seats," and "bleacher bums"; "dugout," "artificial turf" (after all this started with baseball, didn't it? with Astroturf in the Astrodome in Houston?), "watering the basepaths," etc.  I invite folks to add relevant terms in this category. Thank you.--Mack2 17:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably fair.  But the term "astroturf" is often used as a generic word, and this definitely originated with the Houston Astros and the Astrodome.  And if I were writing about jargon for football, I'd have "turftoe" in it.--Mack2 19:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stadium terminology

message: Some of this may already be there, but we need clear definitions of "rookie," "prospect,' "tools" and "toolsie" (said of a position player), "command" (said of a pitcher), "platoon" and "platoon player," etc. Thanks.--Mack2 17:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding tools, Ive now added an entry based on an informative series of articles about scouting by Kevin Goldstein published on Baseball Prospectus, at http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4860.--Mack2 17:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Terminology describing ballplayers

message: We currently have no definitions of error (including "two-base error"), pop fly, pop-up, line drive, foul ball, advance the runner, run-and-hit, squibber.  Asking for volunteers for those and other terms describing action on the field.  Thank you.--Mack2 14:33, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More Actions on the Field

message: The Wikipedia article on box score is just a place-holder and needs to be written from scratch.  There is a nice description of the history of the box scores and some of the scorecard marks in Alan Schwarz's book.  But it would be helpful to have a good article on the baseball box score on Wikipedia, as well as a definition and link here in the baseball jargon article. 
The reader should also find an explanation here of such codewords as GIDP, LOB, etc.  I've added these now, but there are other such terms that one finds in a "modern" box score.  Thank you.--Mack2 17:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't notice that. Thanks!--Mack2 20:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Scoring, Box Scores

message: The line in ERA about "to start the game as a pitcher" sounds like it's the definition for another term. Did a header line get deleted somewhere?
:I looked at that fragment in response to your comment here and it appears to me that there may have been a definition of "emergency starter" that was either not completed or was deleted. I can't find such an entry anywhere in the "history" but went ahead and added one now. Thanks.--Mack2 13:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  mistake near "Earned run average"? 

message: I have picked up some phrases from TV game announcers and ESPN that were not on this List, and then added definitions here.  Yesterday, two announcers on FSN were confused about the terms Hat Trick, Golden Sombrero, and Olympic Rings, while wondering which award a particular player deserved in this game.  Around the 8th inning, one of them had the answer:  he had consulted Wikipedia and announced the definitions in the live broadcast.--Mack2 13:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: As Seen on TV

message: I was under the impression that a Payoff Pitch was ONLY one where the full-count pitch would result in either a run scoring or the inning ending (disregarding foul balls, of course). In other words, the payoff from the pitch goes to either the batter by scoring a run with a walk or to the pitcher as a strike for ending the inning. Input any and all?DocEss 19:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Payoff Pitch 

message: I was sort of surprised of the absence of this term - A ball caught with some of the ball sticking out the top of the basket/webbing of the glove.
*Done. Wahkeenah 23:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snowcone Catch 

message: I have watched this article over the last several months as it has degenerated from an encyclopedic list to an overly long mishmash.  I appreciate Mack2's enthusiasm for baseball, but this has gotten ridiculous.  The article is now 231 KB long, which I think is something along the lines of seven times as long as the recommended article length.  It is also almost completely devoid of encyclopedic merit, being merely a list of definitions, which is specifically prohibited by WP:NOT.  Now the concept of the article is not bad.  Certainly some common terms in baseball should be listed and explained, with information on origins, famouns occurances, etc., but that is not what this article is anymore.  Someone needs to hack away most of what is here and flesh out the rest into encyclopedic form. Indrian 17:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As to the matter at hand, the article clearly violates policy as it stands.  I will not quote WP:NOT here, but I urge you to read what it says about dictionary entries if you have not already.  Most of the content should be transferred to wiktionary, which would involve no loss of content.  Then the article should be written in an encyclopedic manner in which select terms of particular importance and history are given a more thorough treatment either on one page or several.  I have not evaluated every term on the page, and it may be that they can all be expanded in this way, which is fine.  I have posted here rather than undertaking this myself, because I did not want to cause an edit war or any confusion about my objectives for this page, but the current model does violate wikipedia's policies.  I hope you can at least acknowledge that, because I believe that point is relatively straightforward.  Where we go from here to help it conform is what my concern is, and I was hoping for some positive feedback on how to proceed.  I know that was a long post, but I really want to make sure you understand where I am coming from here and that deletion has never been my goal.  Indrian 03:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there still interest in doing this?  Looking at some of the other glossaries (darts and curling?), they appear to be (much smaller!) lists of sport-specific terms that might otherwise not be easily figured out.  I would suggest leaving only those terms that have baseball-specific double meanings, and that don't have their own articles already.  "Can of corn", "paint the corner", "insurance run", things like this.  Things that are simple definitions or statistics (a balk, a third of an inning, outfielder) probably don't belong in a "jargon" list, and there is already a "baseball terminology" category where these are linked.  I'd be willing to give the cleanup a shot (WP:ASG!) if it's wanted.  I must say, even some of the ones that would otherwise be keep-able, seem a little odd and obscure to me personally (a "Lawrence Welk" double play??). -- dakern74 (talk) 06:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't favor that kind of "cleanup." One thing that this List does is try to link to any main technical article on a given subject (e.g., in baseball statistics) if there is one. But there is value in having a list or glossary that focuses on the colloquial and that is reasonably comprehensive. It is my understanding that this is not supposed to be a list of all baseball terminology, in particular not the rules of the game, and so on; but it has to have enough of that to indicate how the colloquial or informal or insider language of the game may differ from that terminology. For example, you can look up types of pitches elsewhere in Wikipedia, and it's a fine article as far as it goes, but it doesn't have the colloquial language for describing pitches -- what you may hear from players, coaches, the media, and fans.  But you can't just cut out anything that happens to have a separate article about it already, because while that's a useful link, it shouldn't disqualify a term from this glossary of jargon.—--Mack2 17:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course that just begs the question as to why the colloquial terms are not covered on the pages about the pitches?  It seems to me that a series of articles linked by a common category would result in all of this information getting in in a much more efficient manner that does not violate Wikipedia policy the way this page currently does. Indrian 20:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You seem to be missing one major point again: a series of articles is not the same as an alphabetical list or glossary, and would be much less useful for those who want to "look up" something they have read or heard. Wikipedia does endorse glossaries. Should all of them be turned into a series of essays?  How come there are so many such glossaries on Wikipedia, all organized alphabetically?  Think about it.  Your other point, that the other articles should discuss colloquial jargon is beside the point. The fact is, very few of those articles do this.  And a further fact is that most of the terms in this List wouldn't be covered in any article, because the terms stand on their own and come out of the game as it is played, watched, and commented on -- not the formal rules of the game.  Those articles aren't concerned with colloquial language, but rather (in most cases) with either rules and regulations, statistical definitions, equipment and playing fields, and the like. We shouldn't expect them to be glossaries. The language used by baseball announcers, players, and the like is off-topic.  That is why having a  glossary of colloquialisms, organized in an easily accessed list, is helpful.—--Mack2 00:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed it shouldn't be only colloquialisms.  But to say "most of the terms in the list wouldn't be covered in any article"?  Dozens and dozens of these terms have links to their own pages, and dozens more have only a one-line "see article" as the definition.  To me, that means that we've got unnecessary duplicate information floating around.  If someone doesn't know what an outfielder is, odds are they would look up Outfielder instead of coming to this list.  It's a nice repository, but it's gotten way too long.  The category (Baseball terminology) should be prominently linked right at the top of the article, but I think this, in keeping with "jargon", should be for terms that are "out there" and in use, but not detailed enough to merit their own article.  Also a lot of the scorekeeping terms are covered in the article baseball scorekeeping, which I've also been trying to get cleaned up.  I can't believe every single possible double play combination (463, 643, 163, 543) needs to have a separate entry here.  For whatever it's worth, I only found this page because there is another list English language idioms derived from baseball, and some of my watchlist pages had their links changed not long ago.  Sorry to start this fight again.  I really just wanted to resolve the "cleanup" tag. -- dakern74 (talk) 01:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you on the endless list of scorekeeping combinations.  The original 0-9, and a couple of the others with numbers (e.g., 55 feet), plus perhaps a couple of examples of a combination would have been enough.  (I didn't add all these combinations, and they can be reduced substantially.)  Your other points I agree with only in part.  The way I read this kind of thing wer're not starting out with a term such as, say, home run, and then looking for a list of synonyms.  Rather we (the typical reader) hears a term or phrase (say, "dinger" or "jack") and looks that term up, and the most practical way to find a term like that would be in an alphabetical glossary.  There may be a way to reduce the space consumed by some of the one-worders.  But I wouldn't conclude as you do that the fact that there are cross-references to other items means that the original is redundant; rather the cross-references are done to reduce repetition in the text.  There are a lot of terms and phrases in this glossary because baseball is our national pasttime. —--Mack2 04:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: It seems to me that those are both valid comments. This list probably  doesn't need "home run." It may not need a separate listing for "ahead in the count" as long as there is a listing of "count" and the explanation of what "ahead in the count" and "even count" and "behind in the count" means under that heading. In fact, I made the initial entry for count, including the mention of ahead, behind, and even.  Then "ahead in the count" arrived (I may have put it there) with a link to the count article. But somebody came along and repeated the detailed definition all over again -- that that was redundant.  This kind of repetition can/should be edited out and if done judiciously (i.e., by making sure the information is already there somewhere else in a form that's easy to find) it would help.  When I have some time I may try some of that, just like cutting out some of those 6-4-3 types of entry can be consolidated (as discussed above). (Later: I did a bit of editing along this line after writing the previous sentence. I'll do more when I can.) I refer to the word "judiciously," because there are some cases when someone might eliminate a term for which the information given here helps in a way that a standard definition usually does not.  For example, the glossary points out that the term "infielder" has to include the pitcher and catcher for purposes of implementing the infield fly rule.—--Mack2 08:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bloated and against policy

message: I edited the "Platinum Sombrero" entry to reflect that it was coined by Blue Jays broadcaster Rod Black. I heard the term for the first time when he said it on a Jays telecast this year to describe a player who had struck out five times in a game. If I'm wrong about this and someone else coined the term, please feel free to correct it. Gujuguy 14:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've heard this many times for many years.  No idea who coined it originally, but I doubt it was this guy.  It's so common that it has its own separate article (see golden sombrero).  I'm going to remove it until it's verified one way or another. -- dakern74 (talk) 17:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Platinum Sombrero

message: * Oppose. See Category talk:Glossaries. Rfrisbietalk 20:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to Wictionary? 

message: I think it's handy to have it alphabetized, but that effort was incomplete, as often happens when somebody parachutes into an article, makes a reformatting change, and then scoots off into the woods.  It's happened a number of times with this list.
Specifically, once a user clicked on a specific category (say the letter L) there was no efficient way to get back to the master list and its alphabetical categories. I've added a "RETURN TO MASTER LIST" category to each alphabetical category.  I may not have done this in the most efficient way; if so, somebody more knowledgable about formatting is welcome to fix it.
Another problem is that all of the internal links to other items in the List were broken (hundreds of them). Now each such internal link has to be reset to one of the alphabetical articles, e.g., List of baseball jargon (D), not to the overall List of baseball jargon.  I've begun that process.  In doing this, I've also discovered a fair number of orphans -- links to topics/words that were missing before (e.g., emery ball), and I've tried to repair those as I go.
A third problem is that the alphabetizer forgot to notice that there were several footnotes (linked references) in the original article.  I've added e "References" category to each of the alphabetized lists that had such footnotes, so that readers can find the sources cited.--Mack2 18:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The pages also lacked a Category classification, which I've now corrected.35.10.69.132 21:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphabetization of the List 

message: This article and the related items in the glossary were deleted on 18 June 2007, which led to a discussion and a decision to overturn the deletion.  The glossary was restored on 26 June 2007:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_June_18#.5B.5B:List_of_baseball_jargon.5D.5D
I assume that the discussion has been archived for future reference.--Mack2 19:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overturning of deletion, 26 June 2007 

message: It seems to me that a lot of the entries in this entry aren't really baseball terms, but rather ordinary English idioms that are used when talking about baseball.  An example is would be one of the definitions for "shot" that reads:
A good chance, within reach, as in "The Red Sox have a shot at taking over 1st place." 
This sense of the word "shot" is ordinary English usage and does not appear to orginate in baseball.  There are several others throughout this article, i.e., seasoning, seal, etc.  Should they be in the article?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gordonmonaghan (talk • contribs) 18:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the second definition of shot is not a baseball term.  However, the main entry on "shot" as homerun does belong in the this list. Accordingly, I deleted that second definition.--Mack2 (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should some of the terms be deleted? 

message: The definitions of double play and triple play contain the phrase "continuous action" but that term isn't defined in the rulebook and is not yet in the Wikipedia glossary. SEppley (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Continuous action" not yet in glossary 

message: This definition is too narrow. I've heard the term used to refer to a catcher who only catches one starting pitcher; I believe it's also been used to describe a Designated Hitter. ProfessorAndro (talk) 13:21, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caddy 

message: Substituted at 01:00, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Hi all - I see an entry in the glossary for a protested game, but as far as I can tell, there is not an article about this topic. There seems to be a protested game maybe once a season in MLB—there was a protest in today's Red Sox vs. Rays game—although most are dismissed.  Retrosheet has a list of upheld protests, here, one of them being the Pine Tar Incident.  I was thinking to create an article, and wanted to seek feedback here first.  Thoughts?  Thanks. Dmoore5556 (talk) 22:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: It could be a notable topic. You might want to draft it rather than start it in main space just in case.– Muboshgu (talk) 18:10, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll find some time to create a draft in the next few days. Thanks. Dmoore5556 (talk) 08:41, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

text:  Draft underway at Draft:Protested game. Dmoore5556 (talk) 06:25, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

text:   Draft is far enough along that feedback would be welcome; see Draft:Protested game. Thanks. Dmoore5556 (talk) 23:45, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protested game 

message: Someone has made hundreds of edits to this glossary of baseball terms in the last few days to change "he" to "them", etc. Not only is this ungrammatical, as far as I can tell there was no prior discussion on this Talk page to gain consensus before doing so.  All these edits are subject to reversion unless and until such a broad consensus of editors is reached to make such a change. Jeff in CA (talk) 21:01, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of "generic he" is strongly discouraged under Wikipedia's style guide. The gender-neutral language guide lists both "he and she" language and plural-they language as preferred alternatives, and singular-they as acceptable. One of these options should be used, rather than the current discouraged "generic he" language. SimLibrarian (talk) 23:34, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Large-scale changes with improper English: so-called "gender neutral pronouns"