No Bulls. No Hawks. Not even a Bears minicamp. Spring football is history. No golf major for another month.
All we have is baseball, yet we have all these pages to fill in the sports section.
So I’m going to take one for the team, step up to the plate. Sorry if this column is coming out of left field, and I don’t mean to grandstand or throw you a curveball, but I’m going to bat for an author named Josh Chetwynd. He used to play baseball at Northwestern, and his new book is called “The Field Guide to Sports Metaphors.”
I’m not playing hardball here. Even if I didn’t know Josh, this would not be a hit piece. He never big-leagued me at Northwestern. Was always good about touching base. So now I’ll try to knock this out of the park.
If you’re still with me, you deserve a curtain call.
Chetwynd’s book covers all the bases. He delves into the history of 300 sports metaphors (ballpark estimate).
Who knew the world’s first flake was oddball outfielder Jackie Brandt, who once supposedly backflipped to try to avoid a tag? A teammate called him a flake, as in his brains were flaking from his head. Lame moniker, but it stuck.
And how about the possibility that “out in left field” has Chicago roots? The Cubs’ turn-of-the-century home, West Side Grounds, had a mental hospital beyond left field. Or, Chetwynd writes of the term’s origin, left fielders used to play the deepest of all the outfielders because of the preponderance of right-handed sluggers. So they were, literally, out there.
Baseball metaphors have added so much to our lives — and to favorite flicks such as “Meet the Parents.” Remember the scene in which Pam and Greg are smooching?
Pam: Jesus, Dad, you ever think of knocking?
Jack: Not in my own den. What are you two doing in here?
Larry: I’d say rounding second base.
Of course it’s not easy to bat 1.000 using sports metaphors. Just ask Ted Cruz. In attempting to borrow a line from the movie “Hoosiers” about the basket being 10 feet high (sports adopting the David and Goliath biblical metaphor), he called it a “basketball ring.”
My bad, Cruz should have said, using a mea culpa popularized by Manute Bol. Chetwynd writes that Bol spoke no English when he arrived in the U.S. and probably meant “my fault.”
But given the final numbers in Indiana, this was clearly a case of no harm, no foul. Cruz, previously on the ropes and now down for the count, needed a Hail Mary.
“Together,” he told his followers Tuesday, “we left it all on the field.”
I could go extra innings here, find my second wind. But I don’t want to drop the ball or make an unforced error.
Game, set, match.
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein
