Batter Up!

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

My name is Mike, and Batter Chatter is the intersection of baseball and language, two passions of mine, and two topics I've gotten to write about a bit in the past.

The language of baseball evolves every day, whether it's the players messing around in the clubhouse or putting on their serious face for the media after a walk-off homer, the front-office brass analyzing a game or new prospect, or the announcers up in the booth, breaking down the game.

Batter Chatter will collect the unique speech heard on and around the Major League Baseball diamonds of America.

For instance, what did Red Sox hurler John Lackey mean when he said teammate Clay Buchholz's pitching reportoire--his "stuff," in ballplayer patois--"plays"?

Has Rays third-sacker Evan Longoria been spending too much time with men in suits, as evidenced by his saying teammate Carl Crawford's "ceiling is above him?" (Unless you've been victimized by some sort of natural disaster, or you're Lionel Richie performing "Dancing on the Ceiling", your ceiling is just about always above you.)

Speaking of the resurgent Rays, what exactly did skipper Joe Madden mean when he referred to his ballclub as "more of a liberal-arts form of playing baseball"?

I'll collect the various oddities I read and hear in the sports pages, at the ballpark, and on TV, find a little humor in them, bring in expert witnesses when appropriate to help explain what a ballplayer meant or where a certain expression came from, and share it with you.

Batter Chatter will focus primarily on the Mets and Yankees, as that's my home market. But I'll check out the sports pages of other MLB teams too, will tune into games when I'm on the road, and hope readers will share the linguistic oddities they unearth in their own corners of the U.S.

Thanks for stumbling upon Batter Chatter, and please come back soon!