Crawford Busts Out With 12 Hits in 4 AB's

We're not talking about any Curse of the Craw-bino or anything--I mean, that's got no ring to it--but the Red Sox, and their star left fielder, Carl Crawford, are clearly struggling mightily. (Real-Time Update: Sawx and Tribe are zero-zero midway through today's day game, amidst a forecast of "Light Snow" in Cleve-town.)
Red Sox manager Terry Francona seemed to single out Crawford, and perhaps Adrian Gonzalez, in his comments to reporters yesterday.
"When a hitter's struggling, you see him try to go 3 for 1," said Francona.
As any fan of the game knows, you simply cannot go 3 for 1 in baseball, just as you cannot hit the rosin bag with any true authority, and you cannot hit a five-run homer--other quirky euphemisms for trying to do too much in one at bat.
Miguel Cabrera, for one, tried his best to hit a five-run home run after letting his team down with an ugly drinking incident late in the 2009 season, with the Tigers in a playoff push.
His first game back, he went 0 for 4 and stranded six runners. "That night, I was trying to hit a five-run homer every time I came up, because I knew I had made a horrible mistake and I wanted to fix it," Cabrera said. "I was just putting too much pressure on myself."
Speaking of the beloved five-run homer, here's a nifty bit of sports satire related to Derek Jeter stroking a five-sacker to show up his movie-star-dating infield neighbor.
Writes SportsPickl.com:
Alex Rodriguez crushed a grand slam home run into the upper deck last night before a capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium, but later that inning his feat was quickly upstaged when teammate Derek Jeter hit baseball’s first-ever five-run homer.

Jeter’s blast flew clean out of the stadium and hit the facing of a highrise several block away. On impact the ball hit a downspout, breaking it open and freeing an adorable puppy that had been trapped inside.
Carl Crawford--and his new Sox mates--will hope for a similar smash today in Cleveland.



 

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!