Everyone Talks Baseball

Most everyone talks in baseball-speak -- well, at least most people in the US where baseball is such an important part of our culture. I assume that only some of the dozens of common terms and phrases in American English that are derived from baseball are also commonplace in other English-speaking countries. That would make for an interesting survey actually -- list 50 or so baseball-derived phrases that are commonly used in America, and see how many are widely known and used in England, Ireland, or Australia, and then how many (presumably fewer) where English is spoken often, but is a second or third language. Anyone know of such a survey or even just anecdotal results on this?

The Washington Post recently had a nice item that shows just how common baseball-speak is American English. Here is the writing sample that makes the point:

Say you are about to take a big math test in school. The teacher could play hardball. Right off the bat, she might throw the class a curveball and ask a question that is out of left field. Even if you are caught off base, you have to step up to the plate and answer the question the best you can. Of course, the teacher might give you a softball question that you can knock out of the park.

But this is no bush league test, so you might want to cover your bases by studying the night before. Touch base with your friends in class to make sure you are studying the right problems. If they are real friends, they will go to bat for you and help you study.

Or maybe your teacher is a real screwball who will give you a rain check and let you take the test another day. More time to study would make it a whole new ball game.

If you do well on this math test, you might move up to algebra or even calculus. That's big league math. But whatever you do, play ball with your teacher. You don't want to drop the ball and flunk the test.

You get the idea. Baseball words and phrases pop up all the time. Even folks who aren't fans might be talking baseball.

There are laws in this country that say if you commit serious crimes three times, you might go to prison for a long time. The three-strikes laws come from the baseball rulebook: Three strikes and you're out.

Believe me, there must be hundreds of baseball phrases. Of course, that's just a ballpark figure.

Can you find all the baseball-related phrases in that passage? There are 21 of them.

And to really get into baseball jargon -- much of which is not used outside of the context of baseball discussions of course -- see the lengthy list of terms at this Wikipedia entry.