Major League Baseball

One of the many signs of spring is baseball's spring training, even though it wintry in much of the U.S. then. Even opening day games in April are often cold and even snowy. The "Boys of Summer" probably prefer days that are in that just-right Goldilocks zone that is late spring and early autumn.

The pandemic really hurt baseball as well as other sports in 2020 and although the games are on this year, the number of fans is still limited and teams still are still dealing with cases.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.

There are 30 teams in American Major League Baseball (MLB). They are divided up evenly between the American League (AL) and National League (NL) with 15 teams in each. Each of the leagues is divided into three divisions called the East, the Central, and the West.

The NL and AL were formed as separate legal entities in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues cooperated but remained legally separate entities. In 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball.

We are working our ways through all the teams' name origin stories. 

MLB also oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises 256 teams affiliated with the major league clubs. I don't know if we'll get around to all those minor league teams - but some have very interesting name-origin stories.

See all our baseball team name origins 
and all our other sports name origins posts.

National League
East
Atlanta Braves
Miami Marlins
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Washington Nationals
Central
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Pittsburgh Pirates
St. Louis Cardinals
West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants

American League
East
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Central
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals
Minnesota Twins
West
Houston Astros
Los Angeles Angels
Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Texas Rangers

reminisce

When we "reminisce," we think or tell about past experiences, and the word's origin comes from our minds.

Reminisce (and its noun relative reminiscence) comes from the Latin word mens meaning "mind." When attached to the prefix re- it became the Latin verb reminisci ("to remember").

In English, we have other re- verbs that suggest bringing an image or memory into our mind: remember, recall, remind, and recollect. 

Reminisce differs from these others because it suggests not only a casual recalling of experiences past but also a sense of nostalgia about those memories. 

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

The Black Crowes

The Black Crowes--Luther Dickinson, Sven Pipien, Steve Gorman, Chris Robinson, and Rich Robinson performing at the 2008 Newport Folk Festival. (Adam MacDougall was playing keyboard out-of-frame to the right.)

THE BLACK CROWES is an American rock band formed in Marietta, Georgia, in 1984. The first incarnation of the band was called Mr. Crowe's Garden which was used until 1989. It was a name taken from L. Leslie Brooke's children's book Johnny Crow's Garden. which had been a favorite of original members Chris and Rich Robinson. Brooke was best known as a book illustrator and the 1903 book is known more for its illustrations than for its minimal text.

The band was influenced by contemporary local acts like R.E.M. along with 60s psychedelic pop and classic southern rock. Gradually, the band's sound moved more toward 70s-era blues rock.

The band had many personnel changes, breakups and reunions over the years but brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, who were the founding members while they were still attending Walton High School, have remained the band's core. 

They changed the band's name in 1989 when they signed with Def American Records at the suggestion of producer George Drakoulias. They released their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker, the following year and their follow-up, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, reached the top of the Billboard 200 in 1992. 

The band went through a hiatus from 2002 to 2005, then regrouped and toured for several years and released Warpaint in 2008. They released a greatest hits/acoustic double album Croweology and did a 20th-anniversary tour, then followed that with a second hiatus. 

Continuing their dizzying history, after a 2013 tour, the band announced another breakup in 2015. As you might guess, by now none of its original line-up was left except for Chris and Rich remained.

The Black Crowes have sold more than 30 million albums, and are listed at number 92 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock and the UK Melody Maker named them as "The Most Rock 'n' Roll Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World."

Shake Your Money Maker (2020 Remaster, 3 CD Super Deluxe Edition)

In late 2019, during an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Chris and Rich Robinson announced that they had resolved their differences after not speaking since the band's 2015 split. They announced a 2020 tour in support of the 30th anniversary of Shake Your Money Maker. but it was canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes--A Memoir

Eurythmics

Eurythmics were a British pop duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. The duo formed in Wagga Wagga, Australia, and released their first studio album, In the Garden, in 1981. It didn't catch much airplay, but their their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) in 1983 had a worldwide hit with the title track.

They picked Eurythmics as their name because that was a method of teaching music going back to the 1890s that Lennox had encountered as a child.

The duo was never really a "band" unless they were on tour and the two were the only permanent members and songwriters. 

Lennox and Stewart had been a couple but split as a couple around the time that they signed their RCA record deal. The duo went on to release a string of hit singles and albums before they split up in 1990. 

Stewart went on as a record producer. Annie Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva.  

After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reunited to record their ninth album, Peace, released in late 1999 and reunited again in 2005 to release the single "I've Got a Life", as part of a new Eurythmics compilation album, Ultimate Collection. 

 

Groundlings and Underlings

We read Julius Caesar in my high school sophomore English class. It didn't make much of an impression on me because we just read it - much of it alone as homework - and Shakespeare needs to be seen and heard as a performance. 

When Cassius says "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." (Julius Caesar I, ii, 140-141) I don't think it made an impression on me. The famous quotation usually does not include those four final words. 

I went on to be an English major and read a lot of Shakespeare and learned a lot about Will and his theater. It was then that I learned that Cassius was saying something that was an anachronism thrown in for the underlings watching the performance. 

Shakepeare's underlings were called groundlings. They were patrons at the Red Lion, The Rose, or the Globe theater in the early 17th century. They were too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre. For a penny, they could stand in "the pit", also called "the yard", just below the stage, to watch the play. 

They were up close to the action but they had to stand for a few hours and were usually packed in tightly with sometimes 500 of them there. The groundlings were commoners. They were also referred to as "stinkards" (hygiene not a priority) or penny-stinkers. The name "groundlings" came into usage after Hamlet used the term around 1600 in a not very complimentary way.

Hamlet:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to 

you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as

many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had

spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with

your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent,

tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you acquire and beget a temperance that may give

it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a 

robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to 

tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,

who for the most part are capable of nothing but

inexplicable dumb shows and noise.

I only recently discovered that it is not a Shakespearean invention. The word had entered the English language to mean a small type of fish with a gaping mouth. Maybe from an actor's point of view on the raised stage, the faces of these patrons might have looked like open-mouthed fish. 

I had learned in college that the groundlings were not well-behaved and the upper-class folks that were high above them were happy to be there.

Groundlings supposedly threw fruit and nuts they were eating at characters/actors they did not like. My professors also told us that Shakespeare would include characters (Falstaff et al), ghosts and jokes to keep the groundlings interested.

I guess if "all the world's a stage," then maybe we are all underlings when it comes to why we might not succeed. Don't blame Fate. Blame yourself. Take responsibility for your place in the Globe. 

The Cranberries

The Cranberries live in Montreal, 2012 via Wikimedia

The Cranberries were an Irish rock band formed in Limerick, Ireland, in 1989 by lead singer Niall Quinn, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan, and drummer Fergal Lawler.

The band classified itself as an alternative rock group, but they incorporated aspects of indie pop, post-punk, folk-rock, and pop-rock into their sound.

In mid-1989, brothers Mike, 16, and Noel Hogan, 18, formed a band called Cranberry Saw Us (a pun on cranberry sauce) with drummer Fergal Lawler, 18, and singer Niall Quinn. Quinn left in 1990 and the three continued as an instrumental band until 18-year-old Dolores O'Riordan answered their ad for a female singer.

As the band moved on to new material from Noel Hogan and O'Riordan, playing gigs and signing a major label deal, the name was changed to The Cranberries. 

The Cranberries' fame went international fame with their debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, with the 1994 hit singles include "Linger" and "Dreams." Five of the band's albums reached the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, and eight of their singles reached the Top 20 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.

There was a 25th-anniversary reissue of The Cranberries’ debut album that had sold over 5,000,000 copies in the US and over 600,000 in the UK. The album has been remastered at Abbey Road (under the supervision of the band’s Noel Hogan) and is now available on vinyl. They were one of the biggest bands of the 90s.

The group broke up but returned to the stage in 2012 with a new single "Tomorrow." The reunion was short-lived. O'Riordan started legal proceedings against Noel Hogan in October 2013 and the case was struck out in July 2015 and the cause was not divulged.

But the band did get together again. Unfortunately, on 15 January 2018, O'Riordan died unexpectedly in London. She had recently arrived there for a studio mixing session on her D.A.R.K. album and to discuss the upcoming album of the band with record label BMG. It was ruled that she had drowned in her hotel room's bathtub due to sedation by alcohol poisoning.

Official band website cranberries.com

Gin Blossoms

Gin Blossoms is an American rock band formed in 1987 in Arizona. Their first major-label album in 1992 was New Miserable Experience. The first single was "Hey Jealousy" which was a Top 25 hit and went gold. The album went quadruple platinum with four other singles from it also charting.

Their name, Gin Blossoms, is also in lower case "gin blossoms" a skin condition. Rosacea is a condition that causes "blossoms" (burst blood capillaries) on the face particularly the nose from drinking too much alcohol. In the late 1800s, gin was a popular alcoholic drink amongst heavy drinkers because it was cheap. 

It is said that the band saw a photo of film comedian W.C. Fields in Kenneth Anger's infamous (and often inaccurate) Hollywood Babylon. That photo has the caption "W.C. Fields with gin blossoms."

The band's follow-up album is Congratulations I'm Sorry (1996) which went platinum and the single "As Long as It Matters" was nominated for a Grammy Award. 

Gin Blossoms broke up in 1997 but reunited after a number of member changes in 2001. Major Lodge Victory (2006), No Chocolate Cake (2010), and Mixed Reality in 2018 are their latest albums.

Gin Blossoms has been described as an alternative rock band and jangle pop and very much a road band. They are labeled as being part of the "Mill Avenue sound", or "southwestern sound", and are compared to other Arizona bands such as The Sidewinders, The Refreshments, The Meat Puppets, and Dead Hot Workshop.

Official band website  ginblossoms.net

Mad as a March Hare

The March Hare as illustrated by John Tenniel

March has arrived. In my neighborhood, it "came in like a lamb" so it supposedly it will go "out like a lion." Another proverb attached to this month is "Mad as a March hare."

I connect the phrase to Lewis Carroll's Alice stories but its usage predates his books.

This British English phrase has been connected to a kind of "spring fever" craziness and also Love being "in the air." It appeared in John Heywood's collection of proverbs published in 1546. 

In the excellent book, The Annotated Alice (my favorite edition), it is explained that it was a popular (and somewhat accurate) belief about rabbits/hares' behavior at the beginning of their breeding season. In Britain, it starts in February or March and runs until September. In the early days of that breeding season, males are "mad" and overly enthusiastic about getting on with things. Females sometimes have to repel those unwanted suitors with their forelegs. Apparently, this observation was once believed (incorrectly) to be two males fighting for breeding dominance.

The March Hare that Alice meets in Wonderland is sometimes confused with the Mad Hatter hare. The March Hare is called "Haigha" in Through the Looking-Glass and he is most remembered, especially from film versions, as part of tea party scene in Carroll's 1865 classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice, knowing that it is not the month of March, thinks that perhaps "The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad – at least not so mad as it was in March."

The Mad Hatter is a friend of the March Hare. 

Alice, March Hare & Mad Hatter at the tea party

I like Sir John Tenniel's illustrations best. He shows the hare with some straw on his head, which was a common way to depict madness in Victorian times.

The March Hare later appears at the trial for the Knave of Hearts. His final appearance is as "Haigha." Lewis Carroll says the name is pronounced to rhyme with "mayor", which would make it "hare." Haigha is the personal messenger to the White King in Through the Looking-Glass and oddly Alice doesn't seem to recognize him as being the March Hare from his earlier appearance in her dream.

That can happen when you go through a looking glass or down a rabbit hole into Wonderland.

jury rigging

an example of some jury-rigged plumbing

A plumber working at my house recently said that he could "jury rig something until I get the parts I need."  I know he meant that he could do a temporary fix, but then I wondered (as I often do here) about where the term originated.

It didn't seem to have any connection to the common use of jury as related to a courtroom trial. Is it about a lawyer trying to rig the member of a jury to work to his client's advantage? In fact, it doesn't have any connection to that use of jury.

Jury rigging (AKA "jerry rigging") is both a noun and a verb describing makeshift repairs made with only the tools and materials at hand. 

Its origin comes from the world of boats and ships, particularly sail-powered ones. After a dismasting, a replacement mast, often referred to as a jury mast and some sail, would be fashioned so that the craft could continue on its journey. That explains the "rigging" part as it is the system of ropes, cables, or chains employed to support a ship's masts and to control or set the yards and sails. 

But what about the "jury" part?

Using "jury" as an adjective, in the sense of makeshift or temporary, has been said to date from at least 1616. There are two parts to the origin of this usage. Part one is that this is a corruption of the French jour meaning "a day." Go back further to the Latin adjutare ("to aid") and the Old French ajurie ("help or relief").

So, my plumber (who likely did not know any French or Latin or has spent much time on ships) was saying that he could "give me some relief for the day."

toady

Have you ever heard someone called a toady? It means someone who flatters excessive, probably in order to gain favor. 

I always thought it was an odd word. Could it have any connection to a toad? That seemed unlikely. 

Surprisingly, there is a connection to the amphibian. Back in the 17th-century in Europe, there were people known as toadeaters. They worked with magicians, showmen and charlatans. As an assistant, one of their jobs was to eat - or at least fake that they were eating - what the audience was told was a poisonous toad or frog. The entertainer (who might also have been selling cures) would then save the assistant by purging the poison from the toadeater. 

These assistants who would do anything to make the charlatan look good became symbols of someone who was very subservient to another. A "toadeater" became the term for a sycophant or any obsequious underling. In the early 1800s, it was shortened to toady and by the middle of that century toady was also being used as a verb meaning "to engage in sycophancy."

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Super Bowl LV (55) in 2021 will be played in Tampa, Florida.
We have already written about the Kansas City Chiefs here,
so today we add their opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, and they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. 

They were an NFL expansion team in 1976, along with the Seattle Seahawks. In their first season, they played in the AFC West division and prior to the 1977 season, Tampa Bay switched conferences and divisions with Seattle, becoming a member of the NFC Central division. Then during the 2002 league realignment, the Buccaneers joined three former NFC West teams to form the NFC South. 

The team name of "Buccaneers" was selected early in 1975. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean. Gaspar (AKA Gasparilla) is an apocryphal Spanish pirate and the "Last of the Buccaneers." According to legend, he sailed and plundered across the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main from his base in southwest Florida.

The term buccaneer was taken from the Spanish bucanero and derives from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame on which Tainos and Caribs slowly roasted or smoked meat. From it derived the French word boucane and from that, the closely sounding boucanier was used to describe French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola. The English colonists anglicized the word as buccaneer.

The nickname "Bucs" quickly became popular (but not the variation of "Bay Bucs").

The team's original colors were green, orange, and white. Orange represented the Florida citrus industry. The green was quickly dropped as being too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins and the greens used by the college Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. Red was added as an accent color. Some people say it is a nod to the University of Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.

Shortly after the franchise was awarded, in February 1975 the team name of "Buccaneers" was selected. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea, and the color orange representing the Florida citrus industry. Almost immediately, the nickname "Bucs" became popular, but the alternative "Bay Bucs" failed to gain traction.

History of the team logo - via Wikimedia

A few months later, however, green was dropped from the color scheme. The artists' renditions were too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins, as well as the green shades utilized by the Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. While they desired to keep the primary color orange, which provided a popular visual link to the Gators, Hurricanes, and Rattlers, they sought to further distinguish themselves. The color red as an accent color was substituted, as a gesture to the former Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.

There was a conscious effort to distinguish the team's branding from the other NFL "pirate" team, the Raiders. The Bucs would beat the Raiders by a score of 48–21 in Super Bowl XXXVII, nicknamed 'The Pirate Bowl'.

Peace symbol

At the end of a year and the start of a new year, we often hear the phrase "Peace on Earth."  Though it started as a symbol of nuclear disarmament, the peace sign that most people know from the 1950s has grown to apply to (and be applied to) all kinds of things.

A number of peace symbols have actually been used in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians. It was used as a secular peace symbol and popularized by a dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II.

In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). That was a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK. It was later adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. 

The symbol was made by superimposing the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D" (for Nuclear Disarmament).

1960s button for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CC0, Link

The V hand sign 

The V hand sign most commonly used to mean "peace" began as a "V for Victory" and was popularized during World War II by Winston Churchill and is displayed with the back of the hand toward the signer.

During the Vietnam War, in the 1960s, Americans began to use the "V sign" with the palm of the hand facing outward as a symbol of peace. The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.

The V (victory) hand sign when displayed with the palm inward toward the signer (shown on the right above) can be an offensive gesture in some countries and dates back to at least 1900.

Listen to a podcast  Who Created the Peace Sign (and Why)?

Magical Phrases

If I asked you to say something "magical," what would you say?  Hocus pocus? Abracadabra? Open sesame? I heard all of those phrases as a child and used them in my make-believe childhood world. Do they hold any power? I doubt that they do, but they have a long history of use in "real" magical ceremonies and also in theatrical magic shows.

Let's look at the origins of those magical phrases.

Hocus-pocus is a generic term that may be derived from an ancient language and is currently used to refer to the actions of magicians, often as the stereotypical magic words spoken when bringing about some sort of change. It was once a common term for a magician, juggler, or other similar entertainers.

The earliest known English-language book on magic (known then as legerdemain "sleight of hand"), was published in 1635 as Hocus Pocus Junior: The Anatomie of Legerdemain.

"Hocus Pocus" also was the stage name of a well-known magician of that time, William Vincent, who may have been the author. He is recorded as having been granted a license to perform magic in England in 1619. 

But it is unlikely that Vincent invented the phrase and the origins of the term remain obscure. I found a bunch of conjectures. Some say it a garbled Latin religious phrase or some form of "dog" "pig" Latin. 

In searching other languages, we find in some Slavic languages, "pokus" means an "attempt" or an "experiment." There is a tenuous connection with alchemy going back to the court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552 – 1612). I  saw that hocus may mean "to cheat" in Latin or a distorted form of the word hoc meaning "this." Together they would give the sense of attempting to cheat.

Another theory (in the Oxford English Dictionary) has the origin from hax pax max Deus adimax, a pseudo-Latin phrase used as a magical formula by conjurors. A similar distortion theory is that it may be taken from the Catholic liturgy of the Eucharist, which contains the phrase “Hoc est enim corpus meum”  (meaning "This is my body") particularly the hoc est corpus portion. This is a mocking suggestion that a magician is changing something in the same way that the Catholic Eucharist changes water and wine through Transubstantiation.

The final suggested origin is that it comes from the Norse magician and "demon of the north" Ochus Bochus.

Image by Franck Barske from Pixabay

Abracadabra is an incantation used as a magic word in stage magic tricks, and historically was believed to have healing powers when inscribed on an amulet.

Abracadabra's origin is also unclear but its first occurrence is in the second-century works of Serenus Sammonicus. His book called Liber Medicinalis (sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) who was a physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla. In that book, he prescribes for malaria and other lethal diseases wearing an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle. It is found on Abraxas stones, which were worn as amulets. Subsequently, its use spread beyond the Gnostics.

Possible folk etymologies include from Hebrew meaning "I will create as I speak", or in Aramaic "I create like the word."  There are also some similar words in Latin and Greek such as abraxas. but according to the OED Online, "no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures."

The Greek abraxas is a possibly related word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides and appears in Gnostic texts such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. It was engraved on certain antique gemstones, called on that account Abraxas stones, which were used as amulets or charms. (Their spelling on stones was "Abrasax" (Αβρασαξ) and the more modern "Abraxas" probably comes from a confusion made between the Greek letters sigma (Σ) and xi (Ξ) in the Latin transliteration. The seven letters may represent each of the seven classic planets.

In the English speaking world, abracadabra was frequently dismissed. The Puritan minister Increase Mather dismissed it as being powerless. Author Daniel Defoe wrote dismissively about Londoners who posted the word on their doorways to ward off sickness during the Great Plague of London.

Today the word is now commonly used simply as an incantation in the performance of theatrical magic.

"Open Sesame" is another common magical phrase that was found in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" in Galland's version of One Thousand and One Nights. In the story, it opens the mouth of a cave in which forty thieves have hidden a treasure. 

In Antoine Galland's Les Mille et une nuits (1704–1717) it appears as "Sésame, ouvre-toi" which we translate as "Sesame, open yourself."

So, is this just a storybook phrase?

Sesame is connected to Babylonian magic practices which used sesame oil. The phrase probably derives from the sesame plant. Sesame seeds grow in a seed pod that splits open when it reaches maturity, and it is thought that it alludes to unlocking treasures.

But "sesame" is a reduplication of the Hebrew šem 'name', i.e. God or a kabbalistic word representing the Talmudic šem-šamáįm "name of heaven" so it also has religious and mystical connections. 

Though I do have a replica Professor Dumbledore elder  wand that I bought at Olivander's shop (Well, the one at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida), I haven't found that any of the Hogwart's spells or the magical phrases described above seem to do anything.

Maybe I need a different wand. Maybe I need to go to wizarding school. Or just stick to card tricks.

Crossposted at Weekends in Paradelle