Tag Archives: baseball

A Collection of Baseball “Chirps:” Doors! and By You!

Text: “Doors!” and “By You!”

Context: “Doors” is used when a player is really late swinging at the ball. When he whiffs, the opposing team chirps “doors!” because the wind created from his missed swing metaphorically blows the doors open.

“By You” is also used whenever someone swings really late. After he misses, everybody screams it, letting the batter know that the ball went straight by him. It also sounds like the word “bayou,” making it snappier to say since it is almost like a double entendre.

Analysis: These sayings all fall under a subcategory of sports lingo colloquially known as “chirps.” These chirps are meant to be yelled at the opposing players to heckle them about their poor performance. As is explained above, “Doors” and “By You” are explicitly meant to poke fun at a batter who swings and misses spectacularly. They are meant to annoy the player at bat and ruin his focus. Also, they happen to be very funny and create a tighter team culture through humor.

While the sayings may seem somewhat childish, they are actually a vital part of baseball culture and competition. Baseball presents a unique type of stress compared to other team sports. Every at-bat is a duel between pitcher and batter, a game of strategy and mental fortitude where breaking either side’s concentration can secure a big hit for the offense or a strikeout for the defense. While pitchers and batters are locked in this duel, it falls to the players on the bench to tip the scales. Consequently, the players waiting in the dugout use these chirps to try and rattle the batter, helping out their pitcher. So, while they may just seem like mean-spirited jabs at another player’s poor performance, they actually represent a cornerstone of baseball culture that much of the non-playing public fails to see.

Elephant Baseball Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC Student Housing
Performance Date: 2/20/23
Primary Language: English

Main Performance:

BH: What do you do to an elephant with three balls?

Me: What?

BH: You walk him and pitch to the rhino.

Me: *Chuckling* I don’t get it

BH: It’s a baseball joke.

Me: OH haha… that’s good I like it!

Context: The informant is from San Diego and remembers hearing this joke as a child from his dad. He also didn’t get it at first, so his Dad told it to him multiple times.

Thoughts/Analysis: This joke plays upon many themes that are present in both American and global culture. Firstly, the set up sets the expectation for the listener that the joke is going to be a dirty one, as any use of the word balls in the context of a joke is most likely going to mean testicles. The punchline, however, works because it subverts the expectation of what “balls” mean in the first place. Additionally, it conjures up the idea that an elephant is playing baseball, which is an absurd and silly idea. The joke also relies upon the listener to be a baseball fan, or at least have base level knowledge of the rules, in order to understand that a fourth ball would be a “walk”. One last thing about this joke is that it contains the idea that those on the same team would be animals from the same region, perhaps alluding to American tendencies to have communities of similar ethnic origin.

Baseball Uniforms and Superstition

Background information: MD is a 21-year-old student at University of California San Diego. From a young age, he played baseball and was very involved in the sport throughout his childhood and young adult life. According to MD, baseball is a very superstitious sport, and athletes in general can be very superstitious.

MD: Baseball players are very superstitious about what we wear too, like accessories and the way we wear our socks or pants. Like for example, you can change the way you wear your arm sleeves, or wear different batting gloves. Even down to what our hairstyles are might impact the way you play a specific game. And once you find something that works well for you, you’re supposed to wear the same thing every game.

Me: How does what you wear affect how you play? What is the belief related to your clothing? 

MD: Depending on how well we play wearing a specific outfit or accessory, we’ll either make sure to wear the same thing every time, or never wear something again. Like, if I roll my socks all the way up before a game and play really badly, I’ll never wear them like that again. But if I use a certain glove and play really well, I’ll always wear the same glove.

Me: Did you have a specific way you would wear your baseball uniform to make sure you played well? 

MD: Um…I just switched it around pretty often – I would have streaks of playing well with one thing, and then when I felt like I should change it, I would switch it up and see what would happen, and if I would play well or not. We tend to blame the way we play on superstitions like this, instead of our actual, like, athleticism. Instead, we would blame it on how we wear our socks, or something like that (laughs). Baseball players are all about rituals.

MD had quite a few baseball-related superstitions that he could think of, which goes to show just how many pieces of folklore athletes engage in as part of their pre-game rituals. He emphasized the fact that, rather than blaming the way a person plays on their own ability, they often turn to folklore and established beliefs to explain why the game happened a certain way. Folklore acts as a way to explain the unexplainable for many different groups throughout history, so to see that baseball is a very modern example of this was interesting.

Fresh Chalk Lines on a Baseball Field

Background information: MD is a 21-year-old student at University of California San Diego. From a young age, he played baseball and was very involved in the sport throughout his childhood and young adult life. According to MD, baseball is a very superstitious sport, and athletes in general can be very superstitious.

MD: Before a game, you have to make sure to jump over fresh lines of chalk on the field. I think everyone kind of knows this, like even if you aren’t playing, even people watching know it. If you step on one of the lines, you’re basically throwing away the game.

Me: Why do you think the tradition is so well-known? How did you find out about it?

MD: I know about it because I played baseball for 14 years! I learned it through playing and seeing other players do it. Especially when I would watch older players, they would always jump over fresh chalk lines. I think you catch on mostly through teammates, and baseball traditions tend to last forever. That’s probably why it’s so well-known too, it’s just becomes a rule at some point…um, I think baseball has a lot of traditions that are like that. There’s a lot of ways that you can give your team bad luck before the game, and there’s a lot of things you can do to get good luck too.

Me: Have you ever accidentally stepped on a line, or seen someone do it? Did it affect your game at all?

MD: I’m sure I’ve accidentally messed it up, um, sometime before a game but I don’t know if ever affected our games at all. I don’t think we even think about it once the game starts (laughs). I personally am not very superstitious, but I think it’s fun to get into the game and it’s fun because everyone knows what to do and what not to do. I would say some people are definitely more committed to it, um, than others.

I didn’t play any team sports as a child or teenager, so I know very little about these superstitions and unspoken rules that MD talked about. I think it was interesting that he brought up the fact that baseball traditions tend to last forever, as younger players observe the practices of older players and copy them. By watching older players “perform” these rite uals before a game, they become so commonplace, that even someone who is not superstitious will engage in them for the sake of the game, and for the sake of forming a camaraderie with teammates.

“Sweet Caroline” at a Red Sox Game

Nationality: American
Age: 39
Occupation: Manager
Residence: Wilmington, Delaware
Performance Date: 3/30/19
Primary Language: English

Background:
Going to a game at Fenway park is a unique experience. There’s nothing like being surrounded by thousands of devoted Boston fans all with the same mentality of victory or death. There is truly an unmatchable energy at Red Sox games in Fenway park. My stepfather is from Boston so when we go to the games we bring several members of his family with us and we travel as a small gang. One tradition that stands out amongst the lot is that Boston fans will sing Sweet Caroline by Neil diamond after the seventh-inning stretch. The whole crowd will cheer that melody- “SWEET CAR-O-LINE” and so on.

Piece:
Me: “why do we sing this?”
S: “I don’t really know. But I do know it started during my lifetime.”
Me: “what do you mean? Well why do you think?”
S: “about 20 years ago I remember the song coming around and for some reason it stuck so I’ve been singing it ever since.”
Me: “Do you like it?”
S: “I love it.”

Discussion:
Immediately after the conversation I looked up the reason for this song being used at the games and there wasn’t much story to be told. A woman named Amy Toby like the song and she played it during a game and everyone knew it fit perfectly. It started out only been played at random games but then in 2002 it became the official Fenway tradition. I believe that this song resonates well with Boston people because of the emotional impact it has on the crowd. People can get rowdy during baseball games, especially people from New England but, this song has an exciting feeling that is both calming and unifying. This song was even used as a memorial after the Boston marathon bombings. There is no piece of evidence stronger than that to exemplify how important this song is to people of Boston.