Learn baseball’s colorful vocabulary of lingo, slang & expressions
How to Speak Baseball
By James Charlton and Sally Cook
Illustrations by Ross MacDonald
Hardcover, 128 pages, $14.95 / Kindle edition $7.99 (Chronicle Books)
Even if you don’t realize you’re talkin’ baseball, you probably do occasionally: “He threw me a curve ball.” “I really struck out.” “Time to step up to the plate.” Now, with this handy little compendium of baseball’s rich, colorful vocabulary of slang terms, phrases and expressions (complete with whimsical illustrations), you can be fully versed in the lexicon of America’s oldest team sport—and able to discern between a “banjo hitter,” a “spitter” and a “splitter,” tell if a pitcher is a “fireman,” a “cousin” or a “portsider” trying to “climb the ladder” or “paint the corners,” and, once a ball is hit, know with certainty whether to pronounce it a “dribbler,” a “looper,” a “frozen rope” or a “can of corn.”
—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine
The Media Tourist 