Texts and Telegrams
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:59 am
Some e-mails I receive are from 'texters'. I'm guessing just about everybody out there is a 'texter' now. But with some, their texting lingo spills over into the day to day e-mails. For example, 'It'll start at 8 o'clock. Are you going to be there' is replaced by '8, U go?
I get it. It's a sign of the times.
And yes, even this phenomenon reminds me of baseball.
There was a time when folks would send telegrams. They were faster than mail. A person would go into a telegraph office, have their message transcribed. The message would be sent by telegraph to the person's town. Then a courier would deliver the message.
To families with military personnel, these telegraph couriers were called 'The Grim Reaper'. These families knew that if a courier knocked on their door, it meant that they had lost a family member overseas.
Like texts, these messages were kept short. They were charged by the word.
During this time, baseball scouts would send messages of importance through telegrams. Their messages would be short and to the point. 'No good', 'Need to sign', 'Can't hit curve', 'soft tosser'.
This is where, 'Good field, no hit' was formed.
And although 'good field, no hit' remains to this very day, there is another description from this era that may have been better. Problem being, is that there is no proof that this line came from a baseball scout. It could just be a story made up by a writer of the times who were more than happy to make up a story and print it as the truth.
Anyway, the story goes that an owner of a club hears from a friend that this good looking kid is killing the ball in Smalltown.
He summons a scout to travel to Smalltown. Smalltown is way off the Scout's beaten path and it means another day of driving and another night of flea bitten room in a dumpy hotel.
When watching the kid the next day, he is peeved. The kid was not worth the time of day. Sure, he was a good looking kid, 6' 2", 200 pounds of muscle, with wavy jet black hair, but he was no baseball player.
The Scout goes to the nearest telegraph office to report his findings.
The telegraph simply reads-
'LOOKS LIKE TARZAN, THROWS LIKE JANE'
I get it. It's a sign of the times.
And yes, even this phenomenon reminds me of baseball.
There was a time when folks would send telegrams. They were faster than mail. A person would go into a telegraph office, have their message transcribed. The message would be sent by telegraph to the person's town. Then a courier would deliver the message.
To families with military personnel, these telegraph couriers were called 'The Grim Reaper'. These families knew that if a courier knocked on their door, it meant that they had lost a family member overseas.
Like texts, these messages were kept short. They were charged by the word.
During this time, baseball scouts would send messages of importance through telegrams. Their messages would be short and to the point. 'No good', 'Need to sign', 'Can't hit curve', 'soft tosser'.
This is where, 'Good field, no hit' was formed.
And although 'good field, no hit' remains to this very day, there is another description from this era that may have been better. Problem being, is that there is no proof that this line came from a baseball scout. It could just be a story made up by a writer of the times who were more than happy to make up a story and print it as the truth.
Anyway, the story goes that an owner of a club hears from a friend that this good looking kid is killing the ball in Smalltown.
He summons a scout to travel to Smalltown. Smalltown is way off the Scout's beaten path and it means another day of driving and another night of flea bitten room in a dumpy hotel.
When watching the kid the next day, he is peeved. The kid was not worth the time of day. Sure, he was a good looking kid, 6' 2", 200 pounds of muscle, with wavy jet black hair, but he was no baseball player.
The Scout goes to the nearest telegraph office to report his findings.
The telegraph simply reads-
'LOOKS LIKE TARZAN, THROWS LIKE JANE'