Booya! Doubling down on sports clichés

HALLIE EPHRON: I remember when I was in high school, my English teacher Mr. McCutcheon advised someone in the class to “drop back 9 yards and punt.”  I had absolutely not a clue what he was going on about. 



By Ray Montgomery. Cropped by User:Blueag9. - https://www.flickr.com/photos/raymontgomery/3071342082, CC BY 2.0, Link

Years later, I was teaching in the UK and commenting that something sounded as if it "came out of left field." The Brits gave me the same look I must've given my English teacher.  They knew from cricket and soccer (aka football). Baseball was a foreign language.

These days you see a ton of sports terms in the news.
Hit a home run
Throw a hail Mary
Drop the ball
Go to the mat
No holds barred
Slam dunk

And then there's "double down." I gather it's a betting term from blackjack. It's become an annoying cliche, especially in political reporting. And like most sports terminology, it feels to me like a guy's term. To check that out I googled "he doubled down" and "she doubled down."

HE doubled down 265k hits 

SHE doubled down 28K hits

Are there sports terms you love or love to hate?

LUCY BURDETTE: We are crazy for women's college basketball, so "full court press" comes to mind. Also that was a "slam-dunk", although that would be men more than women. Actually boxing has delivered the most interesting terms--sucker-punch, throw your hat in the ring, saved by the bell, take it on the chin--I like those sayings even though I despise the sport!

On another tangentially related note, back when my golf mystery series came out, I had the bright idea of including a golf glossary at the beginning of the books. Bump and run, rainmaker, pin-high, yips, and so on. What a terrible idea! Non-golfers got the idea they'd have to know all that in order the read the book--deadly and so off-putting! At least later in the series, the glossary was moved to the end:)

RHYS BOWEN: Having been a tennis player until the discs in my spine gave out I think the most obvious one that comes to mind is "She aced it." That will stick around for a while. 

And speaking of sticking... a cricket term in England is "A sticky wicket". That means a doubtful situation. 


By §hep - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Hitting it for six means the same as knocking it out of the park. I'm sure there are plenty of other cricket ones, but they don't come to mind right now.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: How can you not love terms like "sticky wicket?" We are such a non-sporting household that half the time I don't know what things mean. Although I did grow up with golfers, so "hole in one" and "in the rough" etc. make sense to me. And I love horse racing so I get "out of the gate" and "neck in neck," and so on.

What I would like to see retired is sportscasters! Oh my gosh, they say the most useless things. Like asking the jockey who's just lost the biggest race of his career "How are you feeling?" Duh.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Lucy, I like the glossary, so hey.  Sports terms--well, I did love that Booklist called Trust Me "A knockout." That's good, right? And continuing, we talk about not pulling a punch in the plot, and taking a dive, and being out for the count.  So yeah, Lucy, boxing. Baseball--out of the ballpark,  a rookie move, into the cheap seats. And isn't the whole nine yards from parachuting?

Isn't double down from poker? (Where you have an ace in the hole, a poker face, and know when to hold em, and know when to...)

HALLIE: I always thought "the whole nine yards" referred to football, but apparently not! Here's a fascinating piece in the NY Times that discusses this very question, dubbing the expression's source the "Bigfoot of word origins."

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had to explain where ""Hail Mary pass" came from to youngest after someone had used it in context of the last GOTV effort in the campaign she was working on (they won, so yay!) I was surprised, since she always watched football with me and her dad - I guess we don't say Hail, Mary for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

My kids all did cross country and track and field, so I like those terms - the anchor position, the person who will carry it over the line to the finish. Sprinting of pacing. "The only person you're competing against is yourself." Hit your stride, get over the bar, in the home stretch.

What I think ought to hit the showers? "You win some, you lose some." "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" - a bad sports metaphor using a bad opera metaphor! I think there are some sports-derived saying that have become so common they've entirely separated from their origins. I was talking to someone who thought "full court press" had something to do with a pack of reporters. And does anyone really think of golf when they say "par for the course" now?

JENN MCKINLAY: I thought I might have to "ride the bench" on this one, because I was feeling a "full court press" to come up with something and it was "getting down to the wire", but I "threw a Hail Mary" and now I'm "coming up on the inside" and even though I thought I was "down for the count" and had "dropped the ball", I think I can make this a "photo finish" with "a slam dunk"! LOL! Had enough yet? Because, truly, I could go on. 

Seriously, though, the only sports terms I've ever enjoyed were the non-cliches. When Dan Patrick used to say "Dare I say, 'En Fuego'?" when a basketball player had a hot streak or when Al McCoy, the Suns sportscaster, would say "Shazam!" They always made me smile.

HALLIE: Whew! Well, done, Jenn.

Any overused cliches whose number you'd like to see retired?

Leaving you with my favorite sports announcement: a goal in a soccer game.  GOOOOOOAL!