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GAME THREAD: 4/29, 1:05pm start, vs SEA


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QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 29, 2009 -> 02:11 PM)
There goes our best scoring opportunity of the game.

 

Anderson and Ramirez will be in trouble with that big curveball. Betemit, too.

 

Over/under on White Sox hits today? 3, 4 or 5?

 

what up Miss Cleo

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QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 29, 2009 -> 03:11 PM)
There goes our best scoring opportunity of the game.

 

Anderson and Ramirez will be in trouble with that big curveball. Betemit, too.

 

Over/under on White Sox hits today? 3, 4 or 5?

 

He threw 25 pitches and half of them were balls. I'm not too worried yet. Odds are he either stays wild and/or he doesn't last that long.

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QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 29, 2009 -> 01:49 PM)
Why is it called the rubber game? What's the history behind that term?

 

Dear Yahoo!:

In baseball they refer to the third game of a series when the team's split the previous two as the "rubber game." What is the significance of the word "rubber"?

Michael

Bristol, Connecticut

 

Dear Michael:

According to the Archives Mailbag of the Sporting News, the phrase is borrowed from the card game bridge. The third and final game in bridge is called the "rubber game." A set of three games is also called a "rubber."

In baseball, however, a "rubber game" doesn't necessarily refer to the third game of a tied series, but the last and deciding game of any series. The seventh game of the World Series, for example, is a classic rubber game.

 

================================================== =========================================

 

Alas, this doesn't get us much closer to the true origin of the phrase. Evan Morris' Word Detective digs a little deeper and finds that the phrase comes from the old English game of "bowls," or lawn bowling and dates from the 16th century.

 

Rub out time.

 

 

Dear Word Detective: We often hear baseball sportscasters refer to the "rubber game" of a series, usually the tie-breaking last game of a three-game series in which each team has already won one game. Knowing what a sports fan you are, we thought we'd ask you about the origin of this term. Our dictionary has no idea, and "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" says something about whist and bridge and bowls that we don't understand. -- Rick and Jaye Freyer, via the internet.

 

Whist and bridge and bowls, oh my! According to Paul Dickson's The New Dickson's Baseball Dictionary (Harcourt Brace, 1999), a "rubber game" is "The last and deciding game of a series when the previous games have been split; e.g., the seventh game of the World Series." This tie-breaking sense of "rubber" apparently originated in the pulse-pounding English game of "bowls," or lawn bowling. Despite its name, bowls has little in common with American bowling, and consists of rolling wooden balls (called "bowls") across a level green, the object being to get your ball as close as possible to (but not to hit) a little white ball at the other end of the green. "Rubber" in its tie-breaking sense first appeared in the context of bowls around 1599, and was in use by the card-playing crowd (whist, bridge, etc.) by 1744. A set of three games of bridge is still generally referred to as a "rubber."

 

Unfortunately, no one knows where "rubber" in this sense came from. It appears to be unrelated to the elastic sort of "rubber." (Incidentally, our modern elastic "rubber" is short for "India-rubber," from its original source in the East Indies. "Rubber" previously meant anything used to rub, smooth or clean.) Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable ventures that the term may have referred to two "bowls" rubbing together, a fatal error in the game of bowls. Or it might be a metaphorical use of "rubber" (something that expunges) referring to the "sudden death" third game of a series, the loss of which would conclusively "rub out" the losing team's hopes. But there is, sad to say, no solid evidence for either theory.

 

http://www.word-detective.com/112700.html

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Why, exactly, would we want Lillibridge to lead off the next inning?

 

C'mon Alexei, think!

 

That was the worst display of basestealing against a LHP who wasn't even really paying attention to the runners.

 

Not even close...

Edited by caulfield12
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