I have been trying to remember an ancient baseball term

[goldenponderbob]

I looked over the topic categories and this one seemed closest.

 

I may need a real geezer like myself to resolve my dilemma, or more likely, everyone else around here knows exactly the term I am referring to, and cannot believe there exists a person who calls himself a onetime ballplayer, but lacks this bit of glossary at first hand.

 

Many years ago I played disorganized baseball every warm sunny of my life. I know there was a term for the baseball equivalent of tossing a coin.

 

It would make perfect sense that having no money was why I, for one, spent all my time hanging around a 'sandlot' baseball field. Actually I hung around a great many such fields and none of which, to my recollection, had any sand on them, but that's the term people use for what I just remember as disorganized, or do-it-yourself, baseball.

 

Anyway, I've been racking my brain trying to remember what we called the routine whereby two teams were picked and something needed to be decided such as who would be captain or which side would bat first, or it could have been anything that required a decision.

 

One player would toss a bat perhaps two or three feet to another person; presumably one having a different opinion about something. The receiver would try to snare the bat at a precise calculated distance between the barrell and the knob so that later his hand would fit exactly between his opponent's last grab and the knob. The two would alternate grabbing one hand atop the other up the neck to the knob. Finally the one with no place left to grab would try to hold onto the bat just by the knob and the other would get one kick to knock the bat out of his hand. That's the way we did it and I saw it done exactly that way literally thousands of times. I know there was a specific term for this, but for the life of me I cannot recall it.

 

If nobody here has any ldea about what I just described it will make me feel very very old. In fact, just the thought that I cannot remember a term that was an essential part of my daily routine for over a decade, ought to qualify for some degree of old-timers disease.

 

If anyone has a grandparent maybe they would remember.

 

Thanks to anyone even pondering the notion of helping me fill in this gap in my memory.

 

Bob McDonnell AKA

Schaumburg, IL

Edited February 2, 2012 by Bob McDonnell

[Kyyle23]

i know exactly what you are talking about, I just dont remember a certain name for the game either.

[CanOfCorn]

Doing a quick Google search, it's where the term, "Have the upper hand" comes from.

 

You're welcome...

 

/thread.