A history of the Wittenberg Synod of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1847-1916

The infield’s purpose in chattering at the pitcher like this is to get him so irritated that he deliberately throws the ball at the batter’s face, which minimizes the danger that the batter will swing and thus put the infield in the position of having to stand in the path of a potentially lethal batted ball. American boys learn infield chatter as very young children, but the Russians have tremendous trouble with it. The best they’ve been able to do so far is “Holy mackerel, you are putting forth some likely shots now, ho ho!” which is pretty good for only five years’ effort, but hardly the level of chatter they’ll need in international competition. Another reason why Americans are Number One in baseball is the phrases yelled by fans to encourage the players. American fans generally use the three basic phrases: Boo. You stink. You really stink, you stupid jerk. These phrases of encouragement have dominated baseball since the 1920s, when the great George Herman Ruth made baseball history at Yankee Stadium by pointing his bat at the stands and correctly identifying them in only four attempts. But in recent years, a large cold-air mass of change has begun to form in the North, where fans of the Montreal Expos, who all know how to speak French because there’s nothing else to do in Canada after 4 P.m., have developed some new and very competitive phrases, such as: –Vous bumme, il y a un poisson dans votre bibliotheque. (You bum, there is a fish in your library.) —Boux. (Boo.) Thus encouraged, the Expos have become a baseball Powerhouse. They probably would have won the World Series by now except that the players refuse to return from spring training until Labor Day ...»