When Justin Turner smacked the game-winning home run for the Dodgers on Sunday night, announcers, sportswriters, bloggers and fans all called it the same thing: a “walk-off.”
Unknown as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the term “walk-off” for a game-ending hit has become as comfortable a part of the baseball lexicon as “balls” and “strikes.”
And it’s spreading.
The term’s first published citation was in July 1988, according to William Safire, who was The New York Times’s longtime language maven and who wrote about it a decade ago. The Gannett News Service wrote: “In Dennis Eckersley’s colorful vocabulary, a walk-off piece is a home run that wins the game and the pitcher walks off the mound.”
Yes, the Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, a pitcher …show more content…
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Walk-offs used to mean only home runs. But when Joe Panik won a game for the Giants last October, it was called a “walk-off double.” Credit Monica M. Davey/European Pressphoto Agency
More than a decade ago, some were already sick of the term. In 2000, Sports Illustrated wrote, “Like crab grass invading someone’s lawn, walk-off has taken root in sports lingo and gotten out of control.”
Seventeen years later, it has spread even farther.
While once walk-off was applied pretty much strictly to home runs, it soon came to be applied to game-ending singles and doubles as well. The first time The New York Times used the term appears to be in 1999, and it did not start regularly appearing in a non-home-run capacity until 2007 or so.
In 1951, Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round the World to beat the Dodgers. In 10 Times articles about the game, the famed clout was described as “the unbelievable finish of the most fantastic pennant race in major league baseball history,” “as insane and as improbable an ending as any ballgame could have” and “the wildest scenes ever witnessed in the historic arena under Coogan’s Bluff.” But not as a
Unknown as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the term “walk-off” for a game-ending hit has become as comfortable a part of the baseball lexicon as “balls” and “strikes.”
And it’s spreading.
The term’s first published citation was in July 1988, according to William Safire, who was The New York Times’s longtime language maven and who wrote about it a decade ago. The Gannett News Service wrote: “In Dennis Eckersley’s colorful vocabulary, a walk-off piece is a home run that wins the game and the pitcher walks off the mound.”
Yes, the Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, a pitcher …show more content…
Photo
Walk-offs used to mean only home runs. But when Joe Panik won a game for the Giants last October, it was called a “walk-off double.” Credit Monica M. Davey/European Pressphoto Agency
More than a decade ago, some were already sick of the term. In 2000, Sports Illustrated wrote, “Like crab grass invading someone’s lawn, walk-off has taken root in sports lingo and gotten out of control.”
Seventeen years later, it has spread even farther.
While once walk-off was applied pretty much strictly to home runs, it soon came to be applied to game-ending singles and doubles as well. The first time The New York Times used the term appears to be in 1999, and it did not start regularly appearing in a non-home-run capacity until 2007 or so.
In 1951, Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round the World to beat the Dodgers. In 10 Times articles about the game, the famed clout was described as “the unbelievable finish of the most fantastic pennant race in major league baseball history,” “as insane and as improbable an ending as any ballgame could have” and “the wildest scenes ever witnessed in the historic arena under Coogan’s Bluff.” But not as a