Right on cue

The Baltimore Orioles baseball team has had some surprises for us fans this year, both on the field, where they have been better than anyone expected them to be, and in the broadcast booths for radio and TV, where they have all sorts of new people calling the games for us.

Ben McDonald, who pitched very well for the O's for a few seasons in the 90s, is one of the announcers on the TV side, and he talked about the difficulty for a catcher to pick up a hot bunt that has "English" on it, spinning as it bobs around in the dirt and grass in front of home plate.

Because I have lots of time to Googulate these things, I am now prepared to report on my findings. I didn't even have to go anywhere!

We're familiar with pool, the game that developed from billiards. If you've ever seen "The Music Man" (and I think you should!) you know that the protagonist, "Professor" Harold Hill, engenders fear among the humble villagers of River City by foreshadowing the evil represented by a pool table being brought into the genteel billiard parlor. 

He sings (or more properly, raps): 

But just as I say

It takes judgment, brains, and maturity to score

In a balkline game

I say that any boob can take

And shove a ball in a pocket!

A balkline game, I found out, is a sort of billiards where the object is to have the ball carom off the side of the table and then do something other than go into a hole, as in pool. I don't see the difference, but what matters is, one of the tricks of billiards is to make the ball spin around by hitting it in a certain manner by hitting it off center.  And when pool players ("poolers"?  "poolists"?) use this trick, they called it "putting English on the ball" because they called billiards the English game.

OK, so I hope that clears it up for all of us. You know what, in baseball, when your teammate encourages you to throw the ball a little harder, they say, "Put some mustard on it!"  And that could be confusing. 

"Put a little French's mustard on it so the batter won't be able to put much English on it!"