Bill Bryson Quote
Baseball remains one of the most fertile grounds for inventive wordplay in American life. Among the more notable—and on the face of it more bewildering—recent neologisms are to dial 8 for a home run and Linda Ronstadt for a good fastball. Dial 8 comes from the practice among hotels of requiring customers to dial 8 for a long-distance line. Linda Ronstadt, more complicatedly, is an allusion to her song Blue Bayou, the significance of which becomes less puzzling when you reflect that a good fastball blew by you. Baseball terms presumed to be new often are not.
Bill Bryson
Baseball remains one of the most fertile grounds for inventive wordplay in American life. Among the more notable—and on the face of it more bewildering—recent neologisms are to dial 8 for a home run and Linda Ronstadt for a good fastball. Dial 8 comes from the practice among hotels of requiring customers to dial 8 for a long-distance line. Linda Ronstadt, more complicatedly, is an allusion to her song Blue Bayou, the significance of which becomes less puzzling when you reflect that a good fastball blew by you. Baseball terms presumed to be new often are not.