Product Description
The expanded and now-definitive work on the language of baseball—“That rarest of sports books, a valuable reference work that provides absorbing and enlightening reading.” (Sports Illustrated) Hailed as “a staggering piece of scholarship” (Wall Street Journal) The Dickson Baseball Dictionary is the most complete resource on the lexicon of baseball in the English language. More than twenty-five years in the making, with the help of more t… More >>
5 users commented in " The Dickson Baseball Dictionary "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackGreat for my knowledge even if it was the 1989 edition and not really “like new”. But it was still ok!
Rating: 4 / 5
This third edition of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary is a book you can dig your teeth into–provided you have a very big mouth. At a thousand pages it is larger by a third than the decade-old second edition it has pushed off my shelf. More photos, more definitions, more connections to a game that drips with its own jargon and lore. I think of it not so much as a dictionary but more as a catalog of windows into a game that wears its history the way its players wear their uniforms. I suppose you could enjoy watching a baseball game without knowing the kind of stories that just fall out of the DBD. But why would you?
Rating: 5 / 5
DICKSON BOOMS ONE OUT. Paul Dickson’s formidable tome of baseball terms and definitions demonstrates that baseball is more than a sport and pastime – it is a perpetual language-maker. Assisted by over 400 researchers and contributors, its entries have increased by more than 3,000, to 10,000 terms, with over 18,000 definitions. Cross referencing among the entries leads the reader on delightful discovery tours through the lore and language of baseball and the entries themselves explore the remarkable range of uses baseball fans and commentators make of common words and terms – see those for juice, smoke, move, and Moxie, to pick a few at random. In short, Dickson’s lively, deeply researched, and informative third edition is a must for fans, their partners needing to understand what they are talking about, students of popular culture and language, and SCRABBLE players everywhere.
Rating: 5 / 5
Every obsessive pursuit has its own jargon, and baseball is up there with the best of them when it comes to creating a language of its own. Dickson (and perhaps a team of researchers working behind him in the infield and outfield?) seems to know it all. Now that the 2009 baseball season has just come to an end (with the Yankees taking their unprecedented 27th World Series title), many of us will need an occasional baseball fix until spring training rolls around to ward off Post-Season Affective Disorder. This is it — a way to connect with the game, past and present, in an encyclopedic yet entertaining style. Where else are you going to find an extended essay on the origins and usage of the term “eephus” (a “slowly thrown, high-arcing pitch likely to reach an apex of 25 feet above the ground between the mound and the plate” used to devastating effect by the Pirate’s Rip Sewell in the early 40’s)? Well, you’ve got it here.
Rating: 5 / 5
This hefty 4.2 lb. dictionary is superb. It contains excellent concise understandable explanations of just about any word, phrase or terminolgy related to baseball from statistical explanations on to almost anything you might think of. A great reference. Buy it!
Rating: 5 / 5
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