End of ADS-L Digest - 8 Apr 1997 to 9 Apr 1997
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Subject: ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1997 to 10 Apr 1997
There are 9 messages totalling 362 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Baseball, Hot Dogs....
2. Chicago, "the Windy City"
3. official english
4. poor whites (2)
5. DSNA conference info (3)
6. Variation in "try"-complements?
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Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 02:24:36 -0400
From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Baseball, Hot Dogs....
"Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet."
--Chevrolet ads in the 1970s
It's baseball season again. In less than three months it will be
July--National Hot Dog Month--and "TAD" Dorgan will once again invent the
phrase "hot dog" that he never invented.
I don't know how to stop it. Obviously, hundreds of dollars of mailings
and letters to the editor don't work. If the National Hot Dog Council were
to say, for example--"Hot Dogs! They're great for you! Zero calories!!
Zero cholesterol!! A terrific source of Vitamin C!!"--they'd be sued.
But anyone can lie about the meaning of words and phrases! Rule of
thumb, tip, POSH, OK--make up whatever you want!! You want it to mean
something good? Something bad? Do you want it to come from Africa? Asia?
Brooklyn? Write ANYTHING you want! It's not like there are any
professionals who research this!
Several of my important Baseball & Hot Dogs stuff hasn't yet been in
Comments on Etymology, and I DIDN'T find this in the Cooperstown Library's
"Hot Dog" file. Gerald Cohen began the COE series with "HOT DOG" REVISITED
Feb./March 1991, then UPDATE ON "HOT DOG" Feb. 1993, then many more. He's
working on the monograph now.
On 14 January 1941, at the Commodore Hotel in New York City (now the
Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station), there was a baseball dinner to honor
the memory of Harry Stevens and "the Golden Jubilee of the hot dog as a
baseball comestible." This can be found in a short note in The Sporting
News, 16 January 1941, pg. 8, col. 7, "Hot Stuff for Hot Doggers." These
other articles followed.
23 January 1941, The Sporting News, pg. 4, col. 1 (editorials):
PUTTING ON THE DOG FOR THE HOT DOG
At the dinner given by the baseball writers of New York to the four
Stevens brothers, leaders in major league food purveying, the Golden Jubilee
of the Hot Dog as a diamond comestible was celebrated with fitting ceremony.
(...)
It was 50 years ago that Harry Stevens recognized the importance of the
frankfurter as a baseball "appetizer." For years the wienie labored under
the handicap of being under suspicion. It was said that when a hunk of meat
was stuffed into a jacket, it was pretty far gone.
Stevens was having a lot of success with the frankfurter at the Polo
Grounds, when Tad--T. A. Dorgan, great sports cartoonist of the Journal, now
dead--fastened the moniker of hot dog on the article of food Harry blazed up.
(...)
(A photo and story about the dinner can be found on Pg. 8--ed.)
13 February 1941, The Sporting News, pg. 4, col. 5, "THREE AND ONE: Looking
them over with J. G. Spink."
Feeding the Fans in Stevens Family-Style
(...) "I never will forget how dad got sore when Tad--T. A. Dorgan, sports
cartoonist of the Journal--first called the frankfurter the Hot Dog. Father
thought this moniker would give the public ideas about the contents of the
dog-skin, and kill the sales. But Tad made the hot dog a baseball fixture.
He not only publicized it with the picturesque name, but used the dogs in
his cartoons. You may recollect how he had the frankfurters making
wisecracks to each other." (...)
Let me check the new American Heritage Dictionary of American
Quotations, by Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson. Hm, no "hot dog." Not at
all! For that matter, not even a single quote by TAD!
Whew boy, that's great! He didn't get it wrong!!
Let me just check "Big Apple." Let's see, page 99:
Harlem is the precious fruit in the Garden of Eden, the big apple.
--ALAIN LOCKE, c. 1919.
(An early example of the "big apple" metaphor, cited in Deirdre Mullane, ed.,
_Words to Make My Children Live: A Book of African American Quotations_,
1995. Locke, who earned a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, was the
first black Rhodes Scholar, and taught philosophy at Howard University. He
edited _The New Negro_, 1925, an anthology that introduced the writers of the
Harlem Renaissance to a wide audience.)
Debunked by me six years ago in a letter to The New York Times that was
never published.
Excuse me, I have to eat some applesauce. I'll be right back!