Date:    Tue, 31 Mar 1998 03:54:36 EST
<br>From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
<br>Subject: Racquetball; "I (heart) NY" logogram
<br>
<br>RACQUETBALL
<br>
<br>     I found this in Newsday, Sunday, 29 March 1998, pg. C27, col. 5:
<br>
<br>     _OBIT: Racquetball Founder, J. Sobek._  Joseph Sobek, the former tennis
<br>pro who invented racquetball in the early 1950s at a YMCA and was the first
<br>inductee into the sport's hall of fame (Where is that?  Gotta check Dickson's
<br>halls-of-fame book--ed.), has died.  He was 79.  Sobek died of congential
<br>heart disease Friday at Greenwich (Conn.) Hospital.
<br>
<br>     The web site www.usoc.org/sports/az_3_24_1.html has:
<br>
<br>     Racquetball was invented by Joe Sobek in 1949 on a Connecticut handball
<br>court.  Seeking a game with fast pace that was easy to learn, Sobek designed
<br>the first short strung paddle, devised rules combining the basics of handball
<br>and squash, and named his modification "paddle rackets."  His experiment was
<br>an overnight success, the sport caught on quickly and has since evolved into
<br>racquetball as we know it today.
<br>
<br>     OED has "racquetball, orig U. S., Also racquet ball."  The first citation
<br>is from 1972--twenty-three years after the game was invented!  Joe Sobek is
<br>never mentioned!
<br>     Obviously, we can do better on this Americanism.  The easy way to have
<br>done this was to have written to Joe Sobek and just asked him.  I'm sure he
<br>kept newspaper clippings somewhere.
<br>     The thing for dictionary-makers to do now is to write to whatever family
<br>members honored him and ask for the same information.  We can also write to
<br>the hall of fame.
<br>     If I had time, I'd do "racquetball" and "hacky sack" lingo for American
<br>Speech.
<br>
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<br>HEART=LOVE LOGOGRAM
<br>
<br>     AMERICAN SPEECH, winter 1985, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 366-367, has "The
<br>Symbol (heart)."  "I (heart) New York" is the first example given.
<br>     It's not a great AS note.  It's mentioned that the heart sign is on
<br>playing cards, but historical citations aren't provided.
<br>
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<br>PERSONAL
<br>
<br>     I have vowed never never never never to purchase any product that AOL
<br>hawks on those stupid, ubiquitous ads.  Today AOL hawked a product by Dragon
<br>Systems.
<br>     I will be off the internet from Sunday, April 5th to Tuesday, April 20th.
<br>I'm going to Syria & Jordan, where I'll see Damascus, Amman, Aleppo, Ugarit
<br>(home of the first alphabet), Palmyra, Dura Europos (where ROTAS/SATOR squares
<br>were found), Mari, Jerash, Petra (the rose-colored city), and Ebla (where I'll
<br>be researching the linguistic origins of Connie Eble).
<br>