Alliteration on the Sports Page
1938; Duke University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/451365
ISSN1527-2133
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Games and Media
ResumoAFEW years ago a reporter casually compared four backfield stars of a leading football team to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The comparison caught the popular fancy, and Four Horsemen became their usual appellation. The seven almost forgotten men who played in front of them and who made their exploits possible gained tardy recognition as the Seven Mules. Another name given to backfield men because of their cleverness in handling and concealing the ball was Four Magicians. Such patterns started a vogue of nicknaming the quartets behind the line of scrimmage. There are many happy sobriquets for athletes. Two colored boys who excelled as sprinters have been called the Midnight Express and the Ebony Antelope. A ponderous baseball player is idolized as the Babe, but in his role as the greatest home-run hitter of all time he earned a name more befitting his amplitude-Behemoth of Swat. Wherever baseball is played there are apt and picturesque names for teams, such as Seals (San Francisco), Pelicans (New Orleans), Mud Hens (Toledo), Millers (Minneapolis), and Brewers (Milwaukee). Clubs which bloom luxuriantly early in the season, but which are expected to wilt ignominiously as the competition becomes hotter, are known as Morning Glories. When the American League was first organized the Philadelphia franchise was sneered at as 'a white elephant,' a gibe that suggested to sportsdom the nickname White Elephants, which proved so popular that it was worked to death. The big-league teams which do their training in Florida and play games there with one another have acquired names with local color: the Grapefruit League and the Citrus Circuit. Nicknames as well as clothes wear out, and there is a constant endeavor to replenish the vocabulary wardrobe. White Sox becomes Chisox and Chihose; Red Sox, Bosox and Bohose. By analogy with the first the Cubs have been called Chicubs and Chibruins. The designation Tribe as a respite from Indians (Cleveland) seems to have inspired Brood for Mud Hens (Toledo). Years ago an erudite Boston fan suggested Cyamophagi as a replacement for Bean Eaters, but the old name persisted until it was finally supplanted by Braves. This second name has now yielded to an upstart, Bees, which was selected by sports writers and approved, unenthusiastically, by the president of the club. During the past few years there has been a marked tendency to use alliterative epithets in the re-
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