Base-Ball Ballads/Knocking Slang

by Grantland Rice

 

KNOCKING SLANG.

(Collier's Weekly and the New York Tribune have started a crusade against slang once more, and especially the brand used in detailing ball games.)

Nix on the slang; chop out the stuff;
 That ain't no way to pass the dope out.
Crawl easy on this line of guff
 And push it for a gentle slope out;
Don't make the English spiel a joke
 By crabbing up the conversation;
Give it a chance correctly spoke
 Without some wise mutt's explanation.

If there is one thing puts the punk
 Kibosh upon me, it's the geezer
Who's always spieling out some junk
 And running in some funny wheezer;
Who jams in with a bunch of talk
 That listens like it had a cancer,
Until somebody calls a balk
 And grabs a chart to pick the answer.

Why ain't the old spiel good enough
 That's lined out in the dictionary,
That we must draw this cross-fire guff
 To which no sane gazabe is jerry?
I'll take mine in the simple buzz
 When Noah Webster led the batting.
He had these slangsters on the buzz
 When it came down to big league chatting.

Nix on this slang; it's on the blink,
 And my remarks are here emphatic.
The geek who slings it through the ink
 Has beetles in his bush league attic.
Let's slip in on the Big Revive
 For scholarly and classic diction.
Come on, you mutts now, with the dive
 And do a Brodie at this fiction.