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The earliest baseball mention of a “southpaw” - as found by Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame—appeared in the New York Atl
by pavement 9y ago
The earliest baseball mention of a “southpaw” - as
found by Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National
Baseball Hall of Fame—appeared in the New York Atlas
in 1858, but in reference to a left-handed first
baseman, not a pitcher.
The first documented use of a phrase or term in print, does not mean that the writer used it according to the original intended context, especially since it does not specifically get used in a passage that explicitly states the intended use and origin.
The atlas doesn't explicitly state: "We decided to call him a southpaw, because we're inventing this new term, and not because of convention, and it means 1, 2 and 3, because x, y and z."
- pflats 9y agoEtymological research is rarely cut-and-dry. The authors are aware of this, and the quotation is being held as a counterexample to "the conventional wisdom that the word “southpaw” originated “from the practice in baseball of arranging the diamond with the batter facing east to avoid the afternoon sun. A left-handed pitcher facing west would therefore have his pitching arm toward the south of the diamond.”" The article goes on to point out that southpaw was almost definitely a boxing term before it was given its baseball "etymology".