Baseball - béisbol a-b   c-d   e-f   g-h   i-j  k-l  m-n   o-p   q-r   s-t   u-v   w-x   y-z

This limited baseball dictionary is dedicated to the memory of my father, Thomas Francis, "Tom", O'Neill, an unwavering, though often unsatisfied, White Sox fan. Among my childhood memories stands out the one of my father pacing the floor as he listened to a Sox game on our small kitchen radio and every game exclaiming at least once to my mother, "Sabina, them walksâll kill ya!", to which my mother would respond with equal regularity, "Sure, Tom", not having the slightest idea of what he was talking about.

And so this dictionary ... so that those Tom and Sabina kinds of conversations can continue  to take place -- in two languages.

Notice that many of the terms have multiple equivalents in Spanish; baseball, besides being a game of numbers, is a game of synonyms -- el béisbol es un juego de palabras.

In parentheses following many of the definitions are abbreviations which show the sources in which the words and expressions were found. (Sports pages were read from newspapers from eight Latin American countries.) The sources do not necessarily indicate that the vocabulary is peculiar to a particular place; they simply indicate where the items were first encountered. Where there is no abbreviation the expressions most often are common to baseball across countries (or I forgot).The abbreviations are: Chicago, radio (White Sox broadcasts in Spanish, 2000); Col. - Colombia; CR - Costa Rica; Cu - Cuba; Mex- Mexico; Newsweek - Newsweek en español; Nic. - Nicaragua; NH - Nuevo Herald of Miami (newspaper); PR - Puerto Rico; RD - Dominican Republic; Ven. - Venezuela;Y; Yahoo en español; ESPN - ESPN Sports in Spanish; ESPN, tv (TV broadcasts of Major League games in Spanish); Fox, tv (games broadcast on Fox); Mejore (Mejore su béisbol, Siebert & Vogel, Editorial Pax, México, DF, 1981), Opinión - La Opinión (newspaper, Los Angeles, Cal.), Prensa, NY (Diario La Prensa, New York City)