Craig Calcaterra, “Baseball Gave Us the Word ‘Jazz’? Cool.” (Hardball Talk, NBC Sports blog, Apr. 9, 2012)
This is from a couple of weeks ago in the Boston Globe, but I’m just seeing it now via Baseball Think Factory. File it under Stuff You Never Think About But Which is Nonetheless Cool: A hundred years ago a minor leaguer basically invented the word “jazz.”
It happened when one Ben Henderson, a pitcher for the 1912 Portland Beavers, told a Los Angeles Times reporter that he had a new curve ball he called a “jazz ball.” It hit the paper on April 2nd with the headline “Ben’s Jazz Curve.”
Read the rest here. (Related Boston Globe column, Word Routes column)