Baseball lingo, old writers and jailed reporters

NYTimes mag has this fun bit on baseball lingo from William “I Still Get the Creeps Knowing he Worked for Nixon” Safire. Also see the Times on old writers and newspaper style books, and the Globe on a jailed reporter

Where would pols, pundits and morose mucky-mucks be without the language of baseball?
Here’s the pitch: Despite distractions, you have to keep your eye on the ball. You have to be aware of something unexpected coming out of left field, and only if your ad-libbed response is not off base will your home team go to bat for you. You can’t be born on third base and think you hit a triple. Last year, candidate Obama took the sting out of criticism by the scribes for playing ball with a Chicago fixer by admitting, right off the bat, that his property purchase was boneheaded. Palin showed she had something on the ball, considered 2008 a warm-up in the bullpen and took a rain check for 2012, when she hopes to knock the ball out of the park, unless she gets thrown a curve by the rise of Romney, now in the catbird’s seat.