{"id":3785,"date":"2007-01-07T22:31:20","date_gmt":"2007-01-08T06:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2007\/01\/07\/can-of-corn.html"},"modified":"2007-01-07T22:31:20","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T06:31:20","slug":"can-of-corn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2007\/01\/07\/can-of-corn\/","title":{"rendered":"can of corn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In a submission, I encountered the phrase \"can of corn\" as a baseball term; hadn't heard it before, so went and looked it up.  Apparently it refers to a baseball hit in such a way that it's particularly easy to catch.<\/p>\n<p>John Marshall, the Seattle <cite>Post-Intelligencer<\/cite>'s \"Answer Guy,\" <a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/baseball\/33209_aguy30.shtml\">says<\/a> that there are several possible origin stories for the phrase.  The most accepted one, he says, is this: In olden times, \"[...] a grocer would use a stick to tip a can of vegetables off a high shelf, then catch it in his hands or outstretched apron.\"<\/p>\n<p>A British site, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/bulletin_board\/11\/messages\/625.html\">The Phrase Finder<\/a>, gives a somewhat different explanation: it repeats a story to the effect that the phrase refers to a shopkeeper lightly tossing a can of food to a customer, and notes that it's a can of <em>corn<\/em> because the outfield is sometimes called \"the cornfield.\"<\/p>\n<p>But the <cite>P-I<\/cite> answer sounds better-researched.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the Phrase Finder answer claims that the phrase was first used by announcer Red Barber, but the <cite>P-I<\/cite> answer says it was first used in 1896, which was twelve years before Barber was born.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a submission, I encountered the phrase &#8220;can of corn&#8221; as a baseball term; hadn&#8217;t heard it before, so went and looked it up. Apparently it refers to a baseball&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}