Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about baseball idioms.
It is summertime here in the United States and baseball is a popular sport.
One of the most popular times of the year to watch baseball is during the summertime, and there's a lot of idioms that we use, especially here in the United States that come from baseball.
Has anyone ever told you that they just need a ballpark figure, that you hit out of the ballpark, or that you're playing in the big leagues now?
Do you know what those idioms mean?
If you don't, don't worry.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about these idioms and a few more so that you can understand what a native speaker means and so that you can start using them in conversation.
With that, let's begin.
Before we go over these idioms, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
In the description of this episode and of previous episodes, you will find a vocabulary list.
This list is of the words and phrases that I use so you can take them and put them into whatever vocabulary learning system you are using.
Hopefully, over time, you can learn these words and phrases and start using them in conversation and work towards your fluency goals in English.
Let's start with these baseball idioms.
Now, I know that baseball is popular in some countries and it's not in others.
You might not know a lot about baseball, or you might know a lot of things about baseball.
Either way, don't worry.
We're going to go over these idioms, the history of these idioms, and how you can use them in conversation.
Our first one is just a general saying about baseball itself.
That is, America's pastime.
If you heard the phrase America's pastime, if you've ever seen it on anything, if you've read it before, you may not know what it was referring to.
What it's talking about is the game of baseball itself.
The game of baseball is popular here in the United States, but it was even more popular in the 19th century.
Baseball started in the 18th century.
It got very popular in the 19th century, and that's where this phrase comes from.
Baseball was the most popular sport in America, and a pastime is like a hobby, something someone does to past time.
Something someone does kind of to waste time or to enjoy their time, that's a pastime.
Now, because baseball was so popular, because it was the most popular sport in America, baseball got called America's pastime.
It's not really the most popular sport now, but it still has this idiom that goes along with it.
So if someone says that they're going to go enjoy America's pastime, or if they say that summer is the best time to enjoy America's pastime, what they're saying is that it's a great time to go watch baseball or that they're going to go watch baseball.
Our next few idioms have to do with where baseball is played.
Baseball is played in stadiums, and these stadiums are usually called ballparks.
Ballpark is where baseball is played.
Because of this, there's a couple idioms that involve the word ballpark.
The first idiom with ballpark in it is going to be ballpark figure.
Ballpark figure means a rough estimate.
Just means a general idea for a particular number or for the price of something.
The history of this comes from the size of the stadiums that baseball was played in.
Like I said, baseball was very popular.
A lot of people would go to the stadiums, go to the ballpark to watch the games, and you couldn't really count how many people there were.
There were thousands of people.
It was really hard to count individually how many people there were.
That means that people would just estimate how big the crowd was at the ballpark.
Because it was an estimation and not an exact number, it was called a ballpark figure.
So ballpark figure originally meant how many people were at the ballpark, an estimation of how many people were in attendance.
Nowadays, we use this to mean a rough estimate for any number.
Let's say that you need to get a new roof on your house.
Your roof is leaking, it's old, and you need to get a new one.
You might try to ask someone how much it costs.
They might give you a ballpark figure before they give you an exact estimate.
So they say, well, the ballpark figure is somewhere between seven and eight thousand, but I'll go to your house and I'll inspect your roof and I'll give you a better estimate.
Or you might think of how much time is going to take to work on a project.
You might look at the project and try to estimate how much time it's going to take.
So you'd say, well, a ballpark figure is about ten hours.
You don't know exactly, you haven't done it, but that's your rough estimation of it.
A ballpark figure just means rough estimate for time, for money, for any type of number.
A rough estimation, not sure on the exact number, but a general idea, a general sense is a ballpark figure.
Our next one, again, is referring to this ballpark, and that is not even in the ballpark.
Like we said, a ballpark estimate is a rough estimate, a general idea of how much time something's going to take, or how much money something's going to cost, a general idea, a general estimate of a number.
If something is not even in the ballpark, that means it's way off from the estimation.
Completely different, not even close to what someone guessed it should take, or estimated it should take.
For example, let's say that you have a meeting at work, and the meeting is scheduled to take 30 minutes.
However, the meeting ends up taking two and a half hours.
It takes two hours longer than you thought it was going to take.
What you can say is, wow, that estimation was not even in the ballpark.
That means that the actual time it took was not even close to the estimated time that was thought before the meeting started.
Our next idiom with a ballpark is hit it out of the park.
When someone is batting, when they hit the ball really far and they hit it over the fence, that is a home run.
When someone hits the ball out past the fence and they hit a home run, that means their team is guaranteed at least one run or maybe even more.
Because it's a guaranteed run, that means it's a very valuable type of hit.
That means a team is guaranteed to score.
If you watch baseball nowadays, you know that a lot of hitters try to hit a home run.
They try to get that guaranteed run, that guaranteed opportunity to score.
When we talk about hitting something out of the park, what that's referring to is that home run.
If you hear someone say that someone hit it out of the park or even knocked it out of the park, what they're referring to is this.
This history of a home run being a guaranteed way for a team to score and to hopefully win the game.
When we're using this outside of a ballpark context, outside of a baseball context, what we mean by knocking it out of the park or hitting it out of the park means that the person did a really, really good job.
Let's say that you are doing a presentation at work in front of your boss and in front of some potential clients and you do a really good job and the clients decide to make a contract with your business.
Your boss might tell you, wow, you really knocked it out of the park on that one.
What that means is you did a really great job on this presentation and you got those clients to sign up with our company.
Anytime someone says that you knocked it out of the park or you hit it out of the park, that is a good thing.
That is a compliment to tell someone that they did a really good job on something.
Again, you can use either version, knock it out of the park, hit it out of the park.
They mean the same thing.
They're interchangeable with each other.
They're both compliments and they're both a way of telling someone that they did a really great job.
You might also hear the idiom, hit a home run.
That means the same thing as hit it out of the park.
Again, it's coming from the idea of a home run, the idea of scoring a run, doing a really good hit.
If you tell someone that they hit a home run on something, it just means that they did a really good job.
They went above and beyond.
They did a really great job more than what was expected of them and that you're wanting to compliment them.
You're proud of them.
You're wanting to compliment them on the good job that they did.
Again, you can use hit a home run, knocked it out of the park, hit it out of the park.
Those all mean the same things.
You can say, wow, you really hit a home run without presentation.
You really knocked it out of the park without presentation.
You really hit it out of the park without presentation.
All of those mean the same thing.
They're interchangeable and a way of complimenting someone on a job well done.
Our next idiom comes from the type of leagues that exist in baseball.
Here in the United States, we have the MLB.
That stands for Major League Baseball.
That is the league that is the most elite one to get into.
It's the most difficult to become.
And that's when you are a professional baseball player that's making the most money.
This is the league that has the Angels, the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Phillies, all of the big teams that you see on the news and that are in the sports section of the news program.
That is about the MLB, the professional baseball players who are making a lot of money.
The big names in sports are playing in this league.
If you're not playing in that league, you might be in the minor leagues.
A lot of times when someone first gets signed to a team, they play in the minor leagues.
These leagues have smaller stadiums and they're spread throughout the country.
What happens is that these are considered the growth and the development teams, the farming teams for the higher leagues, for the major league teams.
So a player might begin their career in the minor leagues.
They might play for a couple of years and if they're good enough, they get sent up to the major leagues.
The minor leagues, not as difficult to get into.
Of course it's still difficult because they are still getting paid to play baseball, but you're not as good as someone who's playing in the major leagues.
They also get paid less money and they're not as famous because they're in the minor league system and the goal is to get out of the minor leagues and eventually play in the major leagues, make the money, become famous, and really live the life of a professional baseball player.
Another term for major league is also called big league.
You hear this a lot with idioms when people are talking.
When someone gets to a very elite position, maybe they get a good job or they start working for a really good company, you'll hear someone say that they made it to the big leagues or they made it to the major leagues.
Again, they're not talking about baseball.
They're talking about something that's very elite but in a different sector.
Let's say that you are working for a technology company, a smaller one, and then you get hired at Google.
When you start at Google, people might say, well, congratulations, you made it to the big leagues.
That means you made it to the elite company, the company that everyone wants to work for who's in that sector.
You might also say this with education.
If someone started at a lower university and makes it to a higher university or with a job promotion, maybe they're a regular employee and they make it to a manager, any type of promotion up to something that's considered more prestigious or more elite or better paying, you could say, wow, you made
it to the big leagues or you made it to the major leagues.
You'll also hear it when someone is kind of telling someone that they need to do a better job.
Let's say that someone just got a promotion and maybe they're a little bit sloppy with their job or they're not as good as you would expect them to be, you might hear someone say, hey, you're in the big leagues now, you need to do a better job, which means that you're at a more prestigious place, you're
in a better job, you're expected to do more because you're at a more prestigious or elite position or elite job.
If something is considered to not be as elite, not as recognized, it gets called minor leagues.
Again, minor leagues not referring to baseball just means any place that maybe is not considered so fancy or so elite.
Going back to that technology example, when the person got hired by Google, they made it to the big leagues or the major leagues, but for the smaller companies, when they're working in the smaller companies, they would say, oh, I'm in the minor leagues of the tech sector, which means I'm in the smaller
companies, not as recognizable, not a household name, something that's just a starter position that you're hoping to get out of to make it to a better job or a better company.
You can also use this with any other industry, the minor leagues of the fashion industry, the minor leagues of the healthcare industry, the minor leagues of the automobile industry.
Any of those just means a smaller company, not as prestigious, not as high paying, and you're hoping to get something better in the future.
Our last idiom is playing hardball.
If you've ever played baseball and you've been hit by a baseball, you know that they hurt.
Baseballs are hard and they are painful when you get hit with them.
It's also a name for a style of play when you play very aggressively that is called playing hardball.
Outside of baseball, this has just become a way of talking about being very aggressive when you are negotiating with someone.
It means that you are not compromising and you take a very firm and a very tough stance.
Let's say that you are going to buy a car and you ask how much the car costs and it costs more than you want to pay.
You might start negotiating with the salesperson and if you are not changing the price that you want to pay, if you keep saying the same amount and you're not being flexible on the cost, someone might say that you are playing hardball.
That means that you're being very aggressive with your negotiation, you're being very firm with your negotiation, and you're not changing your position.
You could also do this with salaries if you are trying to negotiate a higher salary.
You could do this with really any type of negotiation and negotiation in business and negotiation in your personal life, but if you are not negotiating with someone in a way that's very compromising, if you have a very set firm position and you're not changing and you don't want to change your position and give
up any ground to the person that you're negotiating with, that would be playing hardball.
You might hear this when an actor is signing up for a movie.
If they're trying to get a really high salary and they're negotiating with the production company, you might see it in the news that they played hardball with their salary, which means that they expected a certain amount and they negotiated until they got it.
You might also hear this in stories about negotiations with companies and their workers.
For an example, the union and the company played hardball over the cost of healthcare, which means that they were arguing and they were negotiating back and forth on the cost of healthcare.
So when you hear this term, again, it's most likely with some type of business because it is a negotiation term, but it also can be in your personal life.
It could be about the price of something, a contract with something.
That's where you're usually going to hear this term.
I hope you found this episode interesting.
I hope it helped you with your English vocabulary, learning these new idioms that we say that are based on baseball terminology.
Reminder to check out the description of this podcast episode for the vocabulary list, so you can start incorporating these into your own vocabulary.
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