"Ataboy!"

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Title:     "Ataboy!"
Author: Heywood Broun [More Titles by Broun]

Thomas Burke has a cultivated taste for low life and he records his delight in Limehouse so vividly that it is impossible to doubt his sincerity. In his volume of essays called "Out and About London," he spreads his enthusiasm over the entire "seven hundred square miles of London, in which adventure is shyly lurking for those who will seek her out."

In the spreading there is at least ground for suspicion that here and there authentic enthusiasm has worn a bit thin. It is no more than a suspicion, for Burke is a skillful writer who can set an emotion to galloping without showing the whip. Only when he comes to describe a baseball game is the American reader prepared to assert roundly that Burke is merely parading an enthusiasm which he does not feel. We could not escape the impression that the English author felt that a baseball game was the most primitive thing America had to offer and that he was in duty bound to enthuse over this exhibition of human nature in the raw.

We have seen many Englishmen at baseball games. We have even attempted to explain to a few visitors the fine points of the game, why John McGraw spoke in so menacing a manner to the umpire or why Hughie Jennings ate grass and shouted "Ee-Yah!" at the batter. Invariably the Englishman has said that it was all very strange and all very delightful. Never have we believed him. The very essence of nationality lies in the fact that the other fellow's pastime invariably seems a ridiculous affair. One may accept the cookery, the politics and the religion of a foreign nation years before he will take an alien game to his heart. We doubt whether it would be possible to teach an American to say "Well played" in less than a couple of generations.

Burke has no fears. Not only does he describe the game in a general way, but he plunges boldly ahead in an effort to record American slang. The title of the essay is well enough. Burke calls it "Atta-boy!" This is, of course, authentic American slang. It meets all the requirements, being in common use, having a definite meaning and affording a short cut to the expression of this meaning. We can not quite accept the spelling. There is, perhaps, room for controversy here. When the American army first came to France the word attracted a good deal of attention and some French philologists undertook to follow it to the source. One of them quickly discovered that he was dealing not with a word but a contracted phrase. We are of the opinion that thereafter he went astray, for he declared that "Ataboy" was a contraction of "At her boy," and he offered the freely translated substitute "Au travail garçon."

It will be observed that Mr. Burke has given his attaboy a "t" too many. "That's the boy" is the source of the word. Perhaps it would be more accurately spelled if written "'at 'a boy." The single "a" is a neutral vowel which has come to take the place of the missing "the." The same process has occurred in the popular phrases "'ataswingin'" and "'ataworkin'." These, however, have a lesser standing. "Ataboy" is almost official. One of the American army trains which ran regularly from Paris to Chaumont began as the Atterbury special, being named after the general in charge of railroads. In a week it had become the Ataboy special, and so it remained even in official orders.

Some of the slang which Burke records as being observed at the game is palpably inaccurate. Thus he reports hearing a rooter shout, "Take orf that pitcher!" It is safe to assume that what the rooter actually said was, "Ta-ake 'im out!"

Again Burke writes, "An everlasting chorus, with reference to the scoring board, chanted like an anthem--'Go-ing up! Go-ing up! Go-ing up!'"

Now, as a matter of fact, the "go-ing up!" did not refer to the scoring board, but to the pitcher who must have been manifesting signs of losing control. The shouts of baseball crowds are so closely standardized that we think we have a right to view with a certain distrust such unfamiliar snatches of slang as "He's pitching over a plate in heaven," or "Gimme some barb' wire. I wanter knit a sweater for the barnacle on second," and also, "Hey, catcher, quit the diamond, and lemme l'il brother teach you." It is impossible for us to reconcile "lemme l'il brother" and "quit the diamond."

It must be said in justice to Burke that it is entirely possible that he did hear some of the outlandish phrases which he has jotted down. Among the dough-boys gathered for the game there may have been some former college professor who had devoted the afternoon to convincing his comrades that he was no highbrow, but a typical American. Such a theory would account for "quit the diamond."

[The end]
Heywood Broun's essay: "Ataboy!"

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