Bull Durham and the Big Bandwagon Show
by Bryce Martin

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has been described as incorporating "the meaning of everything." A remarkable reference tome, it makes specific note of our language from its earliest origins and even cites, when possible, the earliest known use of a word or phrase.

My treatise here, however, is not about the wonderful OED. It's given as a backstory, to use a film making term. My point will be how a word or phrase is taken at face value, as in a work of fiction, where it is made up at that time for that work.

Case in point: The phrase "Big Show" from the movie Bull Durham.

I am aware that the director of the movie and its writer, one Ron Shelton, actually played a little minor league baseball. Nevertheless, I say the phrase "Big Show" was never a term as relating to the Major Leagues. I'm not saying the phrase was never uttered in that regard, as I imagine many more exist just as obscure, I'm saying it was never a phrase used by minor leaguers even on a casual basis, if at all.

Document it. Show me, one book, fiction or non-fiction, film, video, magazine or newspaper mention, one quote or line pulled from one -- just one -- single Associated Press or United Press International wire story, one of tens of thousands AP and UPI items that have covered every game ever played in the major and minor leagues going back as far as you like, anything that predates Bull Durham, where any reference to the big leagues associated with the term "Big Show" actually exists. Exhaustive, yes, but fundamentally fair.

You won't find it. With sportswriters in minor and major league dugouts, hotel lobbies, airports and clubhouses, all over, covering the games and writing feature stories, find me one of their mentions of "Big Show" as described.

Shelton did nothing wrong in making up the term. The fault lies in writers who came after him and used the phrase -- from a work of fiction, remember -- as a real phrase. I'm positive also that if someone asked former minor leaguers who played previous to the Shelton work if they had ever heard the phrase in their playing days many would answer in the affirmative. I'm also positive these same individuals would be just as faulty in response to other details associated with their own playing days.

It's what I prefer to term a bandwagon phrase, a false one, in this instance, some people jump on due to it seeming so natural. It then takes on a credence not deserved.


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