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Let's Work Together To Find The Best Alternate Term For 'Home Run'

Yes, "homers" is easy. Yes, "dingers" and "taters" both have their proponents. But in these uncertain times, we need to agree on an alternate term for the longball.
When you have hit...something that produces a run for your team. Photo by Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

These are uncertain times, although that has always been true. Ordinary life is uncertain and unbalanced, and we tolerate that because the persistent outer chaos that's forever trying the locks is scarier. This is the world as it has always been, and probably the only one that humans can make.

As baseball fans, this does not mean that we should surrender to barbarism and become Yankees fans. It just means that we need to face the world as it is, and that means planning for every possible contingency. We must be ready, as people who care about baseball, to face not just changes in the game but the possibility that the language we use to describe it might fall all the way apart. We say "home run" and everyone knows what it means. We say other words for "home run" and people know that they mean "home run." Fans have done this for a long time. But this is a bad moment to bet on anything lasting forever, which means that we need to get to work on developing alternate terms for "homer" that can be used in an emergency.

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This is a baseball question. Do you prefer that home runs be referred to, when in need of an alternate term, as:

— David Roth (@david_j_roth)February 7, 2017

In these times, can we trust that "home run" will continue to do the linguistic work we need it to do? What if, due to some crisis or other—it is best not to dwell too long on what this crisis might look like, although it has many plausible and horrific faces—we find that "home run" no longer works? As a term, it has been in continuous use for more than a century; we have never developed a universally agreed-upon back-up option, which seems like the very least we could do in terms of locking in a failsafe for a worst-case scenario.

The results of the poll above, which is lopsided but still open as I write this, suggest that people are at least and at last ready to face this question; they also strongly suggest that we at VICE Sports like the term "tater" significantly more than the average voter does. We will not change our strongly pro-tater editorial policy, although the feedback is of course welcome. That disappointing result aside, though, what emerged in the vigorous response to that poll was heartening. Baseball fans appear ready to have this conversation in earnest, and if they've settled on Dingers as their backup term of choice, they are by no means leaving it there. After this photo of a large and thoughtful home run galoot, I will run down my preliminary findings.

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When you're monitoring the debate. Photo by Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

There Is A Constituency For "Dongs"

One of the areas in which the Twitter poll falls short is its limited scope. I'd considered a third and fourth options, which would have been "Dongs" and "Some Old-Timey Shit e.g. Roundtrippers" respectively. I opted not to include them because I wanted to keep the poll clean and binary, and also because the site's character limits made it impossible to get them all in. The character limit was designed, I assume, to make sure that nothing important will ever get done on Twitter, and while there are those who continue to push back against this it's generally easier and wiser just to lean into it, and to trust the site's semi-representative anarchy to fill in the rest.

In this case, it did. One person after another responded with write-in votes for "dongs" or some derivation thereof.

— Jeffrey Paternostro (@jeffpaternostro)February 7, 2017

— Father O'Blivion (@ewangs)February 7, 2017

— Chud Blumpkinson (@KingCobraFan)February 7, 2017

— Sean P Sweeney (@SeanPSweeney)February 8, 2017

The people are speaking, and they are saying "dong" or some version of dong. Not as much or as vociferously as they're saying "dingers," but they're saying "dongs." We should listen.

There Is More Than One Right Way

Another problem with polls like mine are that they narrow the field of debate unnecessarily. Dingers is the most popular alternate term, but that is not the end of the discussion. Over and over again, people were not just willing but eager to make it the beginning of a broader discussion, and to embrace the idea of a baseball discourse that could deploy more than one alternative term. There is not just one type of homer, or one type of home run hitter. Fans know this, but they are willing to make that distinction in the language, and to interrogate the terms of the debate.

— former miata owner (@CrystalPepsi)February 7, 2017

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— Chris (@Conrailius)February 7, 2017

— pumpkinspice mumphré (@mumphrey)February 7, 2017

— Ben Carsley (@BenCarsley)February 7, 2017

Here, again, we are thinking flexibly, even bravely, about a question that matters.

We Are Ready To Create The Language We Need

Here is the most important and encouraging point: we are ready to look the possibility of Slang Collapse in the face, and willing to think beyond even the alternatives that we currently have. Witness, for instance, the fearless and clear-eyed futurism of cartoonist Matt Lubchansky, who took the poll as the first step on a journey leading into uncharted new regions.

We do not know what's coming, or when it will come for our game. But I believe now more than ever that we will be ready to face it when it comes. When words fail, we will find new words. We will go on talking, because the alternative is unimaginable.

— CorbinaSmith (@corbinasmith)February 7, 2017

It's not over until it's over.