Bullpen
Encyclopedia
In baseball
, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief
pitcher
s warm-up before entering a game. Depending on the ballpark, it may be situated in foul territory along the baselines or just beyond the outfield fence. Also, a team's roster of relief pitcher
s is metonymically
referred to as "the bullpen". These relievers usually wait in the bullpen when they have yet to play in a game, rather than in the dugout
with the rest of the team. The starting pitcher
also makes his final pregame warmups in the bullpen. Managers can call coaches in the bullpen on an in-house telephone from the dugout to tell a certain pitcher to begin his warmup tosses.
the earliest recorded use of "bullpen" in baseball
is in a 1924 Chicago Tribune
article from October 5. The earliest known usage of the term "bull pen" relating to an area of a baseball field is in a New York Times article from June 24, 1883. The earliest known relief pitching related usage of "bullpen" in the New York Times is in an article dated September 18, 1912.
There are numerous examples—some historical, some speculative—about the possible origin of the term bullpen.
in the United States, the notorious Andersonville prison camp
featured a bullpen.
, California.
of 1903-04, and in Idaho
in 1892 and 1899 during union miners' uprisings
near Coeur d'Alene
. Author Emma Langdon described these as the first use of the bullpen in the West.
In his autobiography Bill Haywood
described Idaho miners held for,
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief
Relief pitcher
A relief pitcher or reliever is a baseball or softball pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed due to injury, ineffectiveness, fatigue, ejection, or for other strategic reasons, such as being substituted by a pinch hitter...
pitcher
Pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...
s warm-up before entering a game. Depending on the ballpark, it may be situated in foul territory along the baselines or just beyond the outfield fence. Also, a team's roster of relief pitcher
Relief pitcher
A relief pitcher or reliever is a baseball or softball pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed due to injury, ineffectiveness, fatigue, ejection, or for other strategic reasons, such as being substituted by a pinch hitter...
s is metonymically
Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...
referred to as "the bullpen". These relievers usually wait in the bullpen when they have yet to play in a game, rather than in the dugout
Dugout (baseball)
In baseball, the dugout is a team's bench area and is located in foul territory between home plate and either first or third base. There are two dugouts, one for the home team and one for the visiting team. In general, the dugout is occupied by all players not prescribed to be on the field at that...
with the rest of the team. The starting pitcher
Starting pitcher
In baseball or softball, a starting pitcher is the pitcher who delivers the first pitch to the first batter of a game. A pitcher who enters the game after the first pitch of the game is a relief pitcher....
also makes his final pregame warmups in the bullpen. Managers can call coaches in the bullpen on an in-house telephone from the dugout to tell a certain pitcher to begin his warmup tosses.
Origin of the term
The origin of the term bullpen, as used in baseball, is debated, with no one theory holding unanimous, or even substantial, sway. The term first appeared in wide use shortly after the turn of the 20th century and has been used since in roughly its present meaning. According to the Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
the earliest recorded use of "bullpen" in baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
is in a 1924 Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
article from October 5. The earliest known usage of the term "bull pen" relating to an area of a baseball field is in a New York Times article from June 24, 1883. The earliest known relief pitching related usage of "bullpen" in the New York Times is in an article dated September 18, 1912.
There are numerous examples—some historical, some speculative—about the possible origin of the term bullpen.
Civil War
During the Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
in the United States, the notorious Andersonville prison camp
Andersonville prison
The Andersonville prison, officially known as Camp Sumter, served as a Confederate Prisoner-of-war camp during the American Civil War. The site of the prison is now Andersonville National Historic Site in Andersonville, Georgia. Most of the site actually lies in extreme southwestern Macon County,...
featured a bullpen.
Though conditions were initially a vast improvement over Richmond detention centers, problems grew in proportion to the number of inmates. By late summer 1864, the prison population made Andersonville one of the largest cities in the Confederacy. At its peak in August, the "bullpen," built to lodge up to 10,000 enlisted men, held 33,000 grimy, gaunt prisoners, each one crammed into a living area the size of a coffin. Their only protections from the sun were "shebangs," improvised shelters constructed from blankets, rags, and pine boughs, or dug into the hard, red Georgia clay.
World War II
This wartime usage in the United States has occurred as recently as World War II. Tokio Yamane described conditions in Japanese relocation camps, referring to a "bull pen" within a stockade at Tule LakeTule Lake War Relocation Center
Tule Lake Segregation Center National Monument was an internment camp in the northern California town of Newell near Tule Lake. It was used in the Japanese American internment during World War II. It was the largest and most controversial of the camps, and did not close until after the war, in...
, California.
Prisoners in the stockade lived in wooden buildings which, although flimsy, still offered some protection from the severe winters of Tule Lake. However, prisoners in the "bull pen" were housed outdoors in tents without heat and with no protection against the bitter cold. The bunks were placed directly on the cold ground, and the prisoners had only one or two blankets and no extra clothing to ward off the winter chill. And, for the first time in our lives, those of us confined to the "bull pen" experienced a life and death struggle for survival, the unbearable pain from our unattended and infected wounds, and the penetrating December cold of Tule Lake, a God Forsaken concentration camp lying near the Oregon border, and I shall never forget that horrible experience.
Response to labor unrest (United States)
Temporary holding facilities for rebellious hard rock miners trying to organize into unions were referred to as bullpens. These military prisons were sometimes literally pens normally used for cattle which were pressed into service by stringing barbed wire, establishing a guarded perimeter, and keeping large numbers of men confined in the enclosed space. These "bullpens" have been considered early versions of concentration camps, and were used by the national guard during the Colorado Labor WarsColorado Labor Wars
Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred primarily between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one clear exception, always took the side of the mine operators....
of 1903-04, and in Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
in 1892 and 1899 during union miners' uprisings
Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute
There were two related incidents between miners and mine owners in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District of North Idaho: the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892, and the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899. This article is a brief overview of both events.The strike of 1892 had its...
near Coeur d'Alene
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Coeur d'Alene is the largest city and county seat of Kootenai County, Idaho, United States. It is the principal city of the Coeur d'Alene Metropolitan Statistical Area. Coeur d'Alene has the second largest metropolitan area in the state of Idaho. As of the 2010 census the population of Coeur...
. Author Emma Langdon described these as the first use of the bullpen in the West.
In his autobiography Bill Haywood
Bill Haywood
William Dudley Haywood , better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America...
described Idaho miners held for,
...months of imprisonment in the bull-pen, a structure unfit to house cattle, enclosed in a high barbed-wire fence.Penned up in bullpens as a response to violence, many hundreds of union men had been imprisoned without trial. Peter Carlson wrote in his book Roughneck,
Haywood traveled to the town of MullanMullan, IdahoMullan is a city located in a sheltered canyon of the Coeur d'Alene Mountains in Shoshone County in the northern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. The population was 840 at the 2000 census and decreased to 692 at the 2010 census. The city is in the east end of the Silver Valley mining district; the...
, where he met a man who had escaped from the bullpen. The makeshift prison was an old grain warehouse that reeked of excrement and crawled with vermin. Overcrowding was so severe that some two hundred prisoners had been removed from the warehouse and quartered in railroad boxcars.
Other theories about origin
- In the 1800s, jails and holding cells were nicknamed "bullpens", in respect of many police officers' bullish features – strength and a short temper.
- The bullpen symbolically represents the fenced in area of a "bull's pen", where bulls wait before being sent off to the slaughter. The relief pitchers are the bulls and the bullpen represents their pen.
- The name may be a reference to rodeoRodeoRodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
bulls being held in a pen before being released into the main arena.
- Latecomers to ball games in the late 19th century were cordoned off into standing-room areas in foul territory. Because the fans were herded like cattle, this area became known as the "bullpen", a designation which was later transferred over to the relief pitchers who warmed up there.
- At the turn of the century, outfield fences were often adorned with advertisements for the Bull DurhamW. T. Blackwell and Company Tobacco FactoryW.T. Blackwell & Co. Tobacco Factory, also known as Bull Durham Tobacco Factory is a tobacco factory in Durham, North Carolina.The W.T. Blackwell Company was started as a partnership between W.T. Blackwell and Julian S. Carr. Construction of the main factory building was completed in 1874.It was...
brand of tobaccoTobaccoTobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
. Since relievers warmed up in a nearby pen, the term "bullpen" came about.
- Manager Casey StengelCasey StengelCharles Dillon "Casey" Stengel , nicknamed "The Old Perfessor", was an American Major League Baseball outfielder and manager. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in ....
suggested the term might have been derived from managersManager (baseball)In baseball, the field manager is an individual who is responsible for matters of team strategy on the field and team leadership. Managers are typically assisted by between one and six assistant coaches, whose responsibilities are specialized...
getting tired of their relief pitchers "shooting the bullBullshitBullshit is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English...
" in the dugoutDugout (baseball)In baseball, the dugout is a team's bench area and is located in foul territory between home plate and either first or third base. There are two dugouts, one for the home team and one for the visiting team. In general, the dugout is occupied by all players not prescribed to be on the field at that...
and were therefore sent elsewhere, where they would not be a bother to the rest of the team – the bullpen. How serious he was when he made this claim is not clear.
- Jon MillerJon MillerJon Wallace Miller is an American sportscaster, known primarily for his broadcasts of Major League Baseball. He is currently employed as a play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco Giants. He was also a baseball announcer on ESPN until the network chose not to renew his contract following the...
, a baseball play-by-play announcer with ESPNESPNEntertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
television, said the term is derived from the late 19th century. The New York GiantsSan Francisco GiantsThe San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
first played at the Polo GroundsPolo GroundsThe Polo Grounds was the name given to four different stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used by many professional teams in both baseball and American football from 1880 until 1963...
, which opened around 1880. The relief pitchers warmed up beyond the left-field fence, and in the same area was a stockyard or pen that had bulls in it.
- Dennis Kapper states the term came from the some Bull tobacco product and it was on the wall where the pitchers warm-up.
Other uses
Other current uses of the term include:- Reference to a large open work area consisting of desks with no separating walls and private offices. Bullpens were common across many business fields in the first half of the 20th century and are often used by software developmentSoftware developmentSoftware development is the development of a software product...
teams. Michael BloombergMichael BloombergMichael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
used this set-up and term at his media company Bloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...
, and for his staff while Mayor of New York CityMayor of New York CityThe Mayor of the City of New York is head of the executive branch of New York City's government. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property, police and fire protection, most public agencies, and enforces all city and state laws within New York City.The budget overseen by the...
. Adrian FentyAdrian FentyAdrian Malik Fenty was the sixth, and at age 36, the youngest, mayor of the District of Columbia. He served one term—from 2007 to 2011—losing his bid for reelection at the primary level to Democrat Vincent C. Gray...
used this setup also while mayor of Washington, DC.
- Within USAID, the Office of Transition Initiatives' bullpen represents a surge capacity of experienced professionals that can be called upon to assist in all aspect of office operations and programming.
- Marvel ComicsMarvel ComicsMarvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
refers to its in-house staff of writers and artists as the "Marvel BullpenBullpen Bulletins"Bullpen Bulletins" was the news and information page that appeared in most regular monthly comic books from Marvel Comics...
."