1 April 2002
Crash Davis: “It’s time to work on your interviews.”
Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh: “My interviews? What do I gotta do?”
Davis: “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: ‘We gotta play it one day at a time.’”
LaLoosh: “Got to play… it’s pretty boring.”
Davis: “’Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.”
—Bull Durham, 1988
The sports cliché has been around as long as there have been sportswriters. Ever since Wee Willie Keeler told a reporter that the secret to batting success was to hit ‘em where they ain’t, the cliché has been unbreakably linked to sports. From poetry in motion to he tattooed that one, sports clichés abound in American discourse.
www.sportscliche.com records and archives these clichés. The site defines a sports cliché as “an expression that has been used in and around sports with sufficient frequency over a protracted period such that it is ‘tired’ at best and meaningless at worst.” The site also concludes “that nothing of any importance has ever been said in a halftime analysis.”
The site is basically a series of lists, categorized by sport (baseball, football), location (winner’s locker room, loser’s locker room), and special categories (clichés devoted to John Elway). There’s even a page on the music that is played too often in stadiums and ballparks. Features include search function and quiz.
The site is pretty Spartan though. It could use some sprucing up, like making the quiz interactive. But it serves the basic function of identifying these phrases for what they are.
