Seeing the Past from the Present

In spite of the hiccup caused by a dispute between the owners and players, the 2022 baseball season is underway, although about a week late. Early one day last season, I was waiting for the train to take me to the market, when a teenage boy wearing a Cleveland baseball jersey, carrying a baseball glove and accompanied by his dad, walked onto the platform to wait for the train to take them downtown for a game that day (I don't now recall the visiting team that day).

I couldn't help but think of my dad and me, and sometimes my older brother, heading to Cleveland Municipal Stadium for games in the 1960s and early 1970s. My dad would never say "We're going to the stadium for the game," but rather, "We're going to the ballpark," the term he always used. Anyway, I briefly talked with the father and son about the then new season, and it was like having a conversation with my dad and myself, but 60 years ago.

 

I suppose we all reminisce about times gone by, and some seek almost desperately to hold onto the past, perhaps often at the expense of the present and the future. This episode of "The Twilight Zone" fits right into the idea of the past: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-visit-to-past.html   

Back in the 1960s ... my uncle, my dad's brother, was visiting us from Connecticut, where he and his family lived back then. I believe it was the last game of the season for us the day this picture was taken. Just think, "I coulda been a contender," but Marlon Brando made that line famous before I had a chance.

WORD HISTORY: 

Jersey-The origin of this word is uncertain, although it seems to go back to one of two possibilities, both of which have to do with the name of one of the Channel Islands, which is a British Crown Dependency; and thus, it is not a constituent part of the United Kingdom nor of any of the UK's component parts, with many perhaps first thinking of England. First off, there is an argument that the name "Jersey" is simply from a French pronounced form of Latin "Caesarea," which was rendered in French as "Césarée," and then which supposedly became "Gersui" in the French spoken by the descendants of the original Normans in England, then this became "Gersey," before the form "Jersey." Others believe the name comes from Old Norse, and indeed, the Norse sailed and raided along the western European coast, the English coast and among the Channel Islands. The idea is, the Norse called the island "Geirrs Island;" that is, with the Norse form coming from "geirr" and "ey," words from Germanic. "Geirr" comes from the same Germanic source that gave English "garlic, garfish, Oscar" and the verb "gore," and its basic meaning is "spear, spearhead," and in the verb gore meaning, "to be pierced or stabbed by a spear or other sharp object (usually an animal horn)." Old Norse "geirr" meant "spear," and it was also used as a male name. "Ey" goes back to Old Germanic "awjo," which meant "meadow area by a river or stream, the lower level of land near a river or stream;" thus, "a floodplain," with the further meaning "island." The Germanic form gave Old English "ieg," which meant "island," and it gave Old Norse the previously mentioned "ey," also meaning "island." The Norse forms of "Geirr" and "ey" then supposedly became "Gersui," "Gersey" and "Jersey," in succession. Whatever the case, the use of "jersey" (small 'j') for a garment for the upper body is from the island name, seemingly because such garments were commonly worn there, but when this really came into use for the garment name is unclear to me, as some have noted the name was originally applied to the particular cloth made on Jersey and then used for the garment, but there is a huge gap in possible beginnings of the term dating from the 1500s to the first half of the 1800s. This may be because the original cloth was named this in the 1500s, and then that transferred to the name for the garment, but with the "athletic shirt" meaning, which is still common today, first being used around the mid 1800s in the U.S. The U.S. state of "New Jersey" was also named after the island in the second half of the 1600s, as one of the big landowners in the region was from the island of Jersey (he had been given land in America by England's King Charles II). In every day lingo, "New Jersey" is often shortened to just "Jersey."