BACKGROUND :

Sports, gambling and card games are a major part of the American way of life. People in the United States "work hard and play hard". Because they love to play, because games have captured the American heart and mind, terms associated with play have become associated with work and the way Americans do business.

The "deal", derived from card games is the business transaction, the basis of our capitialist society. "That's the ball game; that's the way the game is played; that's the game" summarizes any transaction in life. To not understand "the rules of the game", means more than the rules of a card game or a sporting event, it can mean that one doesn't understand how life is played, how a culture works, why gift giving is less important in the United States than Japan, how business is transacted, how schools work, how boys meet girls and many other everyday events. Even the conduct of war is a "game" and a "level playing field" for U.S. and United Nations' ground troops necessitates mass bombing of the enemy. Advertisements in the U. S. are replete with sports terms: "Why play the game of owning trucks? If you imagine truck ownership as a pinball game in which every problem is a bumper, guess what? You're the ball." (from a Ryder Truck Rental advertisement).

Because of the American mania for games , because there is extensive coverage of sporting events by the mass media, many terms have been incorporated into American English as idiomatic expressions. If one understands the sport, the game and the way it is played, one will understand the idiomatic expressions derived from these games.

The most popular idioms are those derived from those games most ingrained in the American consciousness, those that have a wide audience or have been played for many years, such as cards, gambling and baseball, and those sports which are derived from a previous activity imperative to the conduct of everyday life in past years , such as sailing and horseback riding. Team sports, such as football, soccer, and baseball, have captured the corporate imagination to such a degree that people working on a project are called the "team" and a project "a ball". A quality control team is composed of "team players" who don't want to "drop the ball"; their goal is to produce a superior product, to "score" in the marketing world by selling these products. There are regional and, certainly, personal variations in the use of these idioms. For instance, idiomatic expressions based on sailing terms, such as "take a new tack" or "bail out" might be used more on the west and east coasts of the U. S. than in the heartland and a person whose hobby is sailing will undoubtably use more.

If one starts to listen, one will be amazed at the number of persons and institutions, particularly businesses and businessmen, who use idiomatic terms, based on sports, to summarize a point. To Americans, "to make an end run" immediately conveys going around an immediate superior to the boss; "to pinch hit" or "carry the ball" for someone means to substitute or work on a project for someone. To not understand the games, their terms and idioms, hinders communication. This site is meant to remedy this situation and teach all who want to learn how to "play the game".