In
baseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal 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 square, or diamond...
, the
bullpen (or simply
the pen) is the area where
reliefA relief pitcher or reliever is a baseball or softball pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed due to injury, ineffectiveness, ejection from the game, or fatigue...
pitcherIn 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 it or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the pitcher is...
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 pitcherA relief pitcher or reliever is a baseball or softball pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed due to injury, ineffectiveness, ejection from the game, or fatigue...
s is
metonymicallyMetonymy 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. It comes from the , , "a change of name", from , , "after, beyond" and , , a suffix used to name figures of...
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
dugoutIn 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 pitcherIn 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 DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language...
the earliest recorded use of "bullpen" in
baseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal 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 square, or diamond...
is in a 1924
Chicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company...
article from October 5. The earliest known relief pitching related usage of "bullpen" in the
New York Times is in an article dated September 18, 1912.
Some theories about the possible origin of the term
bullpen include:
- During the Civil War
The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
in the United States, the notorious Andersonville prison campThe Andersonville prison, officially known as Camp Sumter, was the largest Confederate military prison 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.
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 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 one of the largest and most controversial of the camps, and did not close until after the war,...
, 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.
- Temporary holding facilities for rebellious hardrock miners trying to organize into unions were referred to as bullpens. These 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 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 IdahoIdaho is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans." Idaho was admitted to the Union on 3 July 1890 as the 43rd state....
in 1892 and 1899 during union miners' uprisingsThere were two related incidents between miners and mine owners in Coeur d'Alene: the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892, and the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899...
near Coeur d'AleneCoeur d'Alene may refer to a people and related place names in the northwestern United States:* Coeur d'Alene Tribe, a First Nations/Native American tribe** Coeur d'Alene language** Coeur d'Alene Reservation* Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a city in the USA...
. In his autobiography Bill HaywoodWilliam Dudley Haywood , better known as Big Bill Haywood, was a prominent figure in the American labor movement. Haywood was a leader of the Western Federation of Miners , a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist...
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 is a town located in a sheltered canyon of the Coeur d'Alène Mountains in Shoshone County in the northern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. The population was 840 at the 2000 census. The town is in the east end of the Silver Valley mining district; the elevation is 3250 feet above sea level...
, 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.
- 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 rodeo
Rodeo is a 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, western...
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 Durham
Bull Durham is a 1988 American romantic comedy about baseball. It is based upon the minor league experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton and depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina...
brand of tobaccoTobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide, and in the form of nicotine tartrate it is used in some medicines. In consumption it most commonly appears in the forms of smoking, chewing, snuffing, or...
. Since relievers warmed up in a nearby pen, the term "bullpen" came about.
- Manager Casey Stengel
Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel , nicknamed "The Old Professor", was an American major league baseball player or manager from 1912 until 1965. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966....
suggested the term might have been derived from managersIn baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager ; this individual controls 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 bullBullshit is a common American English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemisms bull or B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is now commonly used in British English as well.As with many expletives, it can be used as an interjection or as many...
" in the dugoutIn 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 wouldn't be a bother to the rest of the team – the bullpen. How serious he was when he made this claim is not clear.
- Jon Miller
Jonathan Miller is an American sportscaster, known primarily for his broadcasts of Major League Baseball. He is currently employed as a play-by-play announcer by the San Francisco Giants and ESPN.-Early life and career:...
, a baseball play-by-play announcer with ESPNESPN is an American cable television network dedicated to broadcasting and producing sports-related programming 24 hours a day....
, said the term is derived from the late 19th century. The New York Giants first played at the Polo GroundsThe Polo Grounds was the name given to four different stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City used by baseball's New York Metropolitans from 1880 until 1885, New York Giants from 1883 until 1957, the New York Yankees from 1912 until 1922, and by the New York Mets in their first two seasons of...
, which opened around 1880. The relief pitchers warmed up beyond the left-field fence, and in the same area was a stockyardA stockyard is an enclosure for the handling or keeping of livestock. In the United States, stockyards are regulated by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration...
or pen that had bulls in it.
Other meanings
Other current meanings 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 development
Software development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products...
teams. Michael BloombergMichael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. He was listed as the eighth-richest American, with a net worth of US $16 billion, in the Forbes 400 on September 17, 2008, making him the richest resident of New York City, ahead of David H. Koch...
used this set-up and term at his media company Bloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a closely-held financial software, news and data company. It has a one-third share of the market, similar to Thomson Reuters. Bloomberg L.P...
, and for his staff while Mayor 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...
.
- 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.