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WHAT’S IN A NAME? E.C. GETS TO THE BOTTOM OF IT
NAME OF THE “NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR" AWARD CHANGED DURING SPRING R&R MEETINGS

NEW YORK CITY (Mar. 14-18, 1870) – As previously reported, the main focus of the NBBO’s Spring Rules & Regulations Meetings ended up being the issue of professionalism in the sport, with plans for a new league to begin play next year unveiled by the NBBO’s largest clubs. That wasn’t the original issue the Executive Committee had planned on taking up.

For the past dozen years, the best first-year player in each league had been given the honor known as the Newcomer of the Year award. However, various people around the NBBO as well as some in the E.C. thought that the term “Newcomer” just didn’t quite feel right. So, the E.C. took up the issue of what, then, a first-year senior-level player should be referred to as.

Various terms were thrown around:

• Recruit? That made the clubs sound like they ran military divisions.
• Freshman? That made the clubs sound like they ran university teams.
• Fledgling? Believe it or not, the players weren’t fuzzy young birds learning to fly.
• Beginner? That made it sound like those players were literally learning how to play the sport.
• Trainee? Same problem as “Beginner”.
• Novice? Same problem as “Beginner” & “Trainee”.
• Debutant? Baseball was not, in any way, to be confused with haughty & imperious High Society.
• Apprentice? That gained some support, but these men weren’t in actual apprenticeships.
• Rookie? 1st recorded use occurred in an 1892 book by Rudyard Kipling, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

So, if none of the above terms could accurately apply to first-year players, what could? That was when Charles Prince, the president of Portland BC, based in its namesake city on the Atlantic Coast of Maine, suggested the term “Greenhorn”, which had been used to describe inexperienced sailors since the late 1600s.

With that, the E.C. had an instant winner. Since many of the NBBO’s clubs were based on or near the Atlantic Coast, using an old naval term that applied to new sailors seemed a perfect fit. After all, a baseball team seemed like a ship, with its results going up and down on waves of form over the course of a season. Prince also suggested renaming the managers to “Captains”, but that was met with more skepticism. This was still baseball, not maritime industry.

And thus, the Newcomer of the Year award became the “Greenhorn of the Year” award for the 1870 season, with its first two recipients set to be announced at the end of September – much easier work than trying to figure out how to turn baseball into a professional sport.