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As MLB faces the World Series and renewed national conversation regarding the Braves’ team name and ‘The Chop,’ PETA called on the league to rename the bullpen to arm barn, saying the current term is “outdated.”
‘Bullpen,’ as many baseball fans know, is the area where pitchers warm up.
“Words matter, and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals,” PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman said in a press release. “PETA encourages Major League Baseball coaches, announcers, players, and fans to changeup their language and embrace the ‘arm barn’ instead.”
PETA highlighted that its motto reads, in part, “animals are not ours to abuse in any way,” adding that it “opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.”
What is a literal bullpen?
The animal advocacy group tweeted on Thursday that a ‘bullpen’ refers to the area in a bull’s pen where they “are held before they are slaughtered.”
PETA mentioned in its press release that the term is also used in rodeos, the area being where they are “tormented into kicking and bucking by being electro-shocked or prodded.”
Where did the term originate within MLB?
The origin of ‘bullpen’ within Major League Baseball is highly disputed, but there are multiple popular theories.
One of the leading possibilities is that Cincinnati Enquirer writer O.P. Caylor coined the term during a 1877 game recap. He wrote, “The bull-pen at the Cincinnati grounds with its `three for a quarter crowd’ has lost its usefulness. The bleacher boards just north of the old pavilion now holds the cheap crowd, which comes in at the end of the first inning on a discount.”
Others hypothesis that ‘bullpen’ came from “Bull” Durham tobacco advertisements, which decorated many outfield walls. Relievers warmed-up behind these billboards, which featured cattle.
The list goes on.
Why rename it to ‘arm barn?’
The proposed new name would highlight the pitcher’s throwing appendage; however, per Urban Dictionary, ‘arm barn’ is a vulgar slang phrase.
What do fans think of the suggested move?
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