Words matter.
Donald Hall, the old Poet Laureate of the United States, knew that as well as anyone.
“To appreciate the word,” he once wrote, “writers and readers must first realize that no words can be exact synonyms. Some words are close to each other in meaning, close enough to reveal that they are not the same.”
It’s ironic, then, that one of the words in Hall’s classic collection of essays on sports (mostly baseball, as pointed out on its cover), Fathers Playing Catch with Sons, is wrong. And half of America—at least—is wrong in the way they talk about perhaps one of the simplest and most special experiences we can share with the people in our lives.
In this episode, we explore the most divisive of all sports debates: “Have a Catch” vs. “Play Catch.” After considering every influence from Shakespeare to Snoopy, with a fun stop at a world record attempt in New Jersey, we hope you’ll see that while they are close to each other in meaning, they are not the same. And only one of them truly captures why The Catch means so much to us.
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