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NLDS: About "getting the skunk out of the box"
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NLDS: About "getting the skunk out of the box"
All but lost in last night's Cole Hamels domination/Reds sweeping/Oswalt troll-facing in the Phils NLDS-clinching 2-0 win was TBS announcer Brian Anderson using the most baffling idiom we'd ever heard. In the fourth inning, after Scott Rolen broke his 0-for-the series with a single, Anderson said:
"Rolen gets the skunk out of the box."
It is, honestly, a befuddling thing to say. Our drunken smartphone Googling produced unsatisfactory results, a bunch of stuff related to literally getting a skunk out of a humane trap. While I can imagine that finding oneself with a boxed skunk would indeed be an unpleasant situation, this struck me as far too on-the-nose an explanation for such a colorful euphemism. More extensive Google research today (adding quotes, expanding the search to "got the skunk out of the box") reveals that the saying gets heavy (but not exclusive, witness this account of the poor Lomira, Wis.,high school girls volleyball team whose victory over Omro was described as such by the Fond du Lac Reporter) usage on fishing message boards(!?). Which makes no sense to us (we don't fish).
Can anyone, anyone at all, help us with the etymology behind "got the skunk out of the box"? What on earth does it mean?
If "the box" is a desirable place to be, then presumably one would not want to share it with a skunk. In other words, the once the skunk is out of the box, it will still stink like a skunk but at least it can start to air out a bit. In other words, breaking the 0-for with a single won't fix Rolen's average, but at least he's not 0-for anymore. In fishing, maybe sportsmen use this idiom as a way to blame a faulty tacklebox for their lack of fish. Their bait, in other words, stinks. This is 100% conjecture.
i like your thinking, Ambiguator. I hadn't really considered that Rolen was in the box with the skunk. The "literature" such as it is on this and with regards to the humane traps suggests that a skunk cannot spray unless it's standing on its hind legs. However, a box that could accommodate both a skunk and a human would obviously be big enough for the skunk to stand and spray, making it indeed unpleasant for, in this case, Scott Rolen.
The fact that the phrase was used on fishing message boards made me think of my co-worker, call him Lyle, who dabbles in the semi-pro fishing circuit. He was away on his honeymoon during the series, but he returned to the office today and told me all about the phrase. According to Lyle, if you've been out in your boat for hours, it's getting late, and you haven't caught anything, you're, "getting skunked." A boat that is getting skunked can also be said to be, "flying a skunk flag." Clearly, nobody wants to get skunked. But, if at the end of a long, fishless day, you finally catch your first one, you have, "gotten the skunk out of the boat." You no longer have to worry about getting skunked - you can concentrate on just catching some fish. So, credit where it's due: TBS announcer Brian Anderson used the phrase well. As BH noted, Scott Rolen hadn't gotten a hit in the series before the at-bat in question, in which he finally got that elusive first hit. But, while the phrase was used appropriately, Anderson may have overestimated the percentage of the audience that would recognize the phrase. According to Lyle, the phrase is a fishing thing and kind of a southern thing. So, if you live in a place where the Civil War is referred to as something other than The War of Northern Aggression and you're not a serious fisherman, you probably didn't know what the hell Anderson was talking about, either. References: http://3.ly/C2tM http://3.ly/ws5V
This is my favorite skunk-related blogpost of all time.
[...] NLDS: About âÂÂgetting the skunk out of the boxâ :: The Clog :: Blog … In fishing, maybe sportsmen use this idiom as a way to blame a faulty tacklebox for their lack of fish. Their bait, in other words, stinks. This is 100% conjecture. by ambiguator on October 12th, 2010 at 11:36 am ÷ Reply To This Comment … Jan 01, 1970 12:00am [...]
Comments (1)
Baseball scores/stats are put in a score box. To be scoreless is to be skunked. To catch no fish is also being skunked; this seems to be a idiom of boat fishing not shore, etc. fishing. There is a skunk flag that boaters may fly to indicate being fishless.
Just re-noun the verbed noun:
Get the skunk (zero) out of the (score) box.
r1r— r1r
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