In the latest (October 7th) New Yorker, a Talk of the Town piece, “Dept. of Accumulation: Ballhawks” by Reeves Wiedeman, beginning:
Zack Hample caught his first major-league baseball when he was twelve — a defining moment in most American childhoods, but one that left him unsatisfied. If I can catch one ball, he thought, why not a thousand? Two decades later, a thirty-six-year-old bookstore clerk, with a shaved head and a soul patch, he is now the world’s preëminent ballhawk.
The metaphor in the compound is that the ball collector pounces on baseballs the way a hawk pounces on its prey.
The noun hawk in this sense can be verbed, as in this example from Wiedeman’s piece:
[Greg] Barasch has been hawking balls since he was fifteen
And then the V and its direct object can be the basis of a synthetic compound in -ing, as in this example from Wiedeman:
Ballhawking is a hobby of accumulation
Then, of course, the almost-inevitable back-formation (though not in Wiedeman’s piece). Two examples of PRS ballhawks:
Also, since he ballhawks in Baltimore, attending a bunch of extra games in Washington DC is always a possibility. (link)
Tony Voda: A fellow Target Field [the home ballpark of the Minnesota Twins] ballhawk. Tony loves traveling and enjoys donating to NAMI.org [National Alliance on Mental Illness] while he ballhawks. (link)
There are, not surprisingly, websites devoted to ballhawking and ballhawks.
Leave a Reply