When I was eight or nine years old and playing Little League baseball in the mid-1960s, we had a chant that was supposed to annoy and distract the other team’s pitcher when he was on the mound. It went, “We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!”
At the time, I had no idea what that meant, but when my teammates shouted it, I joined in.
For some reason, the chant popped into my head this morning and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell we were implying. How is “belly itcher” any kind of an insult? Nowhere except in that dugout have I ever heard one human refer to another as a belly itcher, derogatorily or otherwise.
“Tommy, I watched you make your opening statement in court today, and I gotta say you came off like a real belly itcher.”
Could it be that we were too young to come up with a better rhyme for pitcher? Or maybe it’s because nothing else made sense, either. I just asked Siri to give me some words that rhyme with pitcher, and it responded with richer, switcher, ditcher, stitcher, hitcher, snitcher, and twitcher.
Nope, none of them works. In fact, in current jargon, “twitcher” refers to an online gamer.
I remember one game when a player on the other team yelled at our man on the mound, “We want a pitcher, not a glass of water.” That seemed more reasonable, though I doubt it rattled anyone.
On the other hand, maybe the kid was just really thirsty.