“Stuff”
Josh and I were talking about it last night: how is it that only pitchers have “stuff”? Hitters don’t have stuff. When a pitcher comes out and rocks his opponents with pitches that loop and drop and do all kinds of craziness, commentators say that the pitcher has “good stuff.” If the pitcher consistently does this (Josh and I discussed Pedro), you stop talking about how he “brought out good stuff”; instead you say, in a tone of awe, that his stuff is amazing.
But still there’s always stuff. Only for pitchers, though. If a batter comes out, has a great stance, lots of power, good speed, lots of base stealing — in other words, he’s doing everything that a batter should do — you never say that the batter brought out his stuff.
I wonder who invented the tradition of only applying the word “stuff” to pitchers.
P.S.: Manual trackback to Mark Liberman. I’m delighted to see that he reads my blog; I had no idea.