Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Do you know what I love about summer?  Baseball.  More specifically, the St. Louis Cardinals and Albert Pujols.  

Combine my love of the baseball with learning American Sign Language and what do you get?  A history lesson.

I have been trying my best to sign many everyday objects and activities to Ellie as a part of speech therapy.  Of course that meant I had to learn sign language.  Fortunately, my neighbor raided the Austin Public Library and lent me many books on baby signs and ASL.  Andrew joked that I now “speak” ASL better than Spanish (and German, but then I never knew more than 5 words in German).  

Ever watch a baseball game and see how there are different signals for “strike”,  “safe”, and “out”?  These signs originated from William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy, the 3rd deaf professional baseball player in the major leagues.   Hoy created these signals because he couldn’t hear the calls by the umpire or the cheers from the crowd.  Hoy played from 1888-1902 most notably for the Cincinnati Reds, two different D.C. franchises (the Senators & Nationals), and are you ready??? the St. Louis Browns.  As for the “Dummy” part of his name, it stems from the old saying of “Deaf & Dumb” where dumb stands for mute, not stupid.

Anyway, there is your history lesson for the week and again, “Let’s Go Cardinals!”.

Guess what Ellie can do?  She is able to pull herself into a sitting position!!!!!  

Go Ellie-Bear!