The game of baseball has many great moments — the suicide squeeze, a do-it-yourself triple play, and a successful "daylight" pickoff move represent just a few of the best. Not only do these plays result in gleeful grins from fans, but baseball writers of years of yore scrounged for nicknames to describe them. From basket catches to worm-burners, all were cleverly coined, yet all were easy to picture.

But one play, an event whose origins had eluded my grasp, goes beyond a merely imagistic nomenclature: the Baltimore Chop. Cleaving the air downwards with the bat, a batter aims to sky the ball off of the plate and into the air while the impatient fielders squirm underneath. Rarely is this play utilized; rarer still is its success. Those who unleash the Chop are few in number and must be quicker than a chameleon's tongue on smack, i.e. Ichiro or Jose Reyes.

In fact, this play is so rare that I didn't even know it existed until I perused my "Wide World of Baseball Words" novella a couple months ago. Turns out that the Baltimore Chop did not originate with crack deals gone wrong, instead originating with the Baltimore Orioles during the dead ball era. The only reason I could surmise the phrase had lost favor with the voices of baseball was its resemblance to a Great Depression steel-worker — both were effective, but no one would employ either.

No one in baseball, that is.

Softball, on the other hand, is a wholly different story. In softball, the Chop is drawn on by some of the most successful athletes in the game. The small dimensions of the softball field also allow the batter to bound the ball over the heads of the drawn-in infielders, putting fans on the edge of their seats and sometimes requiring the coach to bring in an outfielder for certain batters.

Had my brother not had the hots for an All-State softball player last summer, I would've known none of this. After he turned on that infamous Michel-clan charm, I found myself finally attending my first softball game, and in between sleeping late and dressing in a giant beaver suit to entertain school-kids — gotta love minor-league ball — my family and I soon found ourselves witnessing the trials and tribulations the state softball tournament had in store.

Before the first game, my exposure to softball was about as limited as the rights of a Gitmo detainee. To me, softball was little more than a poor (or at least overweight 40-year-old) man's baseball. Therefore, with a dash of adolescent chauvinism, I went into the opening playoff game with a smarmy attitude and a dour outlook. Entering the warm, breezy stands, I saw the girls tossing the cantaloupe-sized ball around the 60-foot base-paths and taking their hacks with the tiny-barreled bats. "Simpletons", I thought. "Where's the difficulty? Where's the intrigue? Where's the danger?"