In sports - ie hockey, when a player
makes 3 goals, they call it a "hat
trick". Where did that expression
originate?

I've asked this question for ages!
I've heard lots of different answers,
but no one is REALLY certain of the
true origin....Does anyone here know?

Here's the answer, Tree: Kinda interesting


http://www.guelphmercury.com/
news/special/175_anniversary/
news_special_020406131949.html

[This message was edited by Kelleygirl on 08-17-03 at 01:59 AM.]

The only explanation I have ever come across is that it originates in cricket. It is rare for a bowler to take three wickets with successive deliveries. On those few occasions when this was achieved the bowler would be presented with a hat as a souvenir of the feat. This 'prize' is not so very odd when you think how men once wore hats everyday. Cricket dates back to at least the C18 . There are old pictures of cricketers even playing while wearing hats. The hat is usually said to have been a silk one.

Now the explanation needs an explanation! The bowler has the role of the pitcher in baseball. The delivery is equvalent to the pitch; the ball is delivered running ,from a straight arm over the head hurling it downwards, and the ball hits the ground a few feet in front of the batsman. 'Wicket' here means that the batsman is 'out'; so the bowler has ended the innings of three batsmen in consecutive goes.

The word bowler has nothing to do with hats in cricket though. The bowler is called that because he originally bowled the ball ( as in ten- pin bowling now). The overarm method was allegedly invented by a woman who found that her skirts interfered with the movement; men soon saw the advantages. The term ' bowler' for a type of hat has completely different origins.

I researched this a few years ago. While I no longer have the source, I remember enough of the details to speak about what I found.

Many sites give the origin as a hat maker in Canada, who would give a new hat to anyone scoring 3 goals in a game played with the city's team. Most of the sources were very specific, giving dates, teams, use of the word in a newspaper, and some even gave the hat makers name. This was in the late 1800s.

Usually, I accept such a source if it is as specific as some of those were, but for some reason, I kept serching, and found an extremely well-documented source that gave the origin as Fred says, and it pre-dated the hat maker story by many years.

Since both explanations had excellent sources (complete with the hat maker's ad as well as proof of the use of the phrase in a newspaper in the hat maker story, and newspaper clippings showing the use of the phrase in the cricket story), and a complete lack of any other explanation, one has to accept the cricket story. It is certainly plausible to believe that the Canadian hat maker got the idea from the cricket term.

If two different origin stories have relatively equal, well-documented source material, and there is no other reason to dis-believe either except the existence of the other ( e.g. glaring chronological errors in one), one must accept the earlier of the two as the truth, regardless of one's desire to believe the later, more widely known story. But some people will continue to believe what they have previously accepted as the truth, regardless fo facts. In Trivia, I still have trouble getting people to accept some extremely well-documented things because they already know what "everybody knows."

[This message was edited by Doriangreyed on 08-17-03 at 09:11 AM.]

This is in the website that I gave earlier:

The term hat trick itself comes, not from hockey, but from the English sport of cricket. In 1858 a cricket player in England took three wickets with consecutive balls and, as a reward, his club gave the bowler a new hat, hence the name "hat trick."

Originally, a hockey hat trick meant three goals in a row, with no intervening goals by either team. No one knows who scored the first hat trick in hockey, but Bill Mosienko holds the record for the fastest hat trick -- three goals in 21 seconds. It happened March 23, 1952 and Mosienko was playing for the Chicago Blackhawks in a game against the New York Rangers.

Here's a clickable version of Keleygirl's link

I expect our Canadian hat-maker simply saw an amusing way of promoting his business.He is surely certain to have been familiar with the cricket term; it seems unlikely that Canada, a British dominion, did not have cricket played from way back ( it is even played there now).Every other former British possession does, from when the British arrived ( it gets everywhere with us; there's even a pitch within the Embassy in Baghdad !).

It would be strange indeed, on the other hand, if cricket, which has had the term for a very long time, imported the term from (Canadian) ice-hockey, a game totally unknown and never played here until the 1950s ( and then by teams made up mostly of players imported from Canada ).How would cricketers have got to hear of it in the C19? Wisden , the cricketer's annual record book has been recording 'hat-tricks' as such even in those years, each year.

Now all we have to do is stop people thinking that Abner Doubleday or, before him, Alexander Cartwright invented a whole new game and gave it the original, novel, title, 'baseball'! (What they did was formalise the game of baseball, so familiar to Jane Austen, who refers to it.In parts of Britain it is still called that though 'rounders' is how the old game is better known) This could be dangerous territory; I'd best leave !

Fred, I knew the word(s) base ball appeared in print in the 1790, but have forgotten exactly where. Can you tell me exactly where?

I also have read that one of Washington's soldiers commented, in a letter home, that the General often could be found 'having a catch.'
(I think that was the phrase used.)

"It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket,baseball,riding on horseback and running about the country at the age of 14" Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen started this novel in 1796, finished it in 1803 and it was published in 1818.

I find that there are several mentions in Google of a reference to 'baseball' in a book of 1744, The Little Pretty Pocket Book. It has a helpful woodcut too showing the batter/batsman receiving a delivery. He is standing in the classic pose of all baseball batters with the bat up in the air at waist/chest high and the bat is like a baseball bat , not a cricket bat ( which is flat and wide). It is captioned 'playing ball' but the text refers to baseball by that name.One source says it mentions rounders too; this would be no surprise as the game could go under local names or two games could easily co-exist , fundamentally the same but which differed in detail ( Rugby League and Rugby Union football come to mind; both are 'rugby' but you'd soon notice the different procedures when the ball went out of play, for example).

Rounders has a very marked similarity to baseball too.It is usually cited as baseball's ancestor by Englishmen who are not familiar with the old word 'baseball' or any local variants with that name. Rather like soccer in the US rounders is played by young children ( I stopped at 11) or girls.

The 'baseball' I have seen being played in the UK is Welsh baseball ( played by men; Welsh women are not allowed 'manly' things " Dew, mon, back to the kitchen and the sewing, girls!" ) . There is a league and the game may be seen all summer in Wales. The game resembles US baseball ( though I gather that the Welsh baseball cap is of quite different design !).There are, I am assured , differences in rules though it looks outwardly much same to an innocent like me.It seems, for example, as though once a batter has returned to 'home base' he is not then retired but goes on until out. In this it would resemble cricket ( and rounders).

The true Welsh, of course, would avoid cricket ( it's played by the 'Sais', the English) so Welsh baseball ( 'beisbol', I think, in Welsh; obviously they don't call it Welsh) should continue to flourish !

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 08-18-03 at 02:15 AM.]