Word: gab
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Gift of Gab. Time was when pro ballplayers were "tobacco-chewing rowdies" who ran out their brief careers with little to show for their days on the diamond. Of the nine regulars on the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, first big-league team of all, only Shortstop George Wright went on to become a successful businessman (Wright & Ditson, sporting goods). The rest stayed only a pitch or two ahead of the bill collectors. One died in a San Fran cisco poorhouse; sentimental fans saved another from a pauper's grave. Growing prestige, says Professor Gregory, has opened a new world...
...ballplayers' credit, they have also slowly learned to gab in their own behalf while still in uniform. Though they have never really joined organized labor-four separate unions have flopped, and they have never managed a successful strike-each team has its player representative. If trivial requests have failed (one Philadelphia muscleman thought dugout benches needed foam-rubber cushions), earnest efforts to improve conditions have built the pension system and boosted minimum salaries...
...gold clad roundabout horses, or fail to win a thing at any of the booths . . ." The booth marked "Modern English Theatre," O'Casey seems to believe, is rigged by a bunch of gyp-artists. First off, there are the critics, "death-or-drivel boys gunning with their gab from their pillboxes . . . those who take a step forward to enthrone imagination in the theatre and make it more of a temple and less of a den of thieves." Actors are bad actors: "They talk as themselves, dress as themselves, move about as themselves, and feel to be themselves. They...
Novelist Alec Waugh, Evelyn's elder brother, can squeeze out this sort of dialogue as fluently as any large-sized tube. To his gift of the gab, Alec adds a bird's-eye view of life: his new novel is fairly crammed to the horizons with ever-speaking likenesses. The book is a Literary Guild selection for January, has been condensed, serialized, and bought for the movies...
...General Motors Building. As he scans the reports from G.M.'s earth-girdling ventures in autos, Frigidaires, diesel locomotives, radios and earthmovers, he becomes again the eagle-sharp comptroller who can tell from figures how men and machines are doing. His predecessor, rumpled Engineer Charlie Wilson, used to gab cheerfully with friends, and occasionally gave friendly advice to some of his lesser competitors, such as Nash and Kaiser. Curtice rarely finds time for such activity, a fact that has not endeared him to his fellow corporation executives outside of G.M. For example, Curtice is a member of the Department...