My colleague Lauren Theisen mused to me earlier this season that there should be a phrase for when Aaron Judge and Juan Soto homer in the same game, a thing that has now happened 12 times this year. I appreciate the impulse; baseball doesn't become mythos without a cool nickname. What would the Bash Brothers or Murderers' Row be without their names? Just some guys hitting home runs. But the Judge-Soto pairing's demand for a moniker lacks staying power—to the looming distress of Yankees fans—given Soto's willingness to enter a true free agency.
This does not mean our duties to dinger nomenclature are discharged. The heart of the Yankees' order threw down the gauntlet on Sunday, with Soto, Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton hitting three straight home runs in the seventh inning of a one-run game to help put away the Rockies, 10-3.
It was the second homer of Judge's afternoon, his 51st, putting him on pace for 63, which would break his own AL record set two years ago. And as Soto took his spot in right field for the next inning, the fans behind him broke into a chant of "Please sign Soto." ("They have to talk to Cashman," Soto said afterward.) But that's not important now. What's important is that three things can't be back to back to back.
A mere "back to back" is fine. It conjures up the image of two sluggers, looking big and tough and standing quite literally with their backs facing each other. Would you want to pitch to these guys? No way.
But then you throw in a third back and it all falls apart. If the middle guy's back is facing the first guy's, it can't also be facing the third guy's! In this house we respect the sanctity of our metaphors.
Attempts have been made to justify the awkward impossibility of this idiom. There is a folk etymology that holds that it dates to the days of horse travel, and that a fast rider—a Pony Express–type—would mount his next horse immediately after dismounting the previous, thereby literally going from back to back. This works for as many consecutive horses as you care to imagine. The problem is that this is not actually where the idiom comes from.
The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest example of the phrase back-to-back being used as an adjective dates from 1845, and refers to a method of housing construction where dwellings faced opposite, their backs nearly touching. Back has always implied a front.
Gradually, the idiom grew to encompass any less-literal instance of two things happening in quick succession. Always eager to spice up their copy, American sportswriters adopted it, though interestingly, not until after World War II, which means Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig would never have been said to go back to back by their contemporary chroniclers. The OED's earliest sports-related citation is from the New York Times in 1952, and describes two Yankees players hitting consecutive doubles.
It was natural that back-to-back home runs, when followed immediately by a third, would evolve into back-to-back-to-back sockdolagers. Natural but wrong! I defy you to draw a diagram of where the middle guy's back is in this scenario! Are we supposed to assume Aaron Judge is some mythical, double-backed creature?
I hear you mewing. Barry, maybe it's like in the photo on this blog, where three guys' backs are sort of touching? No! That's a stretch. And you'd better believe that when four guys homer, they call it "back to back to back to back," which can't be replicated in any physical manner without major surgery. Barry, it's Monday morning and I don't want to think about this right now. You know what, that's a fair point. Barry, maybe the backs are lined up, so you can just put as many as you want in a row? I'm so sick of your shit.
Don't even get me started on John Sterling's call, Lovecraftian in its anatomical implications, of "Back to back, and belly to belly."
Anyway, we need a new phrase for three consecutive home runs. Let me hear your suggestions; I'm a pedant, not an ideas guy.
