Another way Negro players coped with their wayfaring life in racist surroundings was to dream up their own lexicon. Most outsiders never knew because players never used it with them, and even if they overheard they would not have understood. Which was the point. It let players talk about fans, foes, and anything else without worrying about being overheard, the way immigrant parents used Yiddish, Polish, or Italian to keep things from their English-speaking children. For the baseball men, their language was about more than secrecy. It fostered intimacy. It was a shorthand for making their world
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