Name Origins
A key feature of bleachers is that they are typically uncovered and unprotected from the sun; thus the wooden seats were "bleached by the sun." The term "bleachers" used in this sense can be traced back to at least 1889. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary states that the open seating area was called the "bleaching boards", as early as 1877. Dickson lists as a secondary definition the fans sitting in them. By the early 1900s, the term "bleachers" was being used for both the seating area and its inhabitants.
In modern usage the term "bleachers" almost always refers to just the seating area, and those sitting there may be called "bleacher fans", or "bleacherites". Terms such as Chicago's "bleacher bums", or Yankee Stadium's Bleacher Creatures are also used.
Read more about this topic: Bleacher
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)