Origin
The term dugout refers to the area being slightly depressed below field level, as is common in professional baseball. The prevailing theory of the origin of locating the dugouts below field level is that it allowed spectators seated behind the dugouts to see the field, specifically the home plate area. Unlike most other sports, the primary action in baseball is centered around one area – home plate – and obstructing this area from fans' view, even if by players on the bench, would not be popular with fans.
Not all dugouts are located below the field level. At the major league level, the few dugouts that are located at the field level are in multi-purpose stadiums to simplify the conversion from baseball configuration to another sports field configuration. At such ballparks, the seating area is raised such that the dugouts do not obstruct the spectators' view. Dugouts are also at field level at most amateur ballparks, where locating them below field level would be cost prohibitive or otherwise not beneficial. In these cases, the term "dugout" still applies, as does "bench." In the early days of professional baseball, the seating areas were often constructed high enough that the bench was at field level.
Read more about this topic: Dugout (baseball)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)