What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

He Could Throw That Speedball By You? (2 Viewers)

I just realized how much drinking there is in "Glory Days." 

Bumps into his old friend, they walk back into the bar for drinks. Glory days ensue. 
Girl that could turn heads? Friday nights after her kids go to bed, they have drinks. More glory days. 
What is he doing tonight? Gonna go down to the old well and get his fill with drinks. Prospective glory days. 

Sounds like drinking and reminiscing goin' on here, folks. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
scorchy said:
My cultural attachment comes from going to a dozen or so weddings of Jersey folk after I moved to the area after grad school - maybe half had some kind of weird Jersey Girl ritual near the end of the reception. They're a strange people.  Maryland folk ain't nearly so hung up on Kix.
Click to expand...
He may have been the first megastar who proudly flaunted that he was from Jersey -- it's even in the title of his first album. Given the lack of respect Jersey gets from much of the rest of the country, that had to have counted for a lot. 

 
Ilov80s said:
I get the complaints about Springsteen but I do love the music and the persona- even if it is a persona. 
Click to expand...
Yeah, I was really bored and on a plane back from Italy when I started this thread. I had like a month's sobriety and tons of coffee (and I was just agitated and dying to have a drink), so I put fingers to phone and came up with something that's always sort of bothered me in a literary way. 

Just an egregious use of dicked-up slang straight out of Springsteen's mouf. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
rockaction said:
Yeah, I was really bored and on a plane back from Italy when I started this thread. I had like a month's sobriety and tons of coffee (and I was just agitated and dying to have a drink), so I put fingers to phone and came up with something that's always sort of bothered me in a literary way. 

Just an egregious use of dicked-up slang straight out of Springsteen's mouf. 
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's a weird. Especially because fastball or curveball would have seemed to work just fine. I think curveball would have fit into just right actually. Why speed ball? I would love to ask Bruce. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ilov80s said:
Yeah, it's a weird. Especially because fastball or curveball would have seemed to work just fine. I think curveball would have fit into just right actually. Why speed ball? I would love to ask Bruce. 
Click to expand...
The way he draws out the word "speeedball" has always gotten me. 

I'm left with Occam's razor, which is that I think that artists and musicians don't really know either the technical or slang terms for particular sporting moments and he just ballsed it up. 

 
rockaction said:
The way he draws out the word "speeedball" has always gotten me. 

I'm left with Occam's razor, which is that I think that artists and musicians don't really know either the technical or slang terms for particular sporting moments and he just ballsed it up. 
Click to expand...
Very possible but no way all the band members, producers, etc. were unaware. He had to have been told that there is no such thing as a speedball and decided to keep it. Unless he was trying to portray the narrator of the song as the kind of person who would use the term speedball. Is there anything else in the song that is out of place like that? I really don't think it's the case but was this a choice made with some purpose?

 
Whoops. I just found this from an online Q & A

"I don't know, man. Speedball is a term from the '50s, so it's just an old term I heard my grandparents use at different times. So in the context of that, "Glory Days," I thought it was funny. I guess! I don't know!" - Bruce Sprinsteen via Mike Ryan on Twitter

 
rockaction said:
Whoops. I just found this from an online Q & A

"I don't know, man. Speedball is a term from the '50s, so it's just an old term I heard my grandparents use at different times. So in the context of that, "Glory Days," I thought it was funny. I guess! I don't know!" - Bruce Sprinsteen via Mike Ryan on Twitter
Click to expand...
Love the research. Possible it was some old timey thing his grandfather said or he thought his grandfather said. He just had the idea in his head and verisimilitude be damned, he liked how it sounded. 

 
Pip's Invitation said:
I try to rule y in or out early, because of how versatile it is. 
Click to expand...
Solid strategy, I guess. I lost my Wordle love about four games in, for some reason. Puzzles are meant to be graded, if you ask me. And I don't do graded work in my spare time. Just like I won't go to a bar or restaurant with a strict dress code. If I wanted to go to work, I'd go to work. 

 
kutta said:
I’ll just say, if you’re judging Bruce from “Born in the USA” forward, you’re doing it wrong. 
Click to expand...
We're not really doing that. And while I'm not a real Bruce fan, I'll leave the withering criticisms to others. I might appreciate those criticisms, but I'm not really joining in other than to laugh. I'm mainly here about the speedballs. 

 
scorchy said:
My cultural attachment comes from going to a dozen or so weddings of Jersey folk after I moved to the area after grad school - maybe half had some kind of weird Jersey Girl ritual near the end of the reception. They're a strange people.  Maryland folk ain't nearly so hung up on Kix.
Click to expand...
They should be hung up on Kix.  We all should be.   What an under appreciated hard rock band.  Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.   

 
I'm a NJ native who likes Bruce but is not a superfan. And I totally agree that "speedball" was a terrible word choice. Hey, no one bats 1.000. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a ####ing genius who also wrote "Then a hurricane came and devastation reigned", which sounds like something from a seventh-grade poetry contest.

Side note about "Glory Days": A few years ago, when I was in my mid-40s, I was running a half-marathon when that song popped up on shuffle. And let me tell you, it is pretty gosh darn demotivational to realize -- mid-race mind you -- that you're now the demographic for late-career Springsteen songs rather than his first few albums. (Though to be fair, I did at least make it out of Jersey).

 
ignatiusjreilly said:
I'm a NJ native who likes Bruce but is not a superfan. And I totally agree that "speedball" was a terrible word choice. Hey, no one bats 1.000. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a ####ing genius who also wrote "Then a hurricane came and devastation reigned", which sounds like something from a seventh-grade poetry contest.

Side note about "Glory Days": A few years ago, when I was in my mid-40s, I was running a half-marathon when that song popped up on shuffle. And let me tell you, it is pretty gosh darn demotivational to realize -- mid-race mind you -- that you're now the demographic for late-career Springsteen songs rather than his first few albums. (Though to be fair, I did at least make it out of Jersey).
Click to expand...
Look at me...my middle aged ### can still run!!

Grew up on Bruce, he had me till Born In The USA then I bailed. Almost like two different careers. Loved him in concert before he got all his causes, dude would play forever.

 
ignatiusjreilly said:
I'm a NJ native who likes Bruce but is not a superfan. And I totally agree that "speedball" was a terrible word choice. Hey, no one bats 1.000. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a ####ing genius who also wrote "Then a hurricane came and devastation reigned", which sounds like something from a seventh-grade poetry contest.

Side note about "Glory Days": A few years ago, when I was in my mid-40s, I was running a half-marathon when that song popped up on shuffle. And let me tell you, it is pretty gosh darn demotivational to realize -- mid-race mind you -- that you're now the demographic for late-career Springsteen songs rather than his first few albums. (Though to be fair, I did at least make it out of Jersey).
Click to expand...
Heh, I didn't realize there was some kind of auto-bowdlerizing script that rewrites the phrase "g#dd##m"

 
I was just enough of a fan where instead of waiting for the official live album I bought a bootleg on vinyl.  Album sounded like it was recorded on a potato.

 
Posted this is the other thread but apparently speedball is in the "official" Baseball Dictionary, with it's origin in 1918. So maybe it is something that was sometimes said far before our times? Still sounds all wrong.
 
Every time I hear that song I think how dumb that line makes him sound.

Trying to act like a ball player in the video was just as cringy.
 
I don’t even think the kids in The Sandlot would use the term. Just so far off the common baseball lexicon way before Born In The USA came out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Chadstroma
Youth Sports- Coach Jerk Move or Fair Game?
2 3
Replies
102
Views
2K
Chadstroma
Chadstroma
rockaction
The Overwhelming, Overweening Therapeutic Avalanche In Modern Consciousness
2
Replies
59
Views
1K
Ilov80s
Ilov80s
Chadstroma
Yet More Proof Women are Impossible to Please
4 5 6
Replies
261
Views
8K
Terminalxylem
Terminalxylem

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 3 (members: 0, guests: 3)
Top