dying quail

But still passing muster, for now: ducks on the pond, dying quail, gopher ball and dog days of summer.

While it might be a single in the scorebook and likely becomes a line-drive single when he tells his future children, let the record show that Raleigh’s first MLB hit was a blooper, or a bleeder, or a dying quail, or a flare or whatever you want to call the soft pop-up off a 95-mph fastball from Marquez that broke his bat and landed just in front of a sliding Garrett Hampson in center field.

Not a blooper, not a dying quail or even an infield single.

There are plenty of baseball slang terms for the hit that pushed the Angels toward a 4-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night at Angel Stadium, none of them very manly or flattering — dying quail, jam shot, blooper, lawn dart, duck snort.

Estes, looking deeply uncomfortable, reeled back, and tossed an 87-mile-per-hour dying quail that went behind Clemens’s thigh.