Rook-connoiter

[00:00] Alright, well, let's get to an un-de-google rule.
[00:16] We do an un-de-google rule, that was the play of Super Excited.
[00:20] We told us we had to, sir.
[00:23] We said we signed up for it.
[00:28] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:32] Jason, you got one for us this week?
[00:35] Well, so we'll see how this goes.
[00:38] It's officially, slash unofficially, Ethan's first un-de-google rule.
[00:45] So we're watching the game today, and Ben Shepard did something awesome.
[00:51] I forget what it was, and I was like, yeah, way to go, rookie.
[00:55] And Ethan to anything you say is like, what's this? What's that?
[01:01] And he said, what, rookie? What does it rookie mean?
[01:05] And Jill and I looked at each other, and we were like,
[01:08] huh, I don't know why they're called rookies.
[01:13] Where does that come from?
[01:14] Oh, nice.
[01:16] Because a freshman is the first name for a first-year collegiate athlete.
[01:24] But why is a rookie a first-year professional?
[01:30] And as I understand it, this is the term used across all.
[01:35] Yeah, it's rookie in baseball, rookie in hockey.
[01:40] I guess they call them rookies in NFL, right?
[01:44] Yeah, for sure.
[01:45] Sure.
[01:46] All the professional sports, but not in collegiate sports.
[01:51] And not in high school, of course.
[01:54] So is it related to actually being drafted and paid?
[01:59] Because in high school or college, it's your first year.
[02:03] Right, right.
[02:06] So it does, I feel, need to be related to paid sports,
[02:10] but that's just my first thought.
[02:13] So you're rooking it in?
[02:17] There's the rook.
[02:18] You're a ringer?
[02:19] Yeah, there's the...
[02:20] Is there a relationship to ringer?
[02:21] Or am I just throwing in words that start with R?
[02:24] Let's start with R.
[02:26] I want to say there is the piece in chess, the rook.
[02:34] It shares mainly the same letters in the same order,
[02:37] but I have no indication that there's any connection.
[02:42] That's the one that goes diagonal, right?
[02:44] Nope.
[02:45] Is that the one that goes by L's?
[02:48] Is that the one that goes straight?
[02:50] It goes straight.
[02:52] But it can go left and right.
[02:54] And forward and backwards.
[02:57] The bishop is the one that goes diagonal.
[02:59] I feel like this has got to be something out of that field,
[03:02] like the falconry or something.
[03:07] Horse racing?
[03:08] Is there any way this is a horse racing room?
[03:10] Like the first time you...
[03:11] Because what is it?
[03:12] Like three yearlings?
[03:14] They have different things than yearlings and foals and whatever.
[03:21] Well, okay.
[03:22] I'm thinking it's from a different language.
[03:28] And the language comes from...
[03:32] It basically means first year or...
[03:36] Oh, no, no.
[03:37] Yeah, like not first year.
[03:38] It means uninitiated or wet behind the ears or something.
[03:43] And I'm thinking it comes from German.
[03:49] Or native American.
[03:53] Joey, do you know what a first year footballer would be called in England?
[04:00] I was thinking about that.
[04:02] I would call them a young person.
[04:05] Like they talk about people making their debut, right?
[04:10] Yeah.
[04:11] Getting your first cap.
[04:15] I'm trying to think that I don't feel like they use rookie that way.
[04:20] But maybe in the US, I hear that.
[04:24] Because sometimes too, the lines can be a little bit more blurred like in European football
[04:31] just because if you're on the...
[04:33] You may have like a practice squad or like a B team or something like that.
[04:38] I know like Barcelona and some of the other big clubs,
[04:41] they have just a B team who plays in a lower division,
[04:43] but it is actually...
[04:46] It's like the youth team.
[04:48] Yeah, they have all the development programs.
[04:51] Yeah, yeah.
[04:53] But some of those guys will come up for a short period of time.
[04:58] So then what's the oldest professional sport in America is baseball probably, right?
[05:05] It's got to be baseball, right?
[05:07] Yeah.
[05:08] Yeah, I agree with that.
[05:10] And I'm sure that they always called them rookies, right?
[05:13] I would imagine so, yeah.
[05:14] I feel like that's a thing that...
[05:15] What about boxing?
[05:16] And so that puts us in late 1800s or something like that.
[05:21] I mean, people always like fighting.
[05:24] Sure, 19th century.
[05:27] Yeah, because I suppose there's like a barnstorming and whatnot
[05:30] before Major League Baseball was formed.
[05:35] Would you say do you like boxing?
[05:37] Well...
[05:39] But I mean, I guess...
[05:41] So boxing doesn't have a season though, right?
[05:43] Right.
[05:44] So you're a rookie for the first...
[05:46] It's a season, right?
[05:48] One game.
[05:49] Yeah, I mean, there's no season of boxing.
[05:51] I mean, you know how it is.
[05:54] When you want to fight, you fight.
[05:56] So you're saying cock fighting, there's not a rookie season for the...
[06:01] I'm going to go out on the record and say I know nothing about cock fighting because...
[06:08] I'm just thinking that might be older than baseball.
[06:10] Could this be borrowed from another profession?
[06:12] Like, I feel like the term rookie cop is popping into my head.
[06:17] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[06:19] Oh, there we go.
[06:22] See, now we're getting somewhere.
[06:24] I hadn't even thought about that.
[06:26] There's always rookie cops.
[06:28] So again, that's a first year cop.
[06:30] There's two weeks of retirement cops.
[06:32] Everybody in between.
[06:34] And everybody in between.
[06:36] That's because I'm getting too old for this shit.
[06:42] But they don't stop calling you a rookie after you've been there for a year.
[06:47] Well, maybe you're a rookie until you go through some sort of initiation or something.
[06:53] That's what I'm saying.
[06:55] It's different.
[06:56] You're a new recruit.
[06:58] You're a first...
[06:59] Yeah, you haven't gone through any cases yet.
[07:02] But you can see how that could have adopted.
[07:04] Sports, right?
[07:05] Because, yeah...
[07:07] Or vice versa.
[07:09] Are you, I guess, cops before the sports or sports before the cops?
[07:13] Yeah, either way may work.
[07:15] But I mean, I think that the way I see it is that because there's defined regular seasons,
[07:23] then it's easier to just say, you're a rookie for this time.
[07:27] But yeah, for the police...
[07:29] Yeah, I mean, your co-workers probably aren't looking at your date of hire.
[07:33] They're thinking about like...
[07:36] You're either the new person or you haven't been here.
[07:39] You haven't seen any of the crazy stuff yet.
[07:41] Although, I mean, the thing with cops is that they come in in classes, right?
[07:44] Because you go through academy and then you're all inducted on the same day.
[07:49] I'm assuming that.
[07:50] Yeah, because I've seen a police academy.
[07:52] Yeah, but like the thing is, it's like in restaurants,
[07:55] I will call you the rookie until somebody's hired more recently than you.
[08:00] So you could be the rookie for three years, right?
[08:03] I think you're waiting for the youngest class to be replaced.
[08:07] But they don't do that every year, do they?
[08:09] Maybe they do, I don't know.
[08:11] They might do it multiple times a year.
[08:13] All right.
[08:14] Yeah.
[08:16] Yeah.
[08:17] Okay.
[08:18] So basically, it's still the recruiting class.
[08:20] It's still that whoever's...
[08:23] The youngest class is going to be the rookie.
[08:27] Yeah.
[08:28] Whatever that is.
[08:29] It's basically a mean, youngest class.
[08:31] Is it short for anything?
[08:33] So like Rook-a-noiter or anything?
[08:35] Rook-a-noiter.
[08:38] Rook-a-noiter.
[08:41] Yeah, you know.
[08:43] Rookie.
[08:44] Recruiting class.
[08:45] Is it short for recruiting class, Rick?
[08:49] I mean, we've had worse ideas.
[08:51] It sounds vaguely attached to me.
[08:53] I've got nothing else.
[08:55] The word itself, but...
[08:57] I'm going to go Native American, wet behind the ears.
[09:01] That's what I'm going with.
[09:02] Because I don't think this is a European phrase.
[09:05] I think this is entirely started by American cops.
[09:11] And stolen from indigenous people.
[09:14] Joey.
[09:15] And I'm going...
[09:16] I am going 19th century, though.
[09:19] Hmm.
[09:22] Yeah, I guess the root of the word.
[09:26] I'm struggling here to figure that out.
[09:30] But I would say 18th century or Shakespeare or Falconry.
[09:37] All right.
[09:38] You're saying old stuff.
[09:40] I'm going to go horse racing.
[09:45] Oh.
[09:46] And it's about a young horse.
[09:49] For horse racing, though...
[09:50] For horse racing, though, they've got a...
[09:52] You know, you've got a yearly schedule, right?
[09:54] Yeah.
[09:56] Sure.
[09:57] Yeah.
[09:58] And there's a first race and a second race and a third race.
[10:00] And then they shoot you.
[10:01] Not until your leg fractures.
[10:04] Or you're not going to make the money.
[10:09] Recorded as early as the 1860s for a new recruit to the military for...
[10:17] Oh, police force, sorry.
[10:20] Some think it was the very word recruit that was shortened into rookie.
[10:25] Others see the influence of an old verb, rook, meaning to cheat someone,
[10:30] supposedly alluding to how old timers could easily trick gullible noobs.
[10:35] So neither is true or both are true?
[10:39] It's unclear.
[10:42] At least from...
[10:44] This says popularized by Kipling in 1892.
[10:51] 19th century was correct.
[10:54] Yeah.
[10:55] And actually, I am seeing baseball usage as far back as 19...
[11:02] Was it 1908 for baseball?
[11:09] Or 1903.
[11:13] They say it is slang for new recruits.
[11:20] But etymology uncertain.
[11:23] Somebody else claims that it's first used by the American military during the Civil War.
[11:32] Lots of untrained and inexperienced soldiers into battle.
[11:37] The veterans labeled the incompetent soldiers as wreckies, maybe?
[11:42] Short for recruits.
[11:44] And then eventually that got transmutated...
[11:47] See, that feels truthy to me.
[11:52] You can see how wreckies becomes rookies, and how wreckies comes from recruits.
[11:58] I was just trying to figure out how recruit got to rookie.
[12:01] And that's not a bad way to go.
[12:06] I mean, I know that apparently we're not finding an actual answer,
[12:10] so I'm going to go with what feels truthy.
[12:12] Yeah, I am seeing that it's dominantly North American.
[12:16] But also used by the British Army.
[12:20] Okay.
[12:21] I am seeing stuff about chess as well.
[12:23] But let's say it's used during the Civil War,
[12:25] and then Kipling popularizes it in 1892.
[12:31] Yeah.
[12:33] Then it moves across the pond.
[12:35] I'm okay with that.
[12:36] Sure.
[12:37] Yep.
[12:38] Well, we were dancing around it.
[12:40] Yeah.
[12:41] We were.
[12:42] I see several references to chess, too.
[12:46] Yeah.
[12:47] Oh, really?
[12:48] Jason, I think you even said, is this related to recruits?
[12:52] Yes.
[12:53] And I think we should give you a gold star for the day.
[12:57] Well, thanks.
[12:58] I just said that because you said recruit in class.
[13:01] And I said, uh-oh.
[13:03] Oh, okay.
[13:04] Well, I wasn't making a valid point, and you picked up on it.
[13:07] I'll jump on that.
[13:08] Exactly.
[13:09] I was just word vomiting.
[13:10] Thank you.
[13:11] Nice work.
[13:12] All right.
[13:13] Well, I feel like I know more than I did before.
[13:16] Sure.
[13:17] And we don't have a...
[13:18] It looks like one of those that's actually under-googled.
[13:21] Truly under-googled.
[13:22] But some fun theories.
[13:27] Yeah.
[13:28] Thanks.