It probably won't be surprising that "old-fashioned pitchers' duel" seemed to come into regular use as a phrase in the 1920s. I searched through a bunch of old newspaper articles to try to glean an answer. I heard that cliche "We've got a good old-fashioned pitchers' duel" for the millionth time while watching the Cubs play the Diamondbacks last Friday, as Zac Gallen threw a nine-inning shutout for a 1-0 win, and I wondered, when did a pitchers' duel become invariably, ineluctably old-fashioned? Who was the first person to deem it to belong more to baseball's past than its present? Well. But for an announcer, writer, or fan, nothing is as old-fashioned as a pair of strong performances from a game's starting pitchers. Just about any aspect of a century and a half of baseball can lay some claim to being old-fashioned. You can call old-fashioned the thought of someone downing greenies before pitching a complete game for the second time in a week, or a guy laying down a sac bunt while trailing in the fourth, or even now, overinflated sluggers blasting 65 dingers a year off a whole society of pitchers who could barely touch 93 on the gun, and the moral panic that ensued. You can use it for Babe Ruth's diet of hot dogs and beer, or the golden-boy idealism of Mickey Mantle, or the segregation that disfigured the sport for decades. You can use it for the cosplayers in the park who play without gloves but with Civil War beards. Baseball's history is so long and variegated that the term "old-fashioned" can refer to just about anything.
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