Given the near-historic White Sox collapse this late in the baseball season, I thought I’d ask if anybody knows where/when the term “choke” came to be applied to sports situations in which an athlete or team has victory within its grasp yet fails to win because of a sudden inability to perform.
Checking Hyperdictionary, it appears the term was not used in this sense per the 1913 edition of Websters, and may therefore be a recent application. There is clearly some analogy between the common definition of “choke”–losing air–and the sudden change in an athlete/team’s fortune, but I’m looking for something more definitive…any cites would be appreciated.
My theory: Might it come from the choke valve of a car engine? If your engine is running and you accidentally pull the choke knob, the engine will die (I’m assuming manual choke controls were common on automobiles prior to the automatic choke; there was one on my Dad’s old car at least).
Sportswriter Roger Kahn referred to a competitor using the term in New York in the early 1950s (and given his matter of fact tone about it, I got the impression it was a familiar term), so it goes back at least that far. No clue about why the term was applied, though.
It’s cited in print as far back as 1941 in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang..
By 1950 it was so common in sports that when Jackie Robinson grabbed at his throat in a game between St. Louis and the Dodgers to signify that he(Robinson) thought that umpire Bill Stewart missed a call, Stewart threw him out of the game.
Principal Skinner: Milhous, your word is “choke”.
Milhous: Oh, I know this one. It’s so easy. “F-” [pause] Oh, man! [audience laughs]
Skinner: Stop laughing, it will scar him for life! [audience laughs louder] Heh-heh-heh, it is kind of infectious.