upvoter222

upvoter222 t1_j1sol9g wrote

Aaron Judge broke the American League record for home runs in a season. The previous record was set by Roger Maris, who also played for the Yankees. And he claimed the record from Babe Ruth, who also played for the Yankees. The dimensions changed a little bit over time, but it just so happens that all of the relevant people for that specific record had played in really similar stadiums with a notoriously short right field fence.

Then again, when it comes to home run records, you can make a case that a dozen different people deserve the title of Home Run King based on whatever you consider to be fair.

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upvoter222 t1_j14q7hy wrote

The sport now known as American football or gridiron football changed drastically in the past century or two. When the game first gained popularity in North America, it started as rugby football and the ball was generally advanced by kicking it. Consequently, the term "football" had caught on during the sport's early days in North America.

It's also worth noting that were a bunch of different sports that had names which were variations of "_____ football" in the same manner as rugby football. One of those was association football, the full name for the sport known as soccer in the US and "regular" football elsewhere. Where did the term "soccer" come from? In the late 19th century, some slang was developed at Oxford University in England that informally used "_er" as a suffix at the end of words. For example, a five pound note would be called a "fiver" in this slang. These Englishmen applied this slang convention to the term association football, shortening it to assoccer. Over time, this got shortened from assoccer to just soccer. I'm not sure how, but this term made it from Europe to North America, where it ended up being adopted.

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