This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here. In 1979, Penny Pinkham wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Sportspeak,” a brief overview that provided readers—specifically those who might be novices to the landscape of professional sports in America—with the necessary context and lingo to fake their way through dinner-party conversations. Rather than writing would-be entries for Encyclopedia Britannica, however, Pinkham took a slightly more unorthodox approach. Excerpts include: Baseball players wear tight-fitting uniforms in stretch fabrics and they often display bulging paunches along with the bulging cheeks. They spit a lot and spend a lot of time in the clubhouse playing cards. Football players are called Bill or Steve, with a sprinkling of Bubbas. Their coaches are called Chuck. Most basketball players went to college at UCLA or North Carolina, except for those over 6’10” whose first and last names begin with the same letter, who are allowed to come to play directly out of high school. Many …