Louise Bremner wrote:
> Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> Others have given you great references but have ignored the real
>>>> issue: What was your "rain check" howler?
>>>
>>> Not so much of a "howler". I'd guessed at its meaning from films,
>>> and so took it as a polite brush-off: "Thanks but no thanks". So I
>>> got somewhat miffed when someone used it at me, until he later came
>>> back and said he now had time--the movies never show that bit.
>>
>> You did end up learning of its origins in baseball, yes?
>
> Baseball?

Yes. If a baseball game has to be halted due to inclement weather or other
reasons before a certain point in the game, franchises without domed
stadiums allow spectators to exchange their tickets for a ticket of the same
value for another game in the near future. That's the rain check, although
the rain ceck is generally just a policy printed on the back of the ticket
itself rather than a separate piece of paper.

http://tinyurl.com/ia4z is a typical rain check policy.

> I might've guessed--so many Sepponian idioms do seem to come
> from baseball (I bristled when someone called me a pin-shitter, until
> I found out what it meant).

Take a guess at what "sticky wicket" brings to mind.

-- 
Kevin Gowen
"I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New
York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White
House."
 - Columbia University professor Eric Foner in the London Review of
Books, on the attacks of 11 September 2001. A new study has recently
suggested that the inferno that destroyed the World Trade Center and
killed thousands of innocents was indeed more frightening than the
rhetoric of the Bush administration.