Baseball fans think this suggestion is a load of bull.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is being ridiculed yet again after imploring Major League Baseball to drop the term “bullpen” — the spot where pitchers warm up — due to its so-called animal cruelty connotations. The animal rights org dropped the questionable suggestion ahead of game three of the deadlocked World Series between the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros.
“’Bullpen’ refers to the area of a ‘bull’s pen’ where bulls are held before they are slaughtered — it’s a word with speciesist roots & we can do better than that,” tweeted the animal advocate Thursday. An accompanying article on the PETA site added that the vo-cow-bulary also refers to the area where rodeo bulls are “tormented into kicking and bucking by being electro-shocked or prodded.”
Reps for Major League Baseball didn’t return The Post’s request for comment.
In the name of steer sensitivity, the animal advocate proposed swapping the “outdated” term for the more animal-friendly “arm barn” in reference to the pitcher’s throwing appendage. Coincidentally, “arm barn,” PETA’s preferred term is a vulgar slang reference about one’s arm up an orifice on one’s own body, according to Urban Dictionary.
“Words matter, and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals,” said PETA’s Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages Major League Baseball coaches, announcers, players and fans to changeup their language and embrace the ‘arm barn’ instead.”
Suffice it to say, PETA’s proposition didn’t exactly hit a home run on Twitter.
“You do know there are not really animals in a MLB bull pen,” scoffed one detractor of their social media strikeout.
“BULLPEN REFERS TO THIS RATIOOOOO,” quipped one critic of the skewed proportion of comments to likes on PETA’s tweet.
“Do you think cows are more concerned with the word bullpen, or that their skin is used to cover baseballs?” snarked another.
Other bemused posters inundated the Twitter feed with mouthwatering pictures of steak.
Interestingly, the origins of the term “bullpen” are highly disputed. Cincinnati Enquirer writer O.P. Caylor is thought to have coined the term in a 1877 game recap.
“The bull-pen at the Cincinnati grounds with its `three for a quarter crowd’ has lost its usefulness,” he wrote at the time. “The bleacher boards just north of the old pavilion now holds the cheap crowd, which comes in at the end of the first inning on a discount.”
The sports scribe was referring to the area between the field and stands, where fans would mill about. The rag also observed that adverts for Bull Durham tobacco ads would be posted on stadium fences, on the opposite side of where pitchers would warm up, Fox News reported. Hence “bullpen.”
This isn’t the first time PETA has had a cow over fauna-based lexicon. This past January, the animal activists were ripped as “cuckoo” online after demanding that people stop using “speciesist” terms such as “chicken,” “pig” or “rat” as insults for humans.