Seattle1
06-26-2007, 03:33 PM
Is the MSNBC news talk show "Hardball with Chris Mathews" named after baseball? Did Mathews choose the name Harball because he is a big baseball fan, or simply because the word Hardball is a good colloquialism for blunt political dialogue?
Dirt Dog
06-26-2007, 08:38 PM
The title of the show was taken from a book Matthews wrote in 1988.
http://a7.vox.com/6a00c2251c39da604a00c2251cb59f549d-500pi
The "hardball" part of a journalist is asking straight-forward, hard-hitting questions that sometimes make the person being interviewed to feel uncomfortable and sometimes the questions may cause confrontations. The kind that doesnt pull any punches as opposed to a journalist that asks "softball" type questions; the easy, comfortable type questions that doesn't make one feel uncomfortable.