While researching mulligan, Idiomation became aware of the expression swat mulligan as it referred to Babe Ruth and Walter Hagen. As luck would have it, this wasn’t difficult to research.
The idiom swat mulligan is derived from the name of a infamous albeit baseball slugger — as written by Bozeman Bulger (22 November 1877 – 23 May 1932) — who played for the Poison Oaks of the Willow Swamp League who performed prodigious batting feats. The famous slugger’s name was Swat Mulligan and one of his adversaries was Fahrenheit Flingspeed and his egg pitch.
The news stories first appeared in the Evening World News newspaper of New York City in time for the start of baseball season in 1908.
Strong hitters in baseball and golf saw themselves compared more and more often to the great baseball slugger, and golfers of note began seeing reporters refer to them as ‘the real Swat Mulligan of the links.’
In 1915, the New York Yankees hoped to lure Swat Mulligan out of retirement to coach the team. In fact, reporter Hal Sheridan’s story appeared in the Seattle Star newspaper on 13 January 1915 with this opening paragraph:
“The negotiations for the services of Swat Mulligan as coach for the New York Yankees,” says Bozeman Bulger in the New York World, “are proceeding slowly but Manager Donovan thinks he will yet succeed.”
At the time, Swat Mulligan allegedly lived in Bobbletown (MO) and Bozeman Bulger shared the contents of various telegrams and letters that passed between Swat Mulligan and Bill Donovan (with missives to Bill Donovan being sent general deliver, New York).
Bozeman Bulger was a contemporary of Damon Runyon (4 October 1880 – 10 December 1946), and he wrote a great many “as told to” sports books. Along with being a sportswriter, he was also a newspaper columnist and a playwright as well as a lawyer. He joined the Evening World News newspaper in 1905.
INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Bozeman Bulger was a pioneer in the development of American sportswriting and developed the genre of ghostwriting by way of such sports icons as John J. McGraw, Ty Cobb, John L. Sullivan, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.
INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Bozeman Bulger’s father and grandfather were notable Confederate officers during the Civil War and prior to the Civil War, both had been newspapermen for the Dadeville Record.
INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 2: His grandfather was General Michael Bulger and he served on the staff of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. His maternal great-uncle was a noted frontiersman, and Bozeman (MT) gets its name from him.
The expression referring to a formidable hitter began with Bozeman Bulger in 1908 and has no affiliation to either the expression mulligan in either cricket or golf, but it certainly makes for an interesting side trip to the expression mulligan, doesn’t it?
Historically Speaking 