“Well, that came from way out in left field!”
It’s something we’ve all heard, and most of us have said once or twice in our lives. The phrase, of course, means “out of nowhere” or “happening unexpectedly” and is so ingrained in our culture as an idiom, we rarely stop to think of its roots.
On a tour of Wrigley Field a couple years back, the plucky tour guide was throwing facts at us a mile a minute. He talked about the team’s original name, the establishment of the stadium, and a good mix of things I did and didn’t know already.