Belfast Pastimes

The Belfast Pastimes played only one season as a minor league team, in the Maine State League in 1897, before the league folded at the end of the year. But they hold an interesting piece of baseball history: according to the Belfast Historical Society, the terms "at bat," "on deck," and "in the hold" (now "in the hole") were coined at Pastimes games that summer. These were nautical terms applied to the batting order in a seafaring town, and the story goes that they caught on with the visiting Boston club and spread to the rest of baseball from there.