PETA suggests a new, animal-friendly name for the baseball bullpen: arm barn

Greg Giesen, The Virginian-Pilot
·1 min read

This call to the arm barn is brought to you by PETA

Arm barn?

Arm barn is the “animal-friendly” term the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whose Norfolk-based headquarters is a long fly ball from Harbor Park, suggested for baseball bullpens.

PETA prefers that relief pitchers get a call from the “arm barn.”

“Words matter, and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals,” PETA executive vice president Tracy Reima said in a release Thursday. “PETA encourages Major League Baseball coaches, announcers, players and fans to ‘changeup’ their language and embrace the ‘arm barn’ instead.”

PETA’s release says the term bullpen “references the holding area where terrified bulls are kept before slaughter.”

According to Wikipedia, ‘bullpen’ has been used to refer to where pitchers warm up since the late 1870s, with the Oxford English Dictionary noting the earliest recorded use was in a Cincinnati Enquirer story published May 7, 1877.

The term has various origins ranging from being named after the Bull Durham tobacco sign to a place where pitchers sit before being led into slaughter.