Term covers all the bases

If the game ends with the home team at bat, it's a walkoff win because the beaten visitors are forced to walk off the field in disgrace.

Few of today's major leaguers can remember when they first noticed the new terminology, but there's little doubt ESPN has put walkoff into the mainstream of American sports talk.

And who started the whole thing?

Dennis Eckersley, of course.

''I hate to take credit, but I guess it was me," said the Hall of Fame pitcher who works as a studio commentator for NESN. ''It's not a good thing for a pitcher. You don't want to be known for giving it up. I'd hate to be the one talking about walkoffs like I was the master of 'em."

Hardly. The Eck's Cooperstown resume speaks for itself. But he did happen to give up one of the most memorable walkoffs in history and it was then that his colorful dialect made him the walkoff's mother of invention.

Eckersley and the 1988 A's were ready to close out the first game of the World Series in Los Angeles when Kirk Gibson limped to the plate and hit (by any measure) one of the 10 most famous home runs in baseball history.

Eck was talking walkoff before Gibson.

''Pat Dobson had a word for everything and I started to do that," he said.

Peter Gammons called it DialEck. Eckersley would talk about someone taking him over the bridge (home run). A guy who gave up a lot of homers was a bridgemaster. Money was iron. A particularly speedy fastball had a lot of hair on it. ''Sean McDonough didn't like it when I said that on TV," said Eck.

According to ''The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary," the first walkoff reference appeared July 30, 1988, in the Gannett News Service: ''In Dennis Eckersley's colorful vocabulary, a walkoff piece is a home run that wins the game and the pitcher walks off the mound."

''That's right," Eckersley said this week. ''It was always walkoff piece. Like something you would hang in an art gallery. The walkoff piece is a horrible piece of art.

''The Gibson one had a lot of play in it, but if it wasn't for ESPN, we probably wouldn't have any of this crap."

Today's Sox players agree.