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image:Jacob's Field Fultz and Betancourt in the Bullpen.jpg

In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm-up before entering a game. Depending on the ballpark, it may be situated in foul territory along the baselines or just beyond the outfield fence. Also, a team's roster of relief pitchers is metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These relievers usually wait in the bullpen when they have yet to play in a game, rather than in the dugout with the rest of the team. The starting pitcher also makes his final pregame warmups in the bullpen. Managers can call coaches in the bullpen on an in-house telephone from the dugout to tell a certain pitcher to begin his warmup tosses.

Origin/other meanings for the term "bullpen"

The origin of the term bullpen, as used in baseball, is debated with no one theory holding unanimous, or even substantial, sway. The term first appeared in wide use shortly after the turn of the 20th century and has been used since in roughly its present meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest recorded use of "bullpen" in baseball is in the 1924 Chicago Tribune article from 5 Oct. II. 1/1.

Possible origins/theories about the term bullpen include:

1. During the Civil War in the United States, the notorious Andersonville prison camp featured a bullpen. "Though conditions were initially a vast improvement over Richmond detention centers, problems grew in proportion to the number of inmates. By late summer 1864, the prison population made Andersonville one of the largest cities in the Confederacy. At its peak in August, the 'bullpen,' built to lodge up to 10,000 enlisted men, held 33,000 grimy, gaunt prisoners, each one crammed into a living area the size of a coffin. Their only protections from the sun were 'shebangs,' improvised shelters constructed from blankets, rags, and pine boughs, or dug into the hard, red Georgia clay."The Demon of Andersonville, Carolyn Kleiner on the Confederate soldier who ran the Civil War's deadliest prison, by Carolyn Kleiner

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2002/story_kleiner_sepoct2002.msp Retrieved March 19, 2007. This wartime usage in the United States has occurred as recently as World War II. Tokio Yamane described conditions in Japanese relocation camps, referring to a bull pen within a stockade at Tule Lake, California: "Prisoners in the stockade lived in wooden buildings which, although flimsy, still offered some protection from the severe winters of Tule Lake. However, prisoners in the 'bull pen' were housed outdoors in tents without heat and with no protection against the bitter cold. The bunks were placed directly on the cold ground, and the prisoners had only one or two blankets and no extra clothing to ward off the winter chill. And, for the first time in our lives, those of us confined to the 'bull pen' experienced a life and death struggle for survival, the unbearable pain from our unattended and infected wounds, and the penetrating December cold of Tule Lake, a God Forsaken concentration camp lying near the Oregon border, and I shall never forget that horrible experience."PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED, Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, WASHINGTON, D.C., December 1982, Part I: Nisei and Issei, Chapter 9: Protest and Disaffection http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/personal_justice_denied/chap9.htm Retrieved March 19, 2007.