A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from November 21, 2015
“He puts his pants on one leg at a time” (he’s human)

A popular sports expression is that an opposing star player “puts his pants on one leg at a time”—that is, he’s still human, like everyone else. “The Tech team Is just like any other. They can’t play but 11 men at a time and all of them are just like other men, have to put their pants on one leg at a time,” a college football coach said in 1925. “Hell, they’re just like all the rest of us. They put on their pants one leg at a time,” Lonnie Warneke (1909-1976) said of the New York Yankees in 1932.
 
   
Wiktionary: put one’s pants on one leg at a time
Verb
put one’s pants on one leg at a time

1. (idiomatic) To be a normal person.
 
2 October 1925, Abilene (TX) Reporter, “West Texas SPort Hash” by Reddy, pg. 5, cols. 7-8:
TExpressing the Indian coach’s opinion, “The Tech team Is just like any other. They can’t play but 11 men at a time and all of them are just like other men, have to put their pants on one leg at a time.”
(MacMurray College coach.—ed.)
 
28 September 1932, Ames (IA) Daily Tribune, “Guy Bush Has No Fear of Ruth and Rest of Yankees” by Henry McLemore (United Press), pg. 6, col. 3:
He said Lonnie Warneke summed up the Yankees best when he said: “Hell, they’re just like all the rest of us. They put on their pants one leg at a time.”
 
16 August 1933, The World-Herald (Omaha, NE), “Collin Discovers Big Shots Human,” pg. 13, col. 1:
But Collins, in a letter to a friend, brought these headliners to earth in unique language.
 
“These big shots are only human,” he wrote. “They put their pants on one leg at a time.”
(Conrad “Connie” Collin, captain of Creighton University football and basketball teams.—ed.)
 
3 March 1934,  Illinois State Journal (Springfield, IL)< "Name Schmidt Gridiron Coach at Ohio State," pg. 10, col. 1:

“They put their pants on one leg at a time, the same as we do,” was the way he dismissed a question.
(Francis A. Schmidt, Ohio State University football director.—ed.)
 
YouTube
Jim James puts his pants on 1 leg at a time
Jimmy Waldrip
Uploaded on Jan 8, 2011
american dad. jim james puts his pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else
   
Google Books
The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs
Compiled by Charles C. Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2012
Pg. ?:
Everyone puts his (All men put their) pants on one leg at a time (the same way).

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CitySports/Games • Saturday, November 21, 2015 • Permalink


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