A fungo is a fielding practice drill in baseball in which a person deliberately hits fly balls in order to be caught.
fungo circles
Nobody seems to know for sure. A couple of explanations are: 1) The word 'fungible' means 'something that is exchangable'. The bat used to hit practice ground/fly balls is lighter and thinner than a regular bat and fungo may have originated with the bat as it replaces a regular bat when hitting ground/fly balls for practice. 2) There was a child's game called fungo where a batter would hit fly balls and after one of the 'outfielders' caught a pre-determined amount, the outfielder and batter would switch places. Click on the 'Origins of Fungo' link below to read about the theories behind the term.
The word Fungo has several etymologies: may be derived from the word Fungus as they are stale and used for practice, not actual play, related, could be some sort of paradigim thing: One Goes, two Goes, Three Goes- Fun Goes! while tossing the ball.sort of a blend word Fun- plus Goes. a Fungo stick is thinner than an ordinary baseball bat. Those are the etymologies of Fungo, I do not know who invented it, seems they used second-line bats for instructional purposes which makes sense like the reserves using second-line ( but perrfectly serviceable) weapons in the Armed Forces.l hand=me-downs. as it were.
Fungo
Flatbush - 1979 The Littlest Fungo 1-4 was released on: USA: 1979
athletic tape
That would be a fungo bat.
"Mushroom" in English is fungo in Italian.
Fungo bats are taped on the big end because they hit more balls than a regular bat and this protects the wood and allow it to last longer. Tape also allows the fungo hitter more traction off the bat so more fly balls or ground balls can be controlled better.
to tape it like a tennis raquet
"But I function" is an English equivalent of the Italian phrase Ma fungo. The conjunction and first person singular present indicative also translate into English as "But I serve (stand in, work)." The pronunciation will be "ma FOON-go" in Italian.