bush league

Related to bush league: bush leaguer

bush league

slang Subpar or inept; lame. The phrase comes from minor league baseball, in which some teams played on unkempt fields bordered by bushes, or in rural, "bush" towns. Primarily heard in US. Their operation is pretty bush league—no professionalism at all. The way you just let that forward go around you and score was bush league, dude—show some effort and play harder!
See also: bush, league
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

bush league

Anything amateurish or otherwise below professional caliber. Baseball teams have been divided into two broad categories. Major league teams, also known as the big leagues, have the most professional players who play in state-of-the-art stadiums. Then there are minor league teams, composed of players on their way up or down the baseball ladder and ballparks that range in quality from almost-major league to close-to-sandlot. The latter fields, especially those in rural areas, weren't always enclosed by fences; instead they had shrubbery around their perimeters. Hence the phrase “bush league,” where the level of play was far from major league ability. The expression quickly spread to any endeavor that was less than expertly done.
See also: bush, league
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • raised by wolves
  • mean well
  • rough edges
  • scrungy
  • meatheaded
  • rough around the edges
  • (a little/bit) rough around the edges
  • (a little/bit) rough around the edge
  • mow
  • mow down
References in periodicals archive
Craig Eisendrath and Melvin Goodman, Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are putting the World at Risk, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, forthcoming March 2004.
Writing anything now, after the fact, is strictly bush league and doesn't make up for this unconscionable (to the baseball fan) omission.
"It's not bush league. We want to present ourselves on a professional level," Crawford said.
Now, it can be said, the Filipinos are in the bush leagues. The political scene, indeed, is fatally flawed by an oligarchy that arrogantly refuses to recognize the merits of social justice, social mobility and income redistribution.
He would follow in their footsteps, further enhancing SU's reputation as the nation's foremost producer of sportscasters.<br />Costas' skills already were so refined by the time he arrived on campus, that WSYR, Syracuse's NBC television and radio affiliate, gave him part-time gigs as a weekend sports anchor and as the play-by-play man for the Syracuse Blazers, an Eastern Hockey League team that was one of the inspirations for "Slapshot," the cult classic comedy film about life in the brawling bush leagues, starring Paul Newman.<br />Costas has many fond memories of those days, when the fisticuffs in backwater hockey towns like Johnstown, Pa., weren't restricted to the players on the ice.
Due to the unprecedented outflow of talent from professional rosters, by 1945 major-league baseball "was played at a level that resembled the bush leagues" (1).
Destiny, by contrast, performed her athletic feat away down in the bush leagues, and so had to make do with the insults of a PETA farm club, the Animal Activists of Alachua.
Though the conditions were less than perfect, both of the raw-but-game pitchers threw fastballs in the 90-mph range during two recent sessions for scouts, raising hopes for at least a trip to the bush leagues.
If you get only 8-9 correct, you can still consider yourself major league; a score of 6-7 places you in the high minors while anything less buries you in the bush leagues for another season.
That it's the "bush leagues," with substandard reporting, writing and editing.
It's not surprising, then, that in baseball, a bird in the hand is worth three in the bush leagues.
A score of 7-8 places you in the high minors; 5-6 proper responses puts you in the bush leagues while anything less requires you to get immediate assistance from your local rules consultant.
But in the 1930s and 1940s, it meant a ticket to the bush leagues.