The full OED supports MW's definition 5 of lace. as a verb. Here is OED's definition 7 (with examples): "7. To lash, beat, thrash. 1615 Band, Ruffe & Cuffe (Halliw.) If I meet thee, I will lace thee roundly. 1618 Fletcher Loyal Subj. He was whipt like a top; I never saw a whore so lac'd. 1692 R. L'Estrange Fables, Life of Æsop Go your ways .. or I'll lace your coat for you. 1783 Ainsworth Lat Dict. (Morell.) To lace, .. cædo, verbero. 1847 C. Bronte J. Eyre A .. switch .. waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm. ...

... 1867 Smyth Sailor's Wordbk., Lace, to beat or punish with a rattan or rope's end." I have often heard radio announcers doing play-by-play for baseball games say things like "Ohtani laces a screamer up the middle, and [the centerfielder] cuts it off on one hop." Equally common is the similar use of lash, as in "Tatis lashes the ball into the gap, and it'll go to the wall." As Dickson's Baseball Dictionary notes, the verb just means "to hit hard."

You are talking about the figurative usage of a different sense of the verb lace; and yes, you can find examples in sports context too. In your examples, "laced" is used figuratively to describe moving skillfully or nimbly through something or toward a goal. It implies a sense of weaving or threading through obstacles with purpose. The verb "weave" can be used figuratively in a similar sense also.

So laced as a verb, used in this sense, means "to weave between something"? So the use in baseball is only correctly used when the ball goes between two players into the outfield?

@Zach your question "does it mean". I'm surprised you haven't heard it used a zillion times, but I included many examples to give the sense. (To which your conclusion as to "what it 'means'" is as good as mine, or the OEDs, based on the evidence of usage.) Regarding use in baseball, when you say "correctly used .." people don't use metaphors flawlessly or "exactly", but I get your point for sure. It would "more properly" be used in sports when the object (say, a running back, baseball, or the many examples I quoted) involves something (let's say) wiggling past obstacles.

I appreciate that Sven's outstanding info is making the point "there is an old (1615) usage which meant something like whip". However in (say) literally the example given (by Barry Popik, in the almanac, in the OP), Barry Popik obviously means it as laced (ie, totally normal modern usage, as I am suggesting, and indeed as in the gazillion examples you can find, even in print, of it being used in sports to mean laced, ie the normal way every single human alive has, ever, used "laced!"), not to mean, "laced oh I mean 17th century whipped". (ie yes I'm saying the almanac in question is wrong, o

r, archaic). - ! so there! :)

Nevertheless, I appreciate that (just) 100+ years ago, a sports dictionary asserted that it means "whipped", so .. fair enough.

@Sven - "Ohtani laces a screamer up the middle, and [the centerfielder] cuts it off on one hop" (btw .. 50-50 !!) But surely that commentator was literally saying Otani laced it between them, Otani found the gap, got it through exactly where he needed to (as mentioned, for me laced is synonymous with "threaded that one up the middle to centerfield..." which indeed you hear) :O

To describe a ball hit weakly but for a base hit, sportscasters might say "he threaded the needle with that bleeder" or "he hit a seeing-eye grounder that slipped through the infield" or "the ball found a crease in the infield between shortstop and third base." I have always understood "laced" to mean "lashed" (i.e. "hit hard"). My interpretation could be wrong, but it's based on years of hearing the term used in contexts where "hit hard" made more sense that "hit in precisely the right place." And that understanding arose long before I read the entry in Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

Come to think of it @ZachSaucier the "correct, erudite" answer, as it were, to this question is probably indeed "a 'correct', early sense is whipped, lashed". However my guess would be that most eg. commentators using it have no idea of that, and, think they are just using it in the threaded, perfect-placement sense, and they are accidentally, as it were, using the correct, early sense!

By the way, the third edition of Dickson Baseball Dictionary (2011) has the same entry for lace that the 1989 edition does, indicating that the usage is still current. I think perhaps baseball and British football use the verb lace to mean very different things and that difference is at the heart of our disagreement.

Indeed: my guess would be that most eg. commentators using it have no idea of the early sense, and, think they are just using it in the threaded, perfect-placement sense, now morphed in to "just really fast" - moreover - I bet you a survey of 100 commentators using it, a good number would assume like @MichaelHall that it has something or other to do with laces/stitching.

Your extensive list of citations do not give any sources nor, more importantly, any dates. The OP is asking for the origin of the sport term. Telling the OP or just a visitor to Google "laced his way" is mildly patronising when you yourself could have at least posted three links to further support your answer.

And here's something else, Google is not the source it is the means by which you found these examples. It is like saying Google was the source if you had found the line: "shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Verb. Meaning "beat, lash, mark with the lash" is from 1590s, from the pattern of streaks. I won't bother giving you the source. And from Dictionary.com that is neither M-W or the OED, which lists at 6th position the "lash, beat or thrash" meaning. If you click the British Eng meaning of the verb to lace, we have in 7th position: informal. tr to give a sound beating to A meaning which I have not come across in my life, but then again I was born in the 1960s so it is probably dated but no doubt easy enough to "google up" BrEng examples.

In a comment you said: my guess would be that most eg. commentators using it have no idea of the early sense, and, think they are just using it in the threaded, perfect-placement sense, now morphed in to "just really fast" And I think you're right, that is how I might have interpreted it if I had seen it used in any context or sport outside of football (UK) as in to weave in and out quickly, but to lace meaning or suggesting to run or do something (very) fast is not listed in any dictionary I searched in.

@Mari-LouA I generally agree with those points (as has been sort of hashed out in the discussion). I feel that my comment above beginning "Indeed ..." (which indeed you quoted!) is pretty much the summary of the situation. Note that (as always on this site) things like "references" are largely meaningless / antithetical to the site; 90% of the questions on this site are "in spoken English what is.." to which the only possible answer is "I am a native speaker and in my opinion...". {It occurs to me it's surprisingly like the S.O. site! When a wide and handsome SO'er answers a question, eg,

.. stackoverflow.com/questions/746670/… there's no sense at all in which "references" or other logic are involved, it's just "opinion, logic, presentation"; someone else can and often does come along with a better opinion, logic, or presentation.) Anyway there is no way whatsoever for me here to "prove" (what would that even mean) something being pointed out like "Uh guys lace is a normal word with a direct meaning that is used ubiquitously to mean 'lace'". I don't really know how to "prove" such an exposition, observation. Jus

t finally regarding references. purely IMO (others may disagree) the era of citing references is gone. You know how when we were kids you would say something like "I recommend hotel X in that city, you can google up the address and phone number! ..." (I suppose for our grand parents, you would say something like "I recommend hotel X in that city, let me get the number for you from my notes and write it down! ...") In my opinion the formulation "I recommend hotel X in that city, you can google up the address and phone number! ..." is now as archaic as bakelite; nobody mentions facts any mo

re. You just state things and the ubiquitous AI systems everywhere will supply all the quotes, references etc :O Just MO !