Hail Mary

Today was the start of the American Football season.  It is my favorite sport, so I wanted to tackle the phrase ‘Hail Mary.’  In American football, a Hail Mary is a play where the quarterback throws the ball as far as he can (hopefully in the endzone [scoring zone]) and the other players try to catch it.  The play is usually not successful, and it requires some luck along with skill.  The play is only attempted as a last chance.  There was one Hail Mary in the game today, but it was unsuccessful.

The reason why it is called a Hail Mary is because you are sending up a prayer.  This means that the only way for the play to be successful is to pray to Mary (mother of Jesus).  Hail Mary is a certain type of prayer and in the English world goes like this:

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of they womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen. 

A successful Hail Mary passing play is rare.  Completing one of these passes is very unlikely.  The idiom, Hail Mary, is when you attempt something that is very unlikely.  A lot of the dictionaries I looked at did not include this definition, but grammarist.com agrees with me that the phrase has moved out of the football context to talk about desperate situation.  I would say that it is still a rare phrase that is mostly used in North America.

Example:  The investors didn’t like any of her previous ideas and she was not confident of this one, but it was time for a Hail Mary. 

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Reference:
https://grammarist.com/idiom/hail-mary-play-or-hail-mary-pass/
https://www.idiomsandslang.com/hail-mary-n-adj/
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/reid-sinnett-miami-dolphins-quarterback-hail-mary-nfl-preseason-football-highlight