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Bush League:
Bush league arose in American baseball, referring to the minor leagues, especially those not of very good quality. Players from the bush leagues were referred to as bush leaguers. The term has come to be used beyond baseball, so that anyone who is considered a novice or not skilled in some area may be called a bush leaguer, and his or her work referred to as [of the] bush league.
Now on to the etymology. Why bush? This arose, apparently first in Australia (later turning up in South Africa and New Zealand), from Dutch bosch "wood(s)", and first appears in written English in the late 18th century, referring to woods but also, and then later more exclusively, to uncleared, untamed lands, especially in the interior. It also came to mean "country" versus "city". By extension, bush came to refer, by the middle of the 19th century, to anything crude or roughly made, or a person practicing a craft for which he had received no formal training, like a "bush carpenter". That sense was picked up in America and applied to the minor baseball leagues, which often played in small towns and were not as skilful as the major league players. Bush league is first recorded in that sense in 1906, as is bush leaguer. By 1943 it was being used beyond baseball. In 1975 we find, "I don't care who she is and what she knows, compared to Polly she's a bush leaguer," from Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift (which, incidentally, won Bellow the Pulitzer Prize for 1976, and he won the Nobel prize for literature that same year).
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