It’s not that I collect pet peeves; they just appear and join the ones I already have. Take, for example, the sentence I read Tuesday in an otherwise fine article on ESPN.com. It just leaped off the computer screen and slammed me in the face.
Written by Wallace Matthews, the article was about baseball’s increasing use of defensive shifts and their effect on the game. A worthwhile piece, I thought as I read it, and well explained. Then came this paragraph:
“Since 2006, the number of runs scored in Major League Baseball has plummeted from 23,599 to 19,761, and among the insiders” (talk about pet peeves; I deplore that word and what it is intended to mean) “ESPN.com spoke to for this story, there is the belief that it is partly due to base hits being taken away by the shift. In fact, one Yankees executive predicted baseball would never see another .400 hitter because of the shift.”
How could any baseball executive say that, and how could any baseball writer write it without stating the obvious? Do Wallace Matthews and the unnamed Yankees executive know when someone last hit .400? Have they ever heard of Ted Williams? Do they know when he hit .400? Do they know it was 75 years ago, in 1941? Do they know that no one has hit .400 since? Do they think defensive shifts have had anything to do with no one hitting .400 since Williams hit .406?
In fact, as long as Matthews was writing about shifts, he might have mention that Williams was probably the first player against whom a shift was employed. But to say or write that shifts will be the end of the .400 hitter when baseball hasn’t had such an animal for 75 years is ludicrous.
Fortunately, writers do not have as much influence on young readers as sportscasters have on young listeners. That may be because young readers are apparently becoming extinct. Kids of an impressionable age do not read newspapers, and if they are reading the Internet they read little of significance. But I have long believed that sportscasters have the greatest influence on young people’s speech.
That is not good, given the state of sportscasting today. We are not surprised to hear former players turned announcer or analyst trashing the English language. But there are some former players from whom we have reason to expect more. Ron Darling, a Mets’ analyst and former major league pitcher, is an example of this group. However, what we expect is not necessarily what we get.
On a telecast the other day. Darling referred to a St. Louis player (I missed his name) as “one of their clutcher hitters.” Shortly after that gem, he said, “… to see Keith and I.” He also said “that ball would have went between his legs…”
Darling played baseball for three years at Yale University. I don’t know if he took any English classes. I also don’t know if there is a secret Ivy League language with which I am not familiar,
As Yale president, A. Bartlett Giamatti was a Darling fan.
“We’ve had professional athletes before, but no one who’s performed at Ron’s level,” the late baseball commissioner, once said. “I’m always a little sad when a person of his ability doesn’t finish Yale, but I’ve corresponded with Ron and he said he had every intention of finishing.”
Giamatti, an English language perfectionist, died before Darling became a baseball analyst so he never heard him butcher the language.
Besides butchering the English language, some announcers broadcast in the future tense even though what they are saying will happen has already happened. An announcer, for example, says a runner “will score” when television viewers have already seen him cross the plate. The other night an announcer said a player “will get a double” when the runner was standing on second.
I used to think the New York Yankees announcers were the only ones who broadcast in the future tense, but the more games MLB TV carries the more announcers I hear and the more future tense and more mistakes I hear.
I once asked Vin Scully if he ever broadcast in future tense and I think he thought I might be cuckoo. I explained what I was talking about, and he was incredulous.
I, on the other hand, continue to be incredulous at the disappearance of baseball coverage. I thought some of the shrunken space might be restored once the Olympics were over, but I was wrong. The way The New York Times sees baseball today is it is a minor sport, having no standing in comparison with soccer, rugby, tennis, golf, croquet, curling, ping pong, synchronized swimming and cup stacking.
Wednesday’s edition told me all I needed to know (as if I did not already know). The paper carried scores of five games. That means the games were over before that edition was published. But the paper carried nothing on the games, not even a mere sentence the Times had been running on each game.
The only mention of baseball came in a brief report that the Texas Rangers had asked waivers on Josh Hamilton for the purpose of giving him his unconditional release.
Baseball was a Times staple for more than 100 years. However, in the Times’ desperate effort to save itself from extinction, baseball has become irrelevant, and the elderly readers who have supported the newspaper for decades also apparently have become irrelevant.
Some I know of have canceled their subscriptions. I would cancel mine, but my wife wants to keep it because she likes the Sunday magazine, the Book Review and the Style section. She doesn’t read the sports section. Neither do I any more.