Monday, October 19, 2009

Found on My Bulletin Board

I recently purchased a new Twins/Target Field calendar through eBay. I know, I know, I hate the people who buy cheap seat tickets only to get the stadium giveaway and then skip the game and hurry to their computer to list it on eBay too. But I really wanted the calendar, and I couldn't make it to that game.

I wanted to hang it up right away, because the old one, even though it's cool, is the Metrodome Memories calendar (which I got from a friend who actually went to the game and stayed for the whole game, but didn't want the calendar) and I want to move on from remembering the Dome.

So, anyhoo, because the new one is wider than the old one, I had to rearrange my bulletin board. And in amongst pictures of my kids, six Dilbert comics, a notecard with unicode shortcuts, a Post-It note with RGB codes, my notary license, a document routing checklist, my dentist appointment reminder card, and a Jimmy Johns menu was a little note I wrote last spring (I have now idea how I forgot it was there).

Right before the season started, I was listening to one of the shows on MLB on XM radio, and they were making their projections based on some Vegas line for total wins. I wasn't really interested in their predictions, but I did write down the over/under and my predictions for the AL Central. Here's how it wound up:




O/Uk-broActualResult
CWS78 1/2O79win
CLE85 1/2U65win
DET81 1/2U86fail
KC75 1/2O65fail
MIN83 1/2O87win

So, it's probably a good thing that I'm not a betting woman. Actually, I know it's a good thing I'm not a betting woman; I have so many other things to spend money on. Like shoes. Or books.

Anyway, the one remarkable thing is who Vegas thought would win the division. Yup. That would be the tied-for-last-place Cleveland Indians. Wow. I bet they lost a dollar or two on that line. I thought it was interesting.

~~~~~~

I'm feeling snarky again, so it's time for another episode of:

When Baseball and Bad Writing Collide.

Found on Monday on my favorite MLB rumor site and grammar/spelling/writing error zone -- FOXSports.com's Ben Maller's Rumors.



I'm super glad that our Joe visits sick kids in the hospital. I'm even more glad that he doesn't want a bunch of publicity for it. But, check out that headline.

The first time I read it, I couldn't even figure out what the hell it meant. I know everyone makes mistakes, but this is supposed to be a professional website; a little proofreading might be nice. There's so many things wrong with it, I'm not sure I can name them all.
  • Why is "Hospitals" capitalized? In this case, it's a general term, not a proper noun, so it shouldn't be.
  • Speaking of "Hospitals," why is it pluralized. The story talks about him going to one hospital. Even though it's possible he's done this before, in this case, it should be a singular "hospital."
  • "Without" is one word. Because it is two, I read "out" as a modifier for "new" and I thought he went with some "out new" thing.
  • It's a "news" release, not "new" release.
  • It could be argued that "Twins" should take a possessive apostrophe, as, technically, Joe Mauer belongs to the Twins, but this site consistently does not use one when they write about a team and its player. In my opinion, they should.
(The story itself is from the Pioneer Press, but the headline is written by some poor FOXSports webmonkey.)

Ok, sorry about the lengthy grammar lesson. I can't help it.

2 comments:

thrylos98 said...

think of "Hospitals" grammatically as of "the Internets", grammatically... 'nough said? ;)

THE GRAMMARPHILE said...

I am appalled that anyone dared to let grammar mistakes show up in the vicinity of Joe Mauer's name. Jerks! He is way too awesome to be burdened with that sort of nonsense! :)