When Baseball and Bad Spelling Collide: Poster Edition

My teenage son is a typical boy who likes sports. His room is wallpapered in posters of athletes of all ilks. Consequently, he really enjoys his subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids. He looks forward to getting it every month, especially since the center pages pull out to make a poster of an athlete. 

His very favorite baseball player is Albert Pujols (yeah, he's a Cardinals fan -- I have no idea where this comes from). So, this month's edition of the magazine was especially thrilling as the poster was of Sir Albert himself. He immediately hung it up.

When he showed it off to me, well, something stood out and practically hit me in the face...

I've already expressed my displeasure on spelling names wrong, right? Yeah, well double that. You'd think that Pujols has been around long enough -- he's certainly good enough -- to have his name spelled correctly on the sidebar. This is Sports Illustrated, fercryingoutloud!


Who knows? Maybe the layout designer thought he smelled funny and was using a texting shortcut to express that (get it? P.U.-lols).

When Baseball and Bad Spelling Collide: Trade Edition

I've mentioned before that I love all things grammar, punctuation, and spelling almost as much as I love baseball. Thus, I have The Sentence Sleuth as part of my regular blog-reading regimen.

The proprietor of that wonderful blog, Bonnie Trenga, found this little gem:

The Sentence Sleuth: Picture That Goes with This Week's Poll

Hee hee! I wonder if poor Dan is feeling a little blue. Like this:

Be sure you stop by Bonnie's blog and vote on the poll she posted. And if you like quick grammar tips as much as I do, be sure to visit her blog regulaly.

When Baseball and Bad Spelling Collide - Double Play

One:

This, from my friends over at Alright Hamilton.

Er, it's PIRANHA.

So, this guy's been walking around with this, um, typo for four years. Dude, if you're gonna spend $100 (I checked; that's what the cheapest personalized jerseys cost) on a shirt, you might want to look the word up. And Google ain't good enough (trust me, there are plenty of misspelled blogs and websites out there to that display when you enter it wrong). Try a dictionary next time. Or at least heed Google's recommendation of "do you mean piranha?"

Thanks Daymonster for taking the picture and Haasertime for giving me permission to use this.

~~~

Two:

This, from my daily MLB rumor check, and oft source of material for this series, website, benmaller.com:
*blink blink* Wow. I know Soriano has had some defensive, um, adventures in the outfield, but it's no reason to lose hope. And why in the world would his manager want him to lose hope? Harsh, man.

But, then I read on:

Oooohhhhh! He's losing his little hop he does when tracking fly balls. Wow BIG difference one little "e" makes.

To be clear, the headline error does not belong to the Chicago Tribune -- it's all Ben Maller.

When Baseball and Bad Spelling Collide - Giants Edition

About a year ago, I told you about how the Washington Nationals had a smidgen of trouble with spelling the nickname of their team correctly on a couple of jerseys  -- Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman played for the "Natinals" for one game.

April is early in the season for the players; they're still ramping up to mid-season form. Apparently it's also early for the jersey-makers. Wednesday, outfielder Eugenio Velez played for "San Francicso."

 Image from CBSSports.com

Now, this one is a little easier to forgive -- I never spell Francisco right the first time (which is a pain because the Twins have a player by that name) -- but it's still kind of funny.

According to the article, he didn't even know until the reporter called him to ask him about it. But, really, who proofreads the front of their shirts?

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/U	k-bro	Actual	Result
CWS	78 1/2	O	79	win
CLE	85 1/2	U	65	win
DET	81 1/2	U	86	fail
KC	75 1/2	O	65	fail
MIN	83 1/2	O	87	win

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.

Quick Notes

I gotta make this quick. Like the evil magician guy from Frosty the Snowman says, I'm "busy, busy, busy." (He also says, "think nasty, think nasty, think nasty," but I haven't had opportunity or need to say that lately.) I've got two pans of bars to bake, some work to do, Bones to watch. Oh, and as I write this, there are about 15 high-school football players in my house, so I expect I'll have some picking up to do.

But enough about me -- back to the Twins. Nice sweep of the Indians! See how much fun winning is? Keep it up guys! Think winning, think winning, think winning.

Recap:

Monday: Twins 6 - Indians 3

Tuesday: Twins 5 - Indians 4

Wednesday: Twins 7 - Indians 3

Also, I'd like to give a shout out to the Kansas City Royals for handing two losses to the Detroit Tigers. Thanks guys -- stay good until we have to face you!

~~~

Another snarky episode of When Baseball and Poor Proofreading Collide: (from the FOXSports Rumor page)

This looks like a classic case of spell-check gotcha. Or maybe it's a straight-up typo (the I and O keys are right next to each other after all). No matter; this is the very reason that folks putting out a national website might want to take a minute to look things over before clicking "Publish".

But, that's not why I thought this was funny. When I saw "White Six," I figured it had to be a name of a band or something. A quick Google search didn't find one.

What it did find was a band named Shitting Glitter (which my inner 12-year old boy finds absolutely hilarious) and their song "The Incomparable White Six".

So if Jake Peavy wants to debut on American Idol or something singing that song, I say "Good Luck!" If, however, he's really debuting for the White Sox on Saturday, I've gotta say "Go Royals!"

A Good Weekend for Football

The Twins sure made it easy for me to get excited over football this weekend. It's a good thing they won on Sunday to save it from being totally painful for my baseball-loving heart.

Recap:
Friday: Twins 5 - A's 12
Saturday: Twins 2 - A's 4
Sunday: Twins 8 - A's 0

So football was the theme of the weekend. On Friday, I sat on some bleachers, getting chewed by mosquitoes, watching j-bro play and win his varsity game (and being very grateful that it only sprinkled a little). The periodic text messages regarding the Twins was the only downer for the evening.

On Saturday, the Twins played an early game so folks could enjoy the Gophers inaugural TCF Bank Stadium (which I like very much, by the way) game later in the day. I had the Twins game on the TV, but I wasn't really watching it because I was busy scrubbing my kitchen floor, vacuuming, and other cleaning. I probably would have watched more if the Twins had made it more interesting. It's too bad too, because I found out that they showed my friend on TV. Watching the Gopher game later was fun.

Sunday was the annual Vikings season opener party at above-mentioned friend's house. Everyone is required to wear purple and gold to attend. So I wore this:



Normally I'm a traditionalist, and this goes against everything I believe about wearing your team's colors (if you're going to wear their logo, it had better be in the right colors -- by the way, pink is never appropriate for an MLB team, except maybe for the mothers' day cancer research thing). But, for this party, I thought it was kind of funny. Everyone at that party knows I'm a big Twins fan, and they usually give me a ton of crap about it -- all in good fun, of course.

Anyway, the Vikings game was fun, and the text updates about the Twins game were fun too.

Also, my first ever fantasy football team did pretty well. And as long as my guy playing Monday doesn't get a ton of negative points, I'll win. So, that's fun too.

Add to that my hubby buying Madden '10 for my kids (no I don't play it, but I'll have to listen to non-stop for the next several weeks), it's a lot of football going on.

Don't worry Twins. Just because I'm not completely happy with you right now doesn't mean I don't still love you. But if you continue to drop series, I'll be more apt to watch football when given the opportunity.

~~~

I'm feeling kind of snarky. Here are some recent occurrences of When Baseball and Bad Grammar and Poor Proofreading Collide.

This is an email I received encouraging me to vote for Joe Mauer for the Roberto Clemente award:


It says, "As a Twins fan, it's a chance you won't want to miss." When you use a modifying statement at the beginning of a sentence, you have to put the thing it modifies right next to it. Always. So in this case, it is the Twins fan. I know a lot of crazy Twins fans, but I can honestly say that none of them are technically inanimate objects.

It should be written, "As a Twins fan, you won't want to miss this chance."

This one was on my Google homepage MLB scoreboard app:



I had heard that the Seattle - Texas game was delayed. Are they really intending to play it at 2:33 AM? Wow. I guess they probably won't take batting practice before the game. (Actually, as I'm writing this, about 8:30 PM, it's the bottom of the 2nd.)

When Bad Spelling and Baseball Collide -- Perfect Edition

Yes Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game Thursday. And as you would expect, that feat generated a lot of buzz -- some of it misspelled buzz.

Ok, we have to admit that Buehrle is probably in the top three in the "Hardest Name to Spell in the MLB" category. And I have to come clean -- I did indeed spell his name wrong myself in my blog entry. And as someone who often has her first name spelled wrong, I regret that error. However, I am not a pro. And to be honest, I was in a huge hurry when I wrote it. I fixed it just as soon as I found out.

First of all, it was a problem on Twitter. @MLB himself was none too happy about it.



Ok, fair enough. But most of the folks tweeting about weren't pros either. And maybe they were in huge hurries.

However, the St. Paul Pioneer Press is a professional and well-respected newspaper. They ran this article from the Associated Press. Notice how his name is spelled correctly in the article, but the headline writer didn't get it right.



Ok, that's probably a webmaster who works for the PiPress collecting articles and writing headlines. Maybe that person just didn't look at the very first line of the article to see how it's spelled.

I mentioned it on Twitter, and @Daymonster (who blogs at Alright Hamilton!) showed me this little gem from ESPN Chicago. (It's really hard to see, because it's kind of small, and it's wrong only in one place, but it's there.) Edit: Daymonster had to point out to me that it says "Pefect" because I didn't even notice it at first.


Ok, well it was only once. And it was fixed by the time I visited the site.

A quick Google search of the misspelling also yielded this local news outlet in Hawaii. Every instance is spelled wrong -- including the graphic on the video.



Ok, well Hawaii is pretty far from Chicago.

But, one would think that Yahoo! Sports would get it right, right? Not so much. Again, every instance is wrong.



So I guess I was in good company when I spelled it wrong.

But I'm pretty sure Mr. Buehrle would like it if people would figure it out.

When Baseball and Bad Spelling Collide -- Special Edition (Part II)

Remember the NATINALS uniform misspelling fiasco from a couple of weeks ago? Well, there's more...

The Nationals held an auction for charity and sold Adam Dunn's jersey for $8,000. Very nice.

The Washington Post had a little blurb about it. Ok, good.

And the FOXSports Rumor Page (you know, my favorite place to find funny errors) picked it up and came up with this:

*blink blink* miss spelled jersey? Who the hell is Miss Spelled Jersey, and why are the Nationals auctioning her off?

It's ironic, don't you think, that the headline talking about a misspelled jersey is, in fact, misspelled.

When Baseball And Bad Spelling Collide -- Special Edition

Sewing names on jerseys must be a difficult job, I mean with all those letters and all. And we've seen it before when the name on the front of a guy's jersey isn't spelled right -- remember last season when Adam "Adam" Everett had to do a last minute switch because "Minnesota" was spelled wrong on his jersey?

But it's pretty bad when multiple players have a big old spelling error across their chests for everyone to see.



And it happened to the poor Nationals too. Don't they have enough problems?

Hat tips:
http://www.totalprosports.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/the-washington-natinals-jersey-fail/ for the photo

http://redpeninc.blogspot.com/2009/04/misspelling-monday-for-april-20-2009.html for being the first to tell me about it

What the Hell Did I Do?

So, during my lunch hour, I sit down after warming up my Lean Cuisine frozen meal (or was it a Healthy Choice? -- I can't remember; it wasn't that good) and log on to Twitter and see this:

MN_Twins Scott Baker on disabled list; Liriano to start opener http://tinyurl.com/d4b5bl

"What?!?! Noooooo," I say out loud to no one in particular. I click on the link and see this:

There is word R.A. Dickey likely will start Friday in Chicago.

Oh. So that's it. It's my fault. I stated multiple times that I wanted R.A. to break camp with the team, and this is what happens. I forget, I need to be very, very clear when I wish for baseball-related stuff. In fact, I need to be precise.

So, precisely speaking, here's what I want:

• I want Scott Baker, Twins RHP, and Joe Mauer, Twins C, to be healthy and playing baseball by no later than April 15, 2009. (If there are other men on the planet named Scott Baker or Joe Mauer, I want them to be healthy, and if they want to play baseball, that's ok too.)
• I want Boof Bonser, Twins RHP, and Pat Neshek, RHP, to be healthy and playing baseball by no later than Opening Day 2010.
• I want Justin Morneau, Delmon Young, Michael Cuddyer, Nick Punto and any other Twins player who has aches and pains to stop having any aches and pains for the entire 2009 season.
  
• In fact, I want everyone on the Twins 40-man roster, the Twins minor-league system, the Twins organization, and the fandom known as "Twins Territory" to be completely free from injuries, illness, pain, owies, anxiety, nervousness, bad moods, or any other unpleasantness until no sooner than the final game of the World Series.
• I want any other negative thing that I haven't thought of to never happen to any Twins player ever.

There. That should cover it.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have the TV on MLB network, and they just asked, Who has the most wild pitches in a single inning?

And then they showed our pal R.A., when he was with the Mariners, here at the Dome, throwing four out-of-control knuckleballs. Remind me again why I want him pitching in the Dome again...

Actually, I'm completely convinced that it was all his catcher's fault. Our catchers would never allow such chaos.

~~~~~~~~~~

When Bad Grammar/Misspellings and Baseball Collide:
From my favorite source, FoxSports Rumors page. This one is great because it made me laugh at two different things.

First of all, this is proof-positive that White Sox players are really Bitch Sox. Apparently, they'll complain about anything.

Secondly,...



Um, yeah. He may drink wine while he does it, but I'm pretty certain that he whines.

My Bubble Guy

Every spring training, the players fit into three categories: a) those who will very likely go to the majors, b) those who will very likely stay in the minors, and c) those "on the bubble."


I feel for the bubble guys. I'm sure most teams would like to be able to bring up more than 25 guys. In fact, I'm pretty sure Gardy would like to stock-pile all the relief pitchers and bench players he could. But he can't. So the bubble guys work their asses off so they can separate themselves from the other guys and look more like they belong in group "a" and less like they belong in group "b". I can totally relate - story of my life.

So, every spring training, I select one bubble guy that I root extra hard for. Someone catches my attention and I cross my fingers for him and say little prayers for him in hopes of giving him a boost.

Last year, it was Matt "Tigger" Tolbert. I liked him because I liked the idea of a guy who personified perpetual motion. And my support worked...well, until he got hurt.

This year my bubble guy is R.A. Dickey. I like the idea of having a knuckle-baller on the team. And I've seen a couple interviews with him, and he seems like a pretty cool guy.

So, R.A., keep working hard and I'll do my part. And hopefully, you'll be an "a" guy come April.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, hey, our boy Dennys signed with the Cardinals. Good luck, Big Sweat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Bad Grammar and Baseball Collide: (I should just make this a semi-regular feature)

As I've mentioned before, I like to read FOXSport's rumor page to catch up on the goings-on around baseball. Last week, I stumbled on this gem:



Ok, a pitcher funning around with some radio guys usually isn't news-worthy, unless the pitcher pitches for the Red Sox. But, even a Red Sox pitcher funning about dyeing, i.e. coloring his hair, at a young age still isn't news-worthy. In fact, it's almost cliche (see A.J. Pierzynski late last season). However, funning about dying young might worry fans.

When [Bad] Grammar and Baseball Collide

As I've mentioned before, one thing I like almost as much as baseball is good grammar. And as a result, I like to make fun of poor grammar on professionally-made things. If someone pays good money on a sign or website, it really should be correct.

So, imagine my glee when two of my favorite grammar-centric humor blogs (or humor-centric grammar blogs) chose to publish baseball related entries on the same day!

First, from The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, we have this.

Not only is it unclear how many worlds the series applies to, but apparently SEPTA doesn't really think they're champs.

[For the record, you do not use quotation marks to emphasize words. You would, however, use them to indicate sarcasm or irony.]

Then, from RED PEN, INC. (the author of which also writes a baseball fangirl blog The BILF Report) we have this:


Because these biggest stars belong to the game, it should be game's, not games.

This isn't the first time that MLB has messed up on their e-publications. See here and here for proof. But they are also guilty of another apostrophe blunder. I saw this every time I logged into Game Day Audio to listen to day games last season, and it bugged me like crazy.

Again, because the games belong to the day, it should be TODAY'S GAMES.

Seems like MLB needs a good proofreader.

Oh, and check out the blogs I listed above. They're a ton a fun.

10 Business Cliches That Need to Die

No Twins news for awhile, so I'll talk about something else that's been bugging me. And if you pay close attention, I'll work in something remotely baseball-related.

On Friday, I sat in a meeting led by the CEO of my company. I believe him to be an intelligent man and a good business leader, but by the end of the hour-long meeting, I was ready to scratch out my eyeballs. He loves his business clichés. He used every one of the ones I listed below...Every. One.

I know he's not alone. The business world is adept at taking a catchphrase or buzzword and overusing it until anyone who hears it wants to hurl. And, because of that, they've also become meaningless noise or, really, a pause in the talk to collect one's thoughts.

I propose we start a coalition to end the cliché madness. This is a call-to-arms, people!

My List:

1. "Push the envelope"
2. "Think outside the box"
3. "At the end of the day"
4. "Have an impact on" (when the speaker means "have an effect on")*
5. "When the rubber hits the road"
6. "Step up to the plate"**
7. "Work smarter, not harder"
8. "Paradigm shift"
9. "24/7" (especially when it's not literal)
10. "Team player"

* "Impact" means "collision" and nothing more. You can have a metaphorical impact, such as "my third-grade teacher impacted my life," but it has to be huge, as if the third-grade teacher collided with your life path and changed it.

** The only people who get to say "step up to the plate" are ones talking about a baseball or softball player who is doing just that.

And I'm sure there are plenty more. Add more to the comments section of you'd like. And, please, do your part to squash these and other nonsense phrases.

Pardon My Nerdiness

I've been thinking about writing a post about Delmon Young for the last two weeks or so, but I can't seem to formulate any clear thoughts about him. In fact, I can't even agree with myself more than two days in a row regarding keeping him or trading him, so I think I'll forget about it. Actually, I don't really feel all that strongly about his situation either way. So, meh. (FYI, the word "meh" was just added to the Collins English Dictionary -- pretty cool for such a boring word.)

So, instead, I'll write about what I've been doing since the season ended. The silver-electroplate lining of the off-season is that I catch up on my book reading. And lately, I've been on a grammar kick. I know it may be hard to tell by reading my blog, but I do write for a living, so call it professional enrichment. (No, unless you're into reading user manuals for medical software, you probably haven't read any of my work.)

I'm currently reading Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty. I've been listening to Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty podcasts for awhile, and this book is a fun compilation of those grammar and usage tips. I enjoy her practical advice and friendly tone. She does a nice job of explaining the tips, and her style is easy to understand yet not "dumbed-down." This book is a good resource if you want to brush up on your writing skills or if you just can't remember if you're supposed to use "effect" or "affect."

Adding to my grammar-mania, I just finished reading Things That Make Us (Sic): The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar Takes on Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the White House, and the World by Martha Brockenbrough. Like Grammar Girl, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) gives readers practical grammar and usage advice. However, this book is absolutely hilarious. I had such a great time reading this, I was literally laughing out loud. This is a great book to read cover-to-cover for its entertainment value, and to have near your computer for its educational value.

Reading both these books has been valuable for me. They've refreshed my memory regarding some rules, and reinforced my interpretation of others. And I've been having fun.


more animals

Maybe next time, I'll come up with something intellegent to say about young Mr. Young. Or maybe I won't -- who knows.

Unexpectations

Twins 11 - Tigers 1

Ok, I have to admit that during the pre-game, I was really worried about this game. They were talking about how the Tigers have been playing well lately (notice that I didn't say "as of late" - that's another topic all together*), ever since the last time they played the Twins. And Livan was pitching, and we all know what happened last time he did that. To top it off, they were wearing the ridiculous pixie vests. In my mind, all this added up to a feeling of dread. Luckily, my instincts were way off. And if it turns out that the pixie vests were the good luck charms, well I guess I'm willing to give them another chance. It'll be interesting to see if Livan is superstitious.

---

My Dearest Go-Go,
Please be ok.
Love, k-bro

---

Speaking of Go-Go's injury, I was really impressed that Pudge marched out there to make sure he was ok. It even looked like the umpire tried to stop him, but he would have none of that.

---

My favorite thing about the game: Livan's 61 mph curveball falling in for a strike.

---

Sad news about Gardy's brother. It reminds me that I need to remember what's important in my life. Extra hugs and kisses for my family this weekend.

---

And finally, the "Ain't No Way You Can Get Me To Say That Word On Air Again" moment of the game: Dick-N-Bert were talking about Miguel Cabrera's reaction to the aforementioned 61 mph curveball. Apparently he didn't like it and told Livan so. Dick said something about not knowing how to read lips and not knowing Spanish, but pretty sure he still knew what he said. And then Bert said, "I'm not gonna say it, you say it." Heh heh.

*Why do sportscasters feel the need to say "as of late" when they mean "lately"? No one else says "as of late" ("Hey Jim, what've you been up to as of late?" "Well Bob, not much, but as of late Joyce has been nagging me to take her on a cruise."). What's wrong with "lately"? It's a perfectly nice word, and not as snooty.