\u201cI truly don\u2019t know the language,\u201d said the late Sparky Anderson, a Hall of Fame baseball manager, in 1993. At least he had the gumption to admit it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that they\u2019re lazy\u2014athletes work their tails off. And it\u2019s not that they\u2019re stupid\u2014you<\/em>\u00a0try memorizing a football playbook. It\u2019s just that their brand of eloquence is clutch three-pointers, late-inning game-winning hits, last-second touchdown passes.<\/p>\n So give a break to the baseball pitcher who said, \u201cI look forward to a strong year in oh-sixteen\u201d and the boxer who lamented, \u201cI guess I\u2019ll fade into Bolivian.\u201d<\/p>\n But no mercy for the scribe who wrote, \u201cMaybe he could have took off more.\u201d Or the eminent sportswriter and author who thought the plural of\u00a0series\u00a0<\/em>was \u201cserieses.\u201d Or the play-by-play guy who said, \u201cHunter leads off with a lead-off double.\u201d Or the perky lady on the sidelines who\u2014twice\u2014said \u201cworld\u2019s most fittest man.\u201d Or the color man who enlightened listeners with, \u201cHe\u2019s giving his chance a team to win.\u201d Or a former player, now in the broadcast booth, who tried to get fancy on us but fumbled on the goal line: \u201cHe makes bad plays and he makes great plays, and the latter has hurt him.\u201d<\/p>\n The Washington Nationals major-league baseball team played an entire game wearing jerseys that said \u201cNATINALS.\u201d The Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association had a Reading to Succeed Night at their arena. The posters handed out that evening spelled the team\u2019s nickname \u201cWOVES.\u201d Pro hockey player Brad Marchand celebrated his Boston Bruins\u2019 championship season by getting a tattoo that said, \u201cStanley Cup champians.\u201d<\/p>\n Sports fans who are insomniacs may know that the ESPN Classic cable sports channel intermittently plays 4 a.m. reruns (or used to) of\u00a0The Joe Namath Show<\/em>, a weekly half-hour trifle that ran for thirteen episodes starting in October 1969. (The influence of the sixties psychedelic counterculture on the show\u2019s look makes for surreal viewing today.) The host was the charismatic quarterback who\u2019d led the New York Jets to a shocking Super Bowl III upset win the previous January.<\/p>\n Anyway, one memorable Namath show featured Rocky Graziano, a raspy-voiced brawler from New York\u2019s Lower East Side who was once the world middleweight boxing champion (1947-48). The other guest was the writer Truman Capote, a tiny person whose voice and manner seemed like an over-the-top impersonation of the gayest man who ever lived.<\/p>\n Capote had stunned the literary world a few years earlier with\u00a0In Cold Blood<\/em>, which Capote proclaimed the first \u201cnonfiction novel.\u201d His long, distinguished, and diverse career made him an honored guest on the program. Namath and Graziano couldn\u2019t have been more cordial, and soon Capote was regally at ease.<\/p>\n So now the great writer turned to Namath and told him that he, too, had played football on his high school team. Namath asked, \u201cWhat position did you play?\u201d Capote\u2019s reply: \u201cCenter field.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI truly don\u2019t know the language,\u201d said the late Sparky Anderson, a Hall of Fame baseball manager, in 1993. At least he had the gumption to admit it. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re lazy\u2014athletes work their tails off. And it\u2019s not that they\u2019re stupid\u2014you\u00a0try memorizing a football playbook. It\u2019s just that their brand of eloquence is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,39,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-proofreading","category-spelling"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}