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Hello everybody, and welcome to everybody's favorite game! That's right, it's Arbitrary Archive Entry time, wherein I don't select the Gammons column until the post has already started. I still don't know to which entry I will be taking my figurative red pen. Everybody ready? Well, in the words of Hawk Harrelson, the White Sox TV play-by-play announcer, let's cinch it up and hunker down, because here it comes. (I'm too lazy to research this myself, but has anybody started a blog or website that collects, records, and provides a glossary for all of the ridiculous antiquated baseball expressions that Harrelson uses, like "duck snort" and "hang wiff 'em"? Because all five of us White Sox fans sorely need one.)
I think for this first installment of AAE, I will select the blog entry closest to my birthday, March 29. Please hold while I process this request.
And we've got a winner!
First of all, I strongly urge you to read the entire column, for the following reason. Remember when you wrote your very first five-paragraph essay in fifth grade, and your teacher told you that you couldn't change back and forth from past tense to present tense when referring to the same period of time? Well, I think Gammons was absent that day. Try to count the number of times he unnecessarily switches tenses.
If you get bored of that, there are always some especially tortured sentences. To wit:
In a league that houses Santana, I got the most votes for potential Cy Young for Hernandez, Harden, Bedard and Beckett. In Carpenter's league, Webb, Sheets and Oswalt.
According to these rambling sentences, Peter Gammons himself is not only in the American League (the league that "houses" Santana), but he got the most votes for potential Cy Young!
Okay, fine, that's not what he meant. But those modifying prepositional phrases are so out of whack I couldn't help myself. All kidding aside, though, a classic example of Foist's point that you literally cannot discern Gammons's meaning shines through here. In that first sentence, is he expressing surprise that Santana didn't get as many votes as Hernandez, Harden, Bedard, and Beckett, by saying "In a league that houses Santana"? Or is he saying, here are the guys who got the most votes besides Santana, who rules and is obviously the leading vote-getter? In other words, did he say, "Besides Santana, name a potential Cy Young in the AL" or just "Name a potential Cy Young in the AL"? My head hurts trying to figure this one out.
Of course, this same problem exists in the second sentence, which asks the same question about the NL. In this case, it's arguably even more confusing, since the NL apparently is owned by Chris Carpenter. Not sure if that helps or hurts his chances at the Cy Young award.
Finally, I should point out that yet another ambiguity exists in that first sentence. Does he mean potential Cy Young award winners, or pitchers with the potential to be Cy Young? After all, there are two Cy Young award winners every year, but there is only one Cy Young. Also, there is only one October.
Here's another fun sentence, from the same entry:
And what if Justin Verlander feels the affects of a 50-percent increase in innings?
I know the statistics about what the youngsters these days know are pretty bleak, but doesn't every high-schooler get drilled into them the difference between "affect" and "effect"? (More on this later.) My old high school English teacher is currently turning in her grave. Unless she's not dead. In any case, thanks for continuing to confuse kids everywhere, Gammons.
Speaking of confusing, how about that blanket "50-percent increase in innings" statement? When was this increase? Was it from '05 to '06? From the minors to the majors? From high school to college? Is he projecting a 50-percent increase for this coming year? QUALIFY YOUR STATEMENTS. IT IS NOT DIFFICULT.
Here's a parting shot, since this is how we play Arbitrary Archive Entry.
Ask "who was the best pitcher you saw all spring?" or "who could win the Johan Santana Award?" (heretofore called the Cy Young) and one received a myriad of answers.
I think when Peter was a little boy, he asked his dad for a bike, and his dad gave it to young Peter and said, "Ask and one shall received". That's the only way that older Peter could think that this sentence makes any sense. I also find it amusing that Peter would rename the Cy Young award after somebody who, in the 51-year history of the award, has won it twice. And if you argue that he's just saying that Santana is the prohibitive favorite, look at the next sentence. He names seven other pitchers as likely candidates. Prohibitive, my butt.
Again, why are these horrible sentences slipping through the cracks? Let's start bouncing some theories around, shall we? My first one is most definitely a crackpot one, but I like it. I say that when Gammons got "hospitalized" last year, it was really just a contract dispute that he had with ESPN, and he was threatening to leave ESPN and join the Best Damn Sports Show Period For Sure Like Ever as a baseball correspondent and weatherman. After much negotiation, Gammons agreed to return to ESPN only if his pieces were published completely unedited. ESPN, not wanting to lose its most revered columnist, acquiesced.
Finally, going back to my point about high school kids knowing the difference between "affect" and "effect". The fact that teachers constantly drill into kids, "Affect is a verb, while effect is a noun" would seem to be a positive thing, but it has its drawbacks; namely, the fact that "affect" is also a noun and "effect" is also a verb. Their meanings in those cases are different, of course, but the problem arises when somebody sees a sentence that correctly uses "affect" as a noun, recalls the stupid fact he was forced to memorize fifteen years ago, and blurts out, "Hey! Affect is a verb, stupid!" And so the teachers have accomplished nothing. This phenomenon also arises a lot with the whole "Foist and I" thing. Teachers and parents tell their kids always to say, "Foist and I". This is absurd. I hear adults, seemingly educated, routinely spewing sentences like, "My boss gave Kathy and I a raise." Really? My boss gave I a raise? You're okay with this? YOU SOUND LIKE A MORON.
Okay, I'm finished. For now.
Welcome to Edit Peter Gammons!
Let us start by saying that we dearly love Peter Gammons. His insight into, and insider knowledge of, the game of baseball is second to none, and we suspect that he knows about upcoming trades before the participating GMs do. You've heard this all before. Because he's won awards, everybody loves him, and he was really sick last year, he's basically off-limits to any blogger or critic who desires to say negative things about sports journalists.
So why did we create this blog? Well, like anybody else who writes a blog, we think that what we have to say is important, and in some way unique. (Given the number of blogs that exist, we doubt that this is always, or even usually, true, but that's a whole other post.) The bottom line is, both Foist and I have been reading Gammons' blog entries and, prior to that, his columns, for some time now. Every time he writes anything, we have a conversation about how utterly incomprehensible the majority of his sentences are, sentences supposedly written in English.
Those of you with only a passing knowledge of English grammar and syntax (which, sadly, make up the vast majority of Americans) are right now staring at the screen, wondering where these assholes get off taking shots one of the most respected journalists of the past 50 years. Those of you who can distinguish between participial phrases and prepositional phrases and haven't been turning a blind eye to everything Gammons-related are probably nodding your heads, waiting and waiting for this blog to come along.
Before we go any further, allow us to offer to those non-believers among you some samplings of the works we will be skewering:
10/24: On the one hand, there is Troy Tulowitzki, built like Cal Ripken or even a young Troy Glaus, 6-foot-3, with 23-home run power, a gun for an arm and underestimated athleticism that got him 130 more chances than any other shortstop in baseball -- such athleticism that two teams that do defensive data claim the difference between Tulowitzki and the second-best defensive shortstop this season was greater than the difference between No. 2 and No. 9.
You might accuse us of combing two, three, maybe four sentences into one, but we can assure you that this is a direct quote, and it's supposed to be one sentence. If I had attempted to submit this sentence in my term paper for Mr. Kaufman in eleventh grade, he would have drawn a big X over the entire thing and written "Wommy," which, when translated from his awful handwriting into actual English, would mean "Wordy". Additionally, the use of a dash to combine these sentences is a classic cop-out. The dash is saying to the world, "I'm here because Gammons doesn't know how to use a semicolon, transitional words, or dependent clauses."
Again, we're not mocking the content of Gammons' writing; he's making a decent point, if not an earth-shattering one. Instead, to borrow a classic Gammons construction, "it is the writing that is what is bothering us." (Note: this construction is bad.) In the future, we'll post quotes from various guides to essay writing, so that those of you who don't understand what makes the writing so terrible can enjoy the biting criticism.
What's that, you say? You want another example? Let's reach into the archives a bit, shall we?
10/3: The Mets "blew" a seven-game lead to a team that rode shotgun down the avalanche in September, a team from whom the Mets can look at and learn from.
Wow. All kinds of stuff to address here. Let's run down the list, shall we?
1. The Mets didn't "blow" the lead. They blew the lead. Maybe blew the lead. But why use quotes? Did they not actually blow it? Was he quoting somebody who only said the word "blew"? How did he know this somebody wasn't actually saying "blue"?
2. How do you ride shotgun down an avalanche? That is one of the worst mixed metaphors I've ever read. Gammons, by the way, mixes metaphors quite routinely. Pretty funny stuff.
3. This last clause is bad on so many levels. Let's reprint it.
...a team from whom the Mets can look at and learn from.
a. "From whom" should be "from which", since he's talking about a team. A team is comprised of people, but it is not in itself a person. Again, writing 101. The average Joe may not be aware of the distinction, but you'll have to pardon me for holding the Great Peter Gammons to a higher standard.
b. When I first saw this, I thought to myself, "Gammons should really know better than to end his sentence in a preposition." Then I saw that he actually put the preposition in the right place in addition to dangling it redundantly at the end of the sentence. It was like he thought that the first usage of "from" just didn't look right.* So he figured, oh, hell, I'll just throw it in there again. Couldn't hurt, right? After all, I'm the mighty Peter Gammons!
*c. It's possible that Gammons thought that the first "from" was wrong because it actually is wrong. Look again. "A team from whom the Mets can look at..." This clause actually becomes even worse when you delete the last three words, including the dangling preposition! Gammons is arguing that the Mets can "look at from" this other team, which for whatever reason he waits until the second sentence to name. Good God.
More to come.
