I love the way baseball sportscasters talk about the game. They say such odd things.
For instance, they present a united front on this point: the singular of
Red Sox is
Red Sock -- "He used to be a Red Sock, didn't he?" You hear this all the time.
Moving right along, the plural of
baseman is
basemans. -- "He was one of the all-time great first basemans." (Though they probably would spell it "basemens", if asked. Me, I don't see the need.)
I also like the way they talk about young players. They'll say, "He's a good-lookin' second baseman, yup, a good-lookin' second baseman." The first time I heard this, I looked at the guy and thought, "Well, he seems good-looking enough. But it seems an odd remark." When, in a later game, I heard an announcer refer to a horse-faced young man as a "good-lookin' player," their intended meaning finally hit me.
Rather than put every one of these odd phrasings into a single post, I'm going to save a few so I can do another "language of baseball" post at a later date. In fact, I'll probably write several of them. It's a big field.
Do you have any favorite sportscaster language? Chime in.
