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Hugh Atkins

Baseball, like most sports or hobbies, has its own vernacular. Some of the language used to describe game action or statistics can sound contrary to the established rules of grammar, but seasoned fans understand these nuances. 

A few years back, somebody was pontificating about how many runs batted in a player had. They said something along the lines of, “Dale Murphy now has 100 RBI on the season.” I thought, “100 RBI? Doesn’t he mean 100 RBIs? Then it hit me that this commetator was using the “runs” in RBI as their plural. But the plural of RBI is and always has been RBIs. Unfortunately, serveral peoplle picked up on this useage, and it persists today.

© 1985 Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.

The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) has a style guide for writers and editors that lays out correct and accepted baseball terminology, and they say that RBIs is the plural of RBI. Besides the fact that RBIs has been used for years, SABR follows the justification of the  AP Stylebook, “because they consider RBI to be a formal term, requiring an “s” to pluralize it.”

I also really hate it when baseball announcers say that a batter “flew” out to center field. Every time I hear someone say, “Ronald Acuña, Jr. flew out to right field,” I want to say, “And, boy, I bet his arms are tired.” A batter who hits a fly ball that is caught for an out has “flied out.” I’ve even heard one announcer go so far as to say something like, “Matt Olson is coming to the plate. Tonight, he has singled and flown out to center.” Why can’t he hear how stupid that sounds?  

I realize most of these announcers think they are being grammatically correct by using “flew out.” Every time I hear one of them say a batter “flew out,” I wonder why a director or producer, or even a broadcast, partner doesn’t privately point out the mistake. Announcers who insist on saying a batter “flew out” are demonstrating an alarming ignorance of the basic parlance of the game. Again, you don’t have to take my word for it. The SABR Style Guide says to use “flied out” and even adds parenthetically, “not flew out.”

© T.C.G.

Baseball has lots of idioms announcers use quite frequently to spice up the game. They may use “Texas leaguer” for a bloop hit, “can of corn” for an easy fly ball, or “frozen rope” for a line drive. Announcers may refer to the Pittsburgh Pirates as the “Bucs” or the St. Louis Cardinals as the “Redbirds.” These expressions don’t bother me as long as they are used in moderation, although I must confess that I do not miss Chip Caray constantly referring to the Miami Marlins as the “Fisssh” on the Braves broadcasts. 

My latest terminology pet peeve is referring to the runner who begins extra innings at second base as a “ghost runner.” True ghost runners on sandlots across the country take the place of players who earned their way on base; they are not simply gifted to the hitting team by some quirk of the rules. More importantly, the ghost runner got its name by being an apparition; he’s invisible. How can a runner in a uniform with his name and number on the back of it be a ghost runner? Unfortunately, we see him standing out there at second base, for goodness’ sake. 

Maybe it’s just me. There is plenty to like about Major League Baseball these days, so I guess I shouldn’t let the “SOB” who use RBI as a plural bother me so much.