Date: Fri 04-Aug-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

RBI-Writing-Style

Full Text:

Raising Questions On

Baseball Writing Style

#p100sl110f20#B#p70#Y #p100#T#p70#OM #p100#W#p70#YATT

left-handed? Can he hit a forkball? And how many RBI did he have?

In writing sports, it seems that baseball, with all of its statistics, abbre

viations, and slang, has become almost a language of its own over the years, m

aking it difficult to understand which is the correct way to write on it.

Words such as fastball, curveball, and changeup are also written as fast bal

l, curve ball, and change-up, any of which is assumed correct.

But who's on first? Is the first baseman or actually a firstbaseman?

The Hartford Courant  writes "the third base bag." I don't see that.

I guess I can live with the player being the first of three basemen; I have  a

problem, though, with the center fielder. Does he play out field or outfield ?

I like centerfield _ as does  Sports Illustrated  _ although the hyphenated

center-field fence and left-field line are the correct versions.

A right-handed pitcher is wrongly referred to as a righthander, by several p

ublications. And while his counterpart may indeed be a southpaw (one word), he

is, honestly, just left-handed.

The biggest discrepancy comes in the RBI department.  The New York Times,  w

hich seemingly has its own style, uses r.b.i. when not just using the complete

term, runs batted in, whether it be singular or plural.

They'll write that Ken Griffey had four r.b.i. in the game, intending that h e

had four runs batted in. If he drove home only one run, however, the  Times 

would say that Griffey had an r.b.i. Where's the plural form? Would they say

that he also hit two h.r.?

The Courant  says that Mark McGwire has 25 RBI as does  The Connecticut Pos t

, and  Baseball Weekly.

I don't like that.

SI  will say "RBIs" (no apostrophe) but will then turn around and write, "t he

team of the 90's," in the same sentence.

Getting closer.

Personally, I think that the abbreviation, RBI, has become its own word. Gri

ffey had an RBI today but had three  RBI's  yesterday. He also banged out two

home runs, or HR's.

The American Heritage Dictionary lists RBI or rbi to mean either; run batted

in or runs batted in, but I would like to see an "s" in there somewhere. How

about RsBI?

While my vote would be for a universal style on baseball writing, I've surmi

sed that the only correct thing to do is adopt whichever style you wish to use

and remain consistent.