* RADIO RANT: Sports-Media Gripes

1) The slo-mo replay in football of a passing play, over which the play-by-play analyst is screaming, "Look, the quarterback's got all day to pass! All day!" (Uh, of course he does. It's slow motion, fellah.)

2) The inevitable tone of surprise and reverential awe in the baseball announcer's voice when he relates how much higher a certain player's batting average is with runners in scoring position. Uh—don't you think there's a reason there are base runners? Yes: the pitcher's already in trouble, doesn't have his best stuff; no wonder, then, that our mighty batter takes him to the wall for a stand-up double. . . .

3) How did, say, a count of two balls and two strikes ever become an "even count"? I know it's sportscasting tradition and all, but the hitter actually has only ONE more strike and he's out, but TWO more balls for the walk. Advantage to the pitcher. (This is really quibbling, I know, but it's bugged me all my obsessive-compulsive life.)

4) Finally, the diction errors (although these have become less common among local-yokel sportscasters with ESPN's "standardization of usage," as it were): a) pronouncing "asterisk" as "asterik," without the second s; 2) saying/writing "sure up"{1} (as in—"The Yankees need to sure up their bullpen pitching"); it's "shore up," as in a brace, buttress, or bulwark. [Added 4/30/07:] (I just did a Google search for "sure up" and "infield," and the # of results was staggering.)

{1} Believe it or not, I have (or had) an old baseball-yearly magazine that used "sure up" exclusively and throughout—indeed, dozens of embarrassing times, if I recall. And then there were all the comma splices and dangling modifiers; I swear, this hack writer must have been the editor's brother-in-law or somethin'.