I knocked some sense into the Twins with that rant the other day. Since then, they've hit just one more home run while winning two games. Not that it's safe to conclude that a team is just fine because they won a couple of games against the Tigers (whose record stands at 40-95).
The Twins' only homer in the last two games came today, from Ehire Adrianza (pictured), whom I took a cheap shot at for his poor play in right field three games back. Gonzalez is injured, Buxton is injured, the manager inserts Adrianza in right field because he's a versatile player, and then, playing out of position, he kicks it around and of course some smart ass with a blog notices. Adrianza is an able, solid, hustling player, and I like him a lot. But I'm not going to apologize for what I said about Cron, even though I see his fielding percentage is .991, which sounds pretty good—less than one error every hundred chances! But first basemen have high fielding percentages because they get a lot of chances, most of them easy. They hardly ever have to throw the ball very far. The other infielders throw it to them, and they just catch it. If the throw is low, and they can't come up with it, the error belongs to the guy who bounced it to them. Pretty sure Polanco has more throwing errors than he would if, say, Hrbek or Mauer were the first baseman. Plus, Cron doesn't get to balls it seems to me he should get to. Today a foul pop over his head landed on the warning track—my daughter calls it "the worry trail"—at just about the same moment he looked down to see whether he was running out of room.
Well, he's got 20-some homers, so whatevs, I guess. I will apologize if he gets hot and finishes the season with 30 homers and 100 RBI, which would be a lot of production from a guy who only plays about three-fourths of the time and usually bats toward the bottom of the order.
Did you notice my use of whom above? Pretty sure it's right, though it sounds a little unnatural. This business of grammar and how things sound is somewhat mysterious to me. Got asked by someone at Lake Harriet recently if I would take a picture of "my friends and I." That's wrong, right? You should ask whether someone will take a picture of "my friends and me." You can tell what's right by taking out "my friends." You would never ask someone (if English is your first language), "Will you take a picture of I?" It's, "Will you take a picture of me?" So it's also, "Will you take a picture of my friends and me?" My question is: Why does the ear of a native speaker protect against error in the one case but not in the other? Why does one mistake sound ridiculous but not the other?
It's a holiday, so the second-stringers are on the cable news channels, and I obsessively notice their language tics, too. A meteorologist reported,
The storm is moving slowly toward Florida's Atlantic coast
and, a minute later, under cross examination from the anchor, repeated herself (nearly):
The storm is moving painfully slow toward Florida.
Is there any error here? If we're just talking about what sounds wrong and what sounds right, I'd say
The storm is moving slow toward Florida
sounds wrong. You should definitely say "slowly." But the following also sounds wrong (though more modestly):
The storm is moving painfully slowly toward Florida.
But where is the logic? If you only care about rate, it's "slowly," but, add an interest in the emotional response caused by the rate, and now "slow" is suddenly correct? How about this:
The storm is moving—painfully, slowly—toward Florida.
Can the form of the word you choose be right or wrong depending on how fast you talk, the inflection you give it? I also would like to know which of the following is correct:
She's smarter than me
or
She's smarter than I.
(Don't say both are correct no matter who she is!) The former sounds better to me. But for sure you could also say, correctly, "She's smarter than I am." So it seems maybe you should say
She's smarter than I
(since you can't say)
She's smarter than me am.
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