Jerry Seinfeld, Like William Safire, Can Be Pedantic About Baseball Broadcasts
By Kyle Koster
Coffee and Mets enthusiast Jerry Seinfeld has always had a way with words. More specifically, wielding their specificity and absurdity as a weapon in his comedy. The man has made more salient and humorous observations about the English language that I ever will. But I think I may disagree with his latest nitpick, which came about as a result of SNY announcer Gary Cohen's late-game verbal tic.
Cohen, like many other baseball announcers, has a habit of saying that a team one strike away from losing the ballgame is "down to its final strike." We all know what that means. One more strike and the party is over. But what if that batter reaches base? What then?
Gary, you are the best. But,
— Jerry Seinfeld (@JerrySeinfeld) September 25, 2020
it is not technically correct with 2 outs and 2 strikes in the 9th to say, “The Nats are down to their final strike.”
Because a base hit gives them at least 2 more strikes. It would be accurate to say, “The Mets NEED only one strike.”@garykeithron
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This feels like a weighty, almost existential question. What is finality? How does it shape-shift through the space-time continuum?
It seems to me that when the statement is made, it is truthful. This is the final strike if it happens. It remains true independent of future events. When a household is down to its final roll of toilet paper on Thursday night, it was still down to it's final roll even if someone goes to the store on Friday morning?
Or is it? Weighty stuff. One can see Seinfeld's point though the counter would be that the cliche is almost grandfathered in as a cliche now with everyone understanding its meaning, even if it's not 100 percent accurate across the multiverse.
You know what? Posts like this should be the whole blog. Everyone else is doing something. We'll do nothing.