Announcing/writing pet peeve

Here's one that has pissed me off big time the last few weeks... what the hell is a "gem"

"Joe Smith pitched a gem."
Tonight, on the baseball thread, Chris L informed us that Wakefield "pitched a gem." 1 run, 5 hits in 8 innings is a gem?

One of my high school writers used the phrase twice in the last week ... once when a kid pitched 5 innings and gave up a run and 2 hits and again when a kid went 7 scoreless but his team lost in the eighth.

Cliched crap.
I'm sending out an e-mail tomorrow banning "gem" from ever being used.

 

I'm saying that every game in every series has the chance to be pivotal. I'm saying you can't say that one game in particular is pivotal any more so than any other game. Looking back on the series, you can certainly say which game was pivotal.

But is game 3 pivotal really pivotal if a team, down 2-0, wins to make it 2-1, and then loses the next two? Or what if a team wins game 5 to take a 3-2 lead, but then loses the next two. As it turned out, that game really wasn't pivotal.

This never really bothered me until someone said pivotal game 2 in a promo for an NBA series one year.

Another pet peeve is when someone says "It's not a series until the road team wins a game." I guess the 1991 World Series was a dud because the visiting team never won a game.

 

This is an old Pat Riley line that has been repeated ad nauseum.
More total bullshit.

 

I think you might be wrong here, though I'm willing to listen to arguments about your specific example.

Core and corps are both appropriate, depending on what you mean. Core means "central or most important group." Corps refers to a complete group.

So if you say, "The Boston Celtics returned the same corps of players from last season's championship squad," you are meaning that every single member of the Celtics' championship team, 1 through 12, is back this year.

If you say the Celtics return the core of last year's team, you are probably referring to Garnett, Pierce and Allen ... the central group.

The Spurs have one three titles with the Duncan-Parker-Ginobili core. Not corps.

Now, if you are talking about a football team's linebacker corps or receiver corps, then it's corps ... because you are talking about a full contingent of something.

In your specific example above, I'd go with "core." They have a strong core group of players returning.

 

Here's one that annoys me almost as much as "grow the economy" [/crossthread]

Brent "Arrogant Asshole" Musburger: "Jackson EXPLODES for five yards up the middle." Really? There better be body parts all over the field.

Or my all-time favorite use of that phrase: "Johnson EXPLODES through the hole!" No explanation needed, I guess!

 

I'm about the most anal editor-type you'll run across and I have no problem with a running back exploding through the hole for 5 yards. It's a metaphor and readers/listeners understand it means he raced through the hole with extra suddenness and force, sort of like an explosion. Nobody believes he was ripped apart by a violent blast. Are there other ways to get that same point across? Sure, but this one works fine and does not cause confusion.

 

This is my all-timer.
"He/She was a great player, but an even better person."
Isn't it something like 1 percent of 1 percent of all people become professional athletes?
Or less. So, no matter how good a person they are, isn't it unbelievably unlikely that they were, in fact, a better person? Though it is possible Wayman Tisdale qualifies.

 

I hate when broadcasters, in what I perceive as a pathological avoidance of silence, fill up the air with assessments of what a player is thinking or feeling.

"Well, he's telling himself..."

You have no way of knowing that.

I feel like this happens a lot during crisis news coverage as well. You know what, it's ok to be quiet and let people watch things unfolding. Just for a few seconds. I promise.

 

Yes, J.K., there are worse expressions than "explodes," but I would prefer someone racing, sprinting, even RHUM-BAH-LING through the hole in the offensive line. As the thread says, EXPLODES is one of my pet peeves.

Actually, my real pet peeve is anytime Musburger calls a football game. And yes, I met him when I was in college, and he was just as much of an arrogant asshat as you would imagine he is. Why don't you EXPLODE in some hole, Brent?

 

To me, a pet peeve should be more than just some random word you hate.

 

And Tim Tebow.

 

It's still stupid.