Quick baseball style question

And he slugged home 4 points with a grand tripper.

 

plating 4 in the process

 

Sportschick just stabbed someone with her high heel and doesn't know why.

 

I don't consider myself a rebel, just right.
And there's a reason those examples are in the Stylebook -- they're right, regardless of what the Stylebook says. I've seen debates on this same site about 3-point versus three-point.

 

Just like the dictionary just happens to be right because it spells words correctly.

 

That's because a dictionary isn't a guideline for the spelling, pronunciation and definition of a word, it's the rule. Still, those rules change over time to reflect the evolution of a language and how it's used (see colour versus color).
Even the Stylebook calls itself "a work that is contantly in progress" as well as continually "being distilled from a thousand suggestions and ideas, and several big desk and online dictionaries."

 

That's cool. I was just being a smart ass.

 

Your story would read a whole lot better if you just changed the quote to "he's best the kid I've ever coached at (second base)," than if you used the original quote and then took time to explain to everyone what it means to say "at the 4."

Or you could just write that Coach Blank said Player X is the best second baseman he's ever coached, and then use a quote from the coach backing up that statement.

Either way would be better than wasting space to explain something that most readers are going to know about anyway.

That said, in the hundreds of stories I've written about baseball, I've never once used the position numbers.

To answer the original question, I vote for "one through nine," not "1 through 9."