Bert Blyleven: Language Leavener

"Uribe's a guy you have to keep the ball down."

Poor Juan Uribe! Or as Bert Blyleven pronounces his name: Yew-reeb-ay.

Bert is my favorite baseball color commentator. He was a pretty good pitcher, and was recently, finally, elected to the Hall of Fame. He might be elected again, someday, not for what he did as a pitcher, but for the splendid way he is reshaping the English language.

Bert, who lives in Florida, likes to call himself a Californian, where he grew up. You know, "My California math says that . . ." (whatever his arithmetic suggests.

Bert has redefined the English language. For one thing, he has decided that adverbs are entirely superfluous, although he is reported as having said, once, that "The weather is well today." No one hits a ball well, though. It was hit good. We owe Bert, big time! He has helped you and I get rid of all those "-ly" words: gladly, helpfully. And anytime you pair "him" or "her" or "them" with yourself, you have to say, "him and I", and so on. "I" goes with somebody else. Bert has helped you and I with that, too.

He is modest. He doesn't claim credit for having thought his way through grammar and syntax, but it shows. Just between you and I, we owe a lot to he and baseball. He has redefined what a sentence is, too. You surely recall that sentences used to have nouns and verbs and a bunch of other stuff that modify something, but Bert has analyzed all that complex stuff pretty good, and he demonstrates that a sentence is what happens when you start to talk, and ends when you take a breath, usually.

Look, Juan Uribe hits pitches up and around his waist: he hits high pitches! "Uribe is a guy you have to keep the ball down."

You know, if the ball comes up Uribe, you have to stuff it back down. Think up-chuck, and stuff-down!

Usually, we get the idea, sometimes even when it isn't there.

Comments

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