Today’s Baseball 1908 Style.

October 23, 2015 by 4 Comments

I normally spare LH readers my sports enthusiasms, but how can I resist the New York Times‘ pastiche of sportswriting style from 1908, the last year the Chicago Cubs (just beaten by my Mets) won the World Series? The layout of the physical newspaper (complete with black-and-white photographs); the story itself. Apologies to long-suffering Cubs fans and to readers for whom terms like “ducats,” “second-sacker,” and “base-ball” with a hyphen have no particular resonance, but regular service will return tomorrow. (Thanks for the link, Bonnie!)

Comments

  1. John Cowan says
    October 23, 2015 at 9:18 pm

    Not only are there hundreds of references to baseball already, but I actualy declared it permanently on-topic back in 2011, nemine contradicente. Besides, historical prose style is very much part of language: if the story were in Russian, you wouldn’t bother with the apologies.

  2. languagehat says
    October 24, 2015 at 8:57 am

    So you did; prescient of you!

  3. AJP Crown says
    October 24, 2015 at 4:33 pm

    Wow, whatever happened to Michael Farris, in Poland? I just saw him in John’s 2011 link.

  4. languagehat says
    October 24, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    Good question. Come back, Michael Farris, all is forgiven!

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