FIRE JOE MORGAN: Let's Get Pedantic!

FIRE JOE MORGAN

Where Bad Sports Journalism Came To Die

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

 

Let's Get Pedantic!

Hey, you there. Sportswriter. Bet you thought you could write a logically unsound SAT verbal section-style analogy about Moneyball and get away with it. Sorry, buddy. Not when this sports journalism blogger just burned through two Miller Analogies Test prep books this morning (as I do every morning; it's a ritual like having a cup of coffee to me).

"Moneyball" is to baseball what frugal is to cheap;

<buzzer sound FX>

First of all, Moneyball is a book, not really a formal philosophy. But even putting that aside, let's do this in English. Moneyball, loosely speaking, is a general managing strategy that involves exploiting market inefficiencies in the sport of baseball...is to baseball, which is the sport of baseball...as frugal, a euphemism for the word "cheap"...is to cheap, which is the word "cheap."

Wha?

You don't have to have gotten a 600 on your M.A.T. to smell that this analogy is to correctness as Hillary Clinton is to giving up-ness! Wait, did that work? No. It did not, on several levels. (Humor and accuracy, no. Topicality and mordant political commentary, yes!)

"Moneyball" is not a euphemism for "baseball." "Frugal" is not a strategy for winning at the sport of "cheap." The whole thing is so tangled I can't even begin to suggest an alternative.

Oh, what the hell, here are a half dozen, each one at least as accurate as what this guy wrote:

Moneyball : regular baseball GM-ing :: Fosbury flop : just jumping normally
Moneyball : baseball :: PlayStation 3 : TurboGrafx 16
Moneyball : baseball :: Can't Buy Me Love : Tourette's Syndrome
Frugal : cheap :: strudel : Peeps
Cheap : baseball :: Toni Morrison : Pangaea
Analogies : "are to" :: "as" : "is to"

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posted by Junior  # 4:55 PM
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