John Boston | The Ongoing Low Class of USA Baseball |
One of my all-time favorite people is the editor of this paper, Tim Whyte. For decades, we’ve played on the same team of Journalism here at The Mighty Signal. The most heated argument we’ve ever had was over whether the word, “numbnuts,” was hyphenated.
As you can likely guess, it was in my column. Not his.
Tim was going through one of those awkward periods where he and the AP Stylebook were hyphenating everything, like, the word, “teenage.” AP and Tim felt strongly that “teenage” deserved that little tiny half-a-dash betwixt, which I rightly felt was, ahem — “whack-a-doodle.”
“What’s next?” I asked. “Hyphenating ‘New-hall?’” Or, if AP had its way, “Newh-all.”
Like an Old Testament prophet, Mr. Whyte held up the AP Stylebook.
You know what? Tim and I argued like sensible men. We may have released heavy, put-upon sighs or shaken our heads over the better use of our valuable time. We may have even taken a moment of silence to stare out the window at the car lot across the street and pondered that instead of going into newspapering, maybe we should have been cops or investment bankers.
To our credit, Tim and I didn’t scream or become so unhinged, 9 inches of white surrounded our pupils. We didn’t swear. Throw chairs. Bump chests. Threaten. Loudly question our choices in moms or wives. Run down the hallway like an insane chimp, uprooting the sickly office Ficus tree and making bluff charges.
You know. Like baseball players?
I........