It bothers me more than anything else sports announcers do — even more than saying that a basketball player heading to the bench “to get a blow” — when the name of one guy is used in the plural form to express the athlete as an archetype for whatever the fuck you’re talking about.
It’s usually giving an example of people who play the game the right way. The announcer will say “Yeah, he’s just one of those guys, you know, like the Jeters, the Griffeys, the Roses…” The Griffeys were a bad example, but unless you’re talking about both Sr. and Jr., stop doing this now. It’s just lazy speaking.
The correct way to do this is to say “a Junior Griffey” or “a Rose” or “a Jeter.” If you must explain things with this lame format of lumping people together instead of expressing what the player in question actually does well, do it this way. It does the same thing and it has the Chicago ring to it.
Giving credit where it’s due, I’m not sure who to give credit for this type of speaking exactly. The guys on the Afternoon Saloon show on ESPN 1000 talk this way, saying “it was the first time I had the opportunity to sit down with a Jerry Angelo.” Maybe it’s a Chicago thing in general. Whatever.
It’s better than the stupid plurals thing.
That’s right up there with 1.2 innings, which appeared in an MLB game story today. A pitcher can’t pitch 1.2 innigs. 1.2 is not the same as 1 2/3 innings, which is what the Sun-Times writer and every other baseball writer means when they choose decimals over fractions. If anything, 1.66 innings should have been used to represent 1 2/3 frames. Somewhere, some kid learning baseball is really messed up.