While whiling away these gray and wintry days of winter, I have been enjoying the multi-post discourse about the alleged and vaunted, and allegedly vaunted, and vauntedly alleged "scrappiness" of Mr. David Eckstein (most notably in recent years, the very short shortstop for the St Louis base-ball Cardinals of Missouri, and next season to be a hyperbolically overpaid [and still underheighted] shortstop for the Toronto base-ball Blue Jays of Oh, Canada, blah blah blah, true patriot love in all thy sons command [repeat en français, s'il vous plait]) at the most excellent and hilarious skewerer of bad sports journalism (and particularly bad baseball journalism), Fire Joe Morgan.
Over there lately there has some good fun made of a crappy sportswriter's ado-making about a Google search on the assertion, "David Eckstein is scrappy," and the gnipgnopulously huge number of hits that result from that string. (Subsequently, a reader pointed out that many hits also result from googling "David Eckstein is crappy," which amused me a great deal ... so now you know just how easy to amuse I am.)
In connection with all of that, there's a thing I have just discovered that could be relevant to the analysis (but probably not). To wit:
If you Google the string, in quotes, "David Eckstein is not scrappy", you get ZERO hits. None. Nada. Bupkis, non-etc.
Therefore, there is nobody in the Internet that affirmatively affirms that this particular itty bitty ball player is "not scrappy." They either think he's scrappy, or they have held their tongues ... er, keyboard fingers.
What that means is nobody's guess, because nobody cares. Not that I'm letting that stop me. Because this is a scrappy blog, and I am a scrappy blogger. Scrappier than Dirt, even. Too small for the game, but scrappy to the finish.
1 comment:
> If you Google the string, in quotes, "David Eckstein is not scrappy", you get ZERO hits. None.
Wrong again, oh bearded, jowely clam. Clam of the recent past, that is. Currently, meaning a couple of days later, googling that phrase will get you this very page, which might be chopped liver but is definitely more than "bupkis."
It probably also stands to reason that the Googleaged existence of that phrase doesn't affirmatively affirm that somebody thinks that guy is not scrappy, since there is apparently no known way of differentiating scare quotes from regular quotes. Or would that be meta-quotes vs. scare quotes? Whatevers. Anyway, uh... we dont have enough dada.
Maybe just to lay the issue to rest, having absolutely no opinion on the matter to begin with, I should just say, in quotes, "David Eckstein is not scrappy," "... and I mean that literally... he is not scrappy... I'm not simply referring to the phrase as a search term. Clearly if the man was taller, nobody would apply the term scrappy to him, just as no male politicians have moxy, nobody under the age of 90 is spry, and only the morbidly obese can be jolly."
There, I said it! But since I am who I am, Olivesk, and I have to be who I is, I will see your "not scrappy" and raise you this... "David Eckstein is NOT articulate."
Understand what I'm saying there? He is NOT articulate! I'm not vouching for him at the country club or anything, with that last name, but if he married your sister people wouldn't necessarily stare, what with him not being articulate and all.
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