[Ads-l] Crooked number

Mark Mandel markamandel at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jun 29 00:46:09 UTC 2021


Thank you, Jonathan, for *finally* explaining what it means.

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:16 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 1994 _Augusta [Ga.] Chronicle_ (May 13) C-1: The GreenJackets finally got
> around to putting up a crooked number - and it was mighty crooked. In
> baseballese, "crooked numbers" are innings with multiple runs instead of
> ones or zeroes.
>
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 2:07 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Around for a while, but I don’t know how long a while either.  Often in
> > the form “put up a crooked number”, with “on the (score)board”
> understood.
> > Presumably 8 counts a crooked even though 0 doesn’t.
> >
> > > On Jun 28, 2021, at 8:14 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm sure this predates me by several decades but I'm increasingly
> > noticing
> > > "crooked number" in baseball slang. In particular, the full expression
> is
> > > "put a crooked number on the board", but abbreviated versions exist as
> > > well. Here, the crooked number is 4.
> > >
> > > https://nypost.com/2021/06/27/yankees-gerrit-cole-ambushed-by-red-sox/
> > > That crooked number was hard for us to overcome.
>
>

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