Heard on Springer: "in the _first_ beginning..."

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Feb 25 21:21:45 UTC 2011


At 3:58 PM -0500 2/25/11, Wilson Gray wrote:
>On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  In the big inning
>
>Way back when, there was an anecdote (published in Reader's Digest?)
>to the effect that there was once some kind of contest, or maybe just
>a desire, to produce the first printed edition of the Bible that would
>be totally free of any typos whatsoever. After the first copy of the
>"perfect edition" of the Bible had rolled off the presses, it was
>presented to the head of the publishing house. He opened the book to
>Genesis 1:1, where he read:
>
>"In the _big inning_, God created the heavens and the earth"
>
>When it was that I read this I can't recall, except that it was at
>least as far back of the '50's. Larry's cites are the first time that
>I've come across _In the big inning_ in a (pswaydo-)biblical context
>since that time. IAC, the story immediately struck me as probably
>apocryphal, since I hadn't heard before - or since, for that matter -
>that typos were a major problem WRT printing the Bible.
>
>BTW, doesn't "big inning" have some special meaning in a baseballic
>context?

It's one in which several runs are scored--the more runs, the bigger
the inning.  Presumably, the first day of creation would plausibly
count as such.

LH

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