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

[Garson O'Toole]

 Wilson Gray wrote:
> 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. ..
.
Wilson, here is a version of the story you heard. Apparently a letter
was sent to Newsweek around 1948 or 1949 from John L. McKean of
Tacoma, Washington. Here is the text extracted from Google Books. (The
journal Grade School reprinted the Newsweek letter.) I have not seen
anything on paper so I don't know the exact date.

Begin excerpt:

They remind me of a publisher years ago who had made it a practice to
find mistakes of various kinds in the Bible. He boasted that he would
print a Bible without an error in it. He had it set up in type and had
the proofs read successively by seventeen different proofreaders with
copy holders. Finally everything was marked OK and the presses started
running. After about 1000 sheets had been run through the press, a
bystander remarked that there must be a lot of baseball fans among the
employees. The publisher belligerently inquired what was the matter.
The bystander quietly pointed to the opening paragraph on the first
page which read: "In the big inning God created the heavens. . . "

End excerpt

Unlike the publisher I make no claims of textual fidelity.

http://books.google.com/books?id=fmMVAAAAIAAJ&q=inning#search_anchor
http://books.google.com/books?id=MrwLAQAAIAAJ&q=%22big+inning%22#search_anchor

Garson

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