Bill Klem Quote

[Jonathan Lighter]

Or is it the Schroedinger thing?

Anyway, it's a profound statement on the nature of Reality. That's why
baseball is now less popular than Pro Wrestling.

JL
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> It's Klem's Uncertainty Principle.
>
> JL
>
>   On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Ben Zimmer <
> bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Bill Klem Quote
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>> >
>> > The quote I was thinking of was "It ain't nothing till I call it."  The
>> quote Jon was posting
>> > about, "I calls 'em as I sees 'em," seems not to be included in Paul
>> Dickson's Baseball's
>> > Greatest Quotations, although Dickson has a section of front matter
>> titled "I Call 'Em As
>> > I See 'Em."
>> >
>> > In addition to finding earlier evidence than 1948 for "It ain't nothing
>> till I call it," perhaps
>> > Garson or Sam or Bill or Stephen or Ben or someone else can find early
>> evidence for
>> > "I call 'em as I see 'em."  The earliest version I find in a quick
>> ProQuest search is 1933
>> > in the Boston Globe, where Klem is quoted denying that he called them as
>> he saw them.
>>
>> There's a more elaborate version involving three apocryphal umpires,
>> encompassing both lines:
>>
>> Umpire #1: "I calls 'em as they is."
>> Umpire #2: "I calls 'em as I sees 'em."
>> Umpire #3: "They ain't nothin' till I calls 'em."
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
>  "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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