"a day that will live in infamy" (in a positive way)

[Laurence Horn]

On Jun 1, 2012, at 11:31 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 6/1/2012 10:32 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>> On Jun 1, 2012, at 7:20 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
>> >
>> > According to Bobby Ojeda, announcer and himself former New York
>> Mets pitcher, on the Mets' post-game show tonight, that's the
>> legacy of tonight's game, after Johan Santana completed the first
>> no-hitter in the 50-year history of the Mets.  Nothing infamous (in
>> the traditional sense) about the game or the day; it's just a
>> bleaching, like that of "notorious" = 'famous', facilitated of
>> course by the FDR tag line for Pearl Harbor, but unlike Bobby O.,
>> Roosevelt really *meant* it back in Dec. '41.
>>
>> of course, the original is "a day which will live in infamy".  that
>> was before CMOS got to it.
>
> 1)  Of course, the original is "a *date* which will live in
> infamy."  (And Roosevelt was correct to use "which".  But that's
> another story.)

I know I've usually heard it as "a day that will live in infamy", and I remember hearing FDR's actual recording (more than once) refer to 12/7/1941 as "a date which will live in infamy", but before tonight, I've never heard it used in celebration.
>
> 2)  Larry heard it, I didn't.  But was Oejda thinking of the hit that
> landed on the foul line (a tennis umpire would have run down from his
> chair to point to the ball mark) but was called foul, thus allowing
> the no-hitter to continue?  That would make it an "infamous" no-hitter.
>
No, Ojeda--who was positively bubbling about the game--didn't mention Beltran's chalk-duster.  In fact it didn't come up at all in that post-game colloquy on SNY, although it did on ESPN's SportsCenter.  (I don't think umpires are allowed to reverse fair/foul calls on non-home runs by checking replay the way tennis umpires/linespeople can, so the blown call would have stuck.  And this one still isn't as infamous as the blown call that led to a non-no hitter by that Tigers' pitcher whose name I've already forgotten.)

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org