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

[Alice Faber]

On 6/1/12 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.)
>
> 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.

Ojeda was seriously verklempt at that point. It was definitely an
emotional response to the game, not part of a more conventional recap.
So I don't think the "foul" ball entered into his comment.


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Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
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