OT: multiple meaning

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 15 17:51:13 UTC 2013


Not, strictly speaking, a comment about language. But some semiotic
observation is in order.

It seems that with a substantial number of players, coaches, etc., and
quite a few retired numbers, the Yankees have run out of "double-digit"
(apparently, single-digit numbers are a part of the double-digit
category) numbers to be assigned to personnel in spring training. To be
more specific, there are 83 players in early stages and 16 numbers (for
17 players!) are retired. There are several potential solutions to this,
but some of them would fail with the larger number of players, as is the
case this year. So, the chosen solution is to categorize the players
into two non-overlapping, easily identifying categories. Naturally, it's
the pitchers and everyone else. Specifically, 13 pairs of pitchers and
position players got assigned identical numbers, for now, from 87 to 99.
The idea is to have context provide the correct ID when encountering
semantic ambiguity.

http://goo.gl/gH26S

     VS-)

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