[Ads-l] Crooked number

[Jonathan Lighter]

Don't mention it.

JL

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 8:47 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you, Jonathan, for *finally* explaining what it means.
>
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:16 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > 1994 _Augusta [Ga.] Chronicle_ (May 13) C-1: The GreenJackets finally got
> > around to putting up a crooked number - and it was mighty crooked. In
> > baseballese, "crooked numbers" are innings with multiple runs instead of
> > ones or zeroes.
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 2:07 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Around for a while, but I don’t know how long a while either.  Often in
> > > the form “put up a crooked number”, with “on the (score)board”
> > understood.
> > > Presumably 8 counts a crooked even though 0 doesn’t.
> > >
> > > > On Jun 28, 2021, at 8:14 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I'm sure this predates me by several decades but I'm increasingly
> > > noticing
> > > > "crooked number" in baseball slang. In particular, the full
> expression
> > is
> > > > "put a crooked number on the board", but abbreviated versions exist
> as
> > > > well. Here, the crooked number is 4.
> > > >
> > > >
> https://nypost.com/2021/06/27/yankees-gerrit-cole-ambushed-by-red-sox/
> > > > That crooked number was hard for us to overcome.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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."

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