Egghead Rage: "One Yankee does not a ballgame make..."

It began with a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education
January 23, 2011 Sunday

To the Editor:

Oh dear, how embarrassing! Hoisted on his own excessively pedantic petard was Ben Yagoda. (Note the correct absence of the comma after "petard," because the subject cannot be separated from the verb, no matter what, though whether a "petard" can be "pedantic" is admittedly open to debate.)

While nearly all of Mr. Yagoda's corrections were indeed correct, he sadly committed an egregious error of his own ("The Elements of Clunk," The Chronicle Review, January 7). Perhaps had he taught further to the north (or is it "farther"?), or were he a more sporting fellow, he would have understood that one Yankee does not a ballgame make. The team in question was the New York Yankees, and the student had it right in saying that he hoped to attend a Yankees game. Even up here in Cambridge, Mass., where I reside, we know that much, perhaps because we like to watch the Red Sox, and not the Red Sock, as Mr. Yagoda's logic would have it.

Norman Fainstein
President Emeritus
Connecticut College
(from Cambridge, Mass.)

Then came the comments on chronicle.com:


I speculate that the reason The New York Times has moved forward from "Yankee game" to "Yankees game" is that achieving brevity by arbitrarily shortening a proper name is a step onto a slippery slope. Should The New York Times softball team's games be called Time games?

If "Yankees" is undoubtedly correct, the organization should be fixing the sign: YANKEES STADIUM.

I like "Yankee game," "Yankee tradition," and "Yankee record" because they sound old-fashioned. In old movies and TV shows, you can even hear "in the Yankee Stadium." Love that "the."