Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Death by Dying


It's time for me to expose another stupid cliché that makes the rounds among baseball writers and announcers. The term that for some reason got included in the baseball vernacular is "Bullpen by committee". The term comes up when a team either has no effective closer or their closer is injured. As a result of that situation, the manager is forced to use different pitchers out of the bullpen to close games. The proper term to use in this case is "closer by committee". The last time I checked, the definition of a committee is, "a body of persons delegated to consider, investigate, take action on, or report on some matter." A bullpen is, by definition, a committee. Therefore using the term "bullpen by committee" is about as redundant as saying a batter got a hit by hitting the ball. Of course I have heard this term come out of the mouths of supposed baseball experts innumerable times.

I don't really want to name names (Michael Kay), but trust me, that if you watch baseball at all, you will hear announcers constantly make this mistake. I know it's a small matter, but I'm really hoping that this article will be the beginning of the end of the term "bullpen by committee". And if I can accomplish this one thing, maybe I can end war and hunger and, and... you know what? I'm just gonna stick with ending the madness that is "bullpen by committee" today.

You gotta start somewhere.

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