On the occasion of a birthday for one of us, my wife and I joined my sister Dorothy and her husband Joe Maestas for dinner at El Rialto. The rule in the Trujillo household is that the inviter pays for the invitee. And maybe that’s why we don’t invite others all that often.
But if we can inveigle one another to make the suggestion and turn it into an invitation, we’re willing. We’d almost finished our meal when the waitperson came by with the bill and took brother-in-law Joe’s credit card for processing.
At that moment, our long-time friend, Eddie Groth, entered, stopped by our åtable and said, “I would have been happy to buy your meal, but I see you’ve already taken care of it.”
Not 10 seconds later, the waitperson returned to our table to explain that somehow Joe’s card had been rejected. Those things happen; sometimes the card simply has to be swiped again.
As that discussion was taking place, I rushed to Eddie’s table and said, “Good news! Joe’s card got rejected, so now you can get your wish and treat all of us.” But as luck would have it, a group of musicos filed in to El Rialto, blaring away. Eddie looked at me quizzically with that “no comprendo” look. I tried to get him to lip-read, but that failed too. We wondered how deflated Ed must have felt by not being able to pay our bill for us.
That was Eddie Groth.
And this also was Eddie Groth: Ever the omnipresent emcee, he was invited and showed up for numerous gatherings of students from his alma mater, Immaculate Conception School. A panel discussion held in conjunction with a Places With a Past observance, a few years back, featured Eddie, who told about the primitive playing conditions for members of the I.C. Colts, back in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
One anecdote was about how the Colts took the field in rag-tag outfits, colors mismatched, players’ numbers often pinned on, and ill-fitting jerseys and cleats. Eddie explained that I.C. had had a good chance of winning —until the visiting team figured out the Colts’ strategy. According to Groth, the opponents’ captain must have huddled his players and announced that for each play, whichever Colt wore the helmet would likely be the ball carrier for that particular play.
It worked. We lost.
I repeated this account to my friend Joe McCaffrey, who said he’d also heard it and wondered whether it really happened, although, given I.C.’s sparse resources, it was likely there weren’t enough helmets to go around. Nevertheless, when Eddie gave that account, we all listened.
Eddie passed away last week at age 82, after a struggle with cancer. Having had Eddie come their way has enriched many people throughout the state.
• • •
About the cleanest copy I’ve ever edited is that prepared by our own sports editor, Dave Kavanaugh. But even when we’re rushed, we still run the articles through the spell-checker. We generally find a repeated or missing word, or possibly a pair of transposed letters.
We in the newsroom believe Dave plants occasional typos, just to make sure we’re paying attention. I’m not sure whether the following goes under the rubric of a typo or simply a matter of preference. I refer to the way certain things are pluralized.
In a baseball game, whenever a batter does something to allow teammates to score, that’s called a run batted in, usually abbreviated RBI. Were I writing about such a game, I’d certainly refer to runs batted in, possibly calling them “ribbies” or simply “ribs,” but I wouldn’t ever use the clause, “He had four RBI.” I’d have to make it “RBIs.”
It just sounds strange when we have a noun following a number, and the noun doesn’t change. So, call it a cosmetic change on my part, regardless of the grammatical correctness, or lack thereof.
True, the Latin and Greek languages have done much to dictate how we render plurals. It’s one datum but two or more data; it’s one criterion but two or more criteria; one gymnasium but several gymnasia.
And there’s a bevy of living creatures on ranges, meadows, pastures and oceans whose rules for pluralization aren’t convincing. We refer to one hog and two hogs, one horse or several horses, but one deer and two deer. We use “fish” no matter how many of the slippery critters we caught, bought, ate, or let get away. But doesn’t the Bible refer to loaves and fishes?
And it gets even more complicated when the object is coupled with other words, as in attorney general. So if Gary King has a clone, together they’re attorneys general but not attorney generals.
I have four sisters-in-law but no sister-in-laws.
I don’t have enough curiosity to look things up, trying to find definitive answers as to when we leave the noun alone and when we tack on an “s.”
When it comes to RBI and RBIs, some might argue that if we use RBIs, we’re saying the equivalent of run batted ins. Perhaps, but doesn’t euphony, the lovely sound of an “s” at the end, make things all right?
And if we want to get really technical, what about the plural of prisoner of war? It seems nobody flinches when they hear or read about POWs. The plural refers to the prisoners, not to the wars.
Trying to ferret out correctness in this verbal minefield of confusing and contradictory rules concerning English is as enjoyable as sitting on cactuses. (Or is it cacti?) But let’s not be ridiculi.