BG Note: Every few weeks, BG does a Blogger's Minute on the Twins Magazine on 'CCO. BG feels that her topic this week was so important as to merit discussion on Batgirl.
Well, we've had another glorious National Spelling Bee this week, but as young obsessive-compulsives from all over the country dazzled us with their abecedarian knowledge, spelling such words as Gallipot and pasqueflower and the winning Appoggiatura, I couldn't help but feel a little sad. Two years ago, the Twins were a walking Spelling Bee word list of their own, what with A.J. P-I-E-R-Z-Y-N-S-K-I and Doug M-I-E-N-T-K-I-E-W-I-C-Z. Their names dazzled opponents, stunning them into submission. Why, every time Frank Thomas saw Dougie's name on his jersey he'd strike out and run crying into the dugout. I believe half of our division lead in '03 was caused by an excess of consonants.
But now, we're just spoiled. Our DH has seven letters to his whole name. Our brains have become so soft and lazy that we can't figure out how to pronounce M-O-R-N-E-A-U. I, for one, think that if we're trying to choose between MOR-neau and Mor-NEAU we should just pick the one that hits more homers. Pretty soon, the whole team is going to get in on the act, and we'll be told that it's Luis Ri-VAS and Little Nicky Pun-TO and Kyle Lo-SHE—which may actually be right, I've never been clear on how that's pronounced.
As for complicated last names, there's not much hope in our farm system, either—not when we're drafting guys like Matt M-O-S-E-S and Denard S-P-A-N. Were it not for A-ball infielder Kaulana Kuhaulua and pitcher Tim Henkenjohann, that's H-E-N-K-E-N-J-O-H-A-N-N, we'd have a serious depth problem in our organization as a whole, like the New York Yankees, except our deficit is in difficult-to-spell names as opposed to actual baseball talent. Something to think about.
Posted by Batgirl at June 4, 2005 09:13 PMI was out and about (or as our Canadian friends would say, oot and aboot) during the blogger's minute, so I missed hearing it, but you raise a good point. As a member of the lengthy last name club (9), I always enjoy cheering for guys whose last names are as long as, if not longer than mine. Perhaps I need to lend my last name, which contains 5 vowels, to someone on the team? It would surely throw the opposing team into fits of confusion because it breaks the "i before e except after c rule." It has confused people for years, and even people who have known me all my life have trouble pronouncing it correctly, let alone spelling it!
Posted by: ndtf at June 4, 2005 10:21 PM