The New York Times' Joe Queenan (wasn't that Martin Sheen's character in The Departed?) has a nice article in the Wall Street Journal about cliches in baseball. And, oh yes, there's a jab at the Astros, in reference to the Phillies:
The summer is always a good time for high-octane sports banalities, and this year was no exception. When the Philadelphia Phillies went 27 straight innings without scoring a run against the cataleptic New York Mets, they were routinely described as "struggling at the plate," or "struggling to score runs" or hamstrung by an offense that was "struggling."
When you don't score any runs for days at a time, especially against teams like the New York Mets and the Houston Astros, you can't really be described as "struggling." The correct terminology is "stinking" or "sucking," as in "The Philadelphia Phillies offense, which has flat-out sucked recently, will try to stop sucking tonight against the Dodgers."
It's satire, and let's leave it at that.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
