Wednesday, January 24, 2007

ESPN Posts Rare NL West Story (VHTF)

ESPN.com's Bob Klapisch posted on the NL West, which he calls baseball's hottest division, fueled by the strength of the pitching corps in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Arizona. And he does give passing reference to that other guy up in San Francisco (what was his name again?).

Two points of note from the article:

1) He not only calls the NL West "hot," but Klapisch also gives the Dodgers the nod as front-runners:

And as for [Jason] Schmidt, it was a no-brainer. He opted for the pitcher-friendly National League, then narrowed his choice to the Dodgers, where he was reunited with Colletti. The two had a relationship that dated back to their days in San Francisco, which made the courtship that much easier. Now teamed up with Derek Lowe and Randy Wolf, another free agent who spurned the East (Phillies) for a chance to play out West, the Dodgers will enter the season as the favorites in this suddenly glamorous division.

2)His deliberate use of the spelling "glamor", sans-"u", is very interesting (the headline of the article, "NL West is baseball's glamor division," echoes the usage in the above paragraph's last sentence). Much like any ESPN article on the NL West (see exhibits (a) (b) (c)), this spelling convention is pretty uncommon. According to dictionary.com:

While the -or spelling of the suffix -or is characteristic of American English, there are occasional exceptions, as in advertising copy, where spellings such as colour and favour seek to suggest the allure and exclusiveness of a product. The spelling glamour is somewhat more common than glamor—-not actually an instance of -or, but conformed to it orthographically in the course of the word's history. In British English -our is still the spelling in most widespread use.

But enough sniping about spelling. We wanted to just pass along or thanks for the favour of this ESPN article.

0 comments: