Basbal*, Basebal, Baseballl*, Basebl*, Bsebal* (for Baseball*)

Today is the birthday of the great Ring Lardner, but alas, it looks like I've already blogged fondly about him here. Lardner was a "sports writer" of considerable fame during the 1920s, but he was a wonderful, if underrated, fiction writer and "humorist" to boot. Perhaps his most famous baseball story is You Know Me Al. It seems that March 6 is a popular birthdate for baseball players, according to Wikipedia. The following players were all born on this day, along with Ring Lardner himself, who was clearly one of their biggest fans: Lefty Grove (1900), Ted Abernathy (1933), Cookie Rojas (1939), Willie Stargell (1940), Marcus Thames (1977), Clint Barmes (1979), Érik Bédard (1979), Jake Arrieta (1986), and Francisco Cervelli (1986). The following died on this date as well: Frank Barrett (1998), Danny Gardella (2005), and Kirby Puckett (2006). It strikes me as interesting that these fellows were all either pitched into, or departed from, this mortal mound midway between spring training and the official start of baseball season. I probably shouldn't run with that thought too far, though; I suppose there are baseball players, like suckers, being born every minute. And I know I'm throwing you a bit of a curve ball with all of today's numerous typos, each of which only comes up once in OhioLINK, and between four and 116 times apiece in WorldCat. Still, you may catch a bit of luck with these in your own catalogs. They're worth taking a swing at.

(1933 Goudey baseball card of Robert "Lefty" Grove of the Philadelphia Athletics, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Yorkshier* (for Yorkshire*)

While waiting at the bus stop the other morning, I struck up a conversation with a guy walking a tiny Yorkshire terrier, bouncing around in the grass on the end of a retractable leash, when an older man with an angry face strode by, muttering, "Could you pull your damn dog back?" Noticing my quizzical stare, he added peevishly, "We're not all fanciers!" More than just rude, it seemed rather odd to me. Firstly, we're talking about one of the cutest damn dogs in the whole wide world here. Secondly, the poor thing had barely stepped onto the sidewalk at all; it was busy concluding its toilet at a nearby tree. And thirdly, so what if it had? It was small enough to practically fit in the palm of your hand, it hadn't so much as barked yet, and it would surely have melted the heart of almost anyone else. But perhaps the most anomalous thing of all was the way Mad Man, without a trace of irony or effeminacy, had employed the word fancier. While he made it crystal clear he wasn't one, it still made him sound a bit twee. (The truly twee and utterly blameless Yorkie was adorably oblivious to it all.) Though it's a "low probability" typo on the Ballard list, let's not ignore this little one today. There were two cases of Yorkshier* (for Yorkshire*) in OhioLINK, and 16 of them in WorldCat.

(A Yorkshire terrier named Apple, in Provo, Utah, May 11, 2007, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Vatcan* (for Vatican*)

Lately I've been watching TV with the closed captioning turned on. With certain things, like scripted programs or classic films on TCM, it's really quite accurate and useful for following along. But I think the real reason I'm drawn to it is its accidentally absurd, almost surrealistic quality. I could fill notebooks with endless examples of this and will often jot them down for my own befuddled amusement. Last night I was catching a few minutes of Conan O'Brien and during a bit about the resignation of the pope, sidekick Andy Richter observed: "We have a real crowd of Vatican watchers here..." The closed captioning wonderfully rendered this as "cat van watchers" and suddenly that was all I could think about. Like an overstuffed clown car—a rockin' tricked-out van full of kitties! Who cares about the future of the Catholic Church when there are giant cat carriers cruising our highways! Of course, it's just another case of apparent voice recognition software gone ludicrously haywire. But happily it brought me to today's adorable cat picture, featuring this tiny too-cute Turkish Van cat. According to Wikipedia, these fascinating felines are larger than usual, pretty much all-white, and "frequently odd-eyed." The Armenians are said to have "revered" the Vana katou. And unlike anything your average cat might do, Van cats are "known for swimming in Lake Van." This little guy almost looks like he's driving too. Maybe he blinks one sleepy eye (blue) for STOP and the other one (green) for GO. In any case, he couldn't be any more precious were he wearing the cat's pajamas. There were no hits on Vatcan* (for Vatican*) in OhioLINK today, but we did find 17 in WorldCat.

(Van cat, male kitten, photo by Bertil Videt, Istanbul, 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Dowtown* (for Downtown*)

Dowtown might make a good moniker for the money-grubbing Wall Street, home to the Dow Industrial Average and located in downtown Manhattan. Uptown, downtown, big town, small town—bankers have never exactly been anybody's favorite folks, regardless of the redemptive fantasy of perennial favorites like It's a Wonderful Life. Like the Lord Himself, they giveth and they taketh away. Whether haughty or dowdy, their intent is the same. And once they get their hands on your dough, they hate to let go. Despite all the interest earned, however, I can't say I find it all that interesting. Though you might find it intriguing to know that when your money's in a bank, it belongs more to them than it does to you. Dowtown* was found five times in OhioLINK, and 172 times in WorldCat.

(Reginald Gray's 2007 The Banker, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Humami* (for Humani*)

The Bob Dylan line "My sense of humanity has gone down the drain" (from the song "Not Dark Yet") once gave rise to a hilarious mondegreen: "My sensitive manatee has gone down the drain." According to a friend and Dylan fan, "that would have to be one really small manatee or one really big drain." (Dylan famously doesn't publish his lyrics upon an album's release and my friend intimates that he isn't necessarily above having engineered such a deliberately manateed mishearing; however, another fan, William Routhier, clearly claims it as his own.) A manatee is also what some sensitive sailors and overly gullible TV watchers might take for a mermaid, though the Animal Planet's fishy mockumentary "Mermaids: The Body Found" would beg to differ. One probably true thing about this otherwise work of fiction is the deleterious effect of Navy sonar testing on our ocean's wildlife. Let's all get in touch with our humanity and help keep animals like whales, seals, and manatees from going down the drain. There were five instances of Humami* in OhioLINK today, and 71 in WorldCat.

(Manatee, Columbus zoo, Ohio, February 19, 2005, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Meting* + Meetin*, Meeting* + Metin* (for Meeting* or Meting*)

Apparently, the word metin means "text" in Turkish; therefore, I believe the caption to this picture refers to the epigraph on the statue, which loosely, if in a rather fanciful fashion, translates to: "Yurdanur Iskitler, swans sculpture park opposite the water fairies dance." This is one work of art I'd sort of like to meet, even if actual swans and fairies happened to be afoot. I love it when ugly ducklings turn out to be swans, and when fairies are not ugly names for graceful men, but little winged ballerinas flying through the air (sometimes but not always the same thing). Meting* + Meetin* garners five hits in OhioLINK and 242 in WorldCat. Meeting* + Metin* gets six and 99. Just Meting* alone produces 127 records in OhioLINK and "too many" to display in WorldCat, but many of the hoped-for "typos" in this case are probably proper names or, conceivably, the gerund form of the verb "to mete." For some reason, I get zero hits in OhioLINK on Meeting* + Met* (is "met" some sort of unknown Boolean operator or something??), though meting out an extra i to the second component yields 28. These results proved unsatisfying as well, however, revealing words like metier, meticulous, metidja, the Indian tribe Métis, etc. Swan that note, and fair[l]y or not, I'll leave it to you to figure out if such things exist in your own catalogs, and daydream instead over walks in the park and other happy thoughts on this late-winter, almost-spring day.

(Metin Yurdanur'un Kavaklıdere, kuğulu park karşısındaki su perilerinin dansı heykeli, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Norteast* (for Northeast*)

I cataloged an audit report recently for a town in New York called North East. And as if the name itself weren't amusing enough, Wikipedia tells us, under "Communities and locations in North East," that Northeast (one word, a different place) is "a location southwest of Northeast Center" and that Northeast Center is "a hamlet southwest of Millerton." Okaaay. As a coworker wryly observed: "You can't get there from here." All of these vaguely northeastern-y southwestern-ish places are situated in Dutchess County, a lovely section of upstate New York, including Hyde Park, the home of FDR, and Poughkeepsie at its center. The town of North East is apparently, at least in some directions, a little fancier than one might expect, given its cut-rate sounding name and higglety-pigglety seeming geographic positioning. This picture shows where the rich folk appear to reside, in the town's "historic district." I'm not sure I could locate North East if I had a compass taped to my forehead, but I did find six cases of today's typo in the OhioLINK database, and 124 in WorldCat.

(Hiddenhurst estate, a contributing property to the Coleman Station Historic District in the Town of North East, south of Millerton, NY, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid