Headlines and titles: the 'invention' conceit

• In our modern Scots-invented world of bloviation, headlines and titles can't stand the heat of a literalist's kitchen.

• Note: This is a post that appeared on a previous blog in May. I'll be doing a follow-up soon.
  

Being a literalist when it comes to words and their usage (though not without a sense of humor, I hope), I tend to pay attention to headlines and titles and to parse them unmercifully.

That's why, when I got my copy of Sports Illustrated last week, I was taken aback by the headline on the cover. (Yes, I get a hard copy of Sports Illustrated. It apparently comes as part of the audio subscription I have with Major League Baseball. I didn't ask for it and wouldn't buy it otherwise. I even turn down the copy of the swimsuit issue, which probably disappoints the editors because they use their highest level of sports knowledge to produce this profound epic. But I digress.)

The headline on this week's issue of SI reads: The Best Game Ever. One of the subhead is "How John Unitas and Raymond Berry Invented the Modern NFL."

I'm no expert, but I know a little bit about the history of professional football in this country. I was alive in 1958 and remember listening to the Giants-Colts game on the radio in my room where I grew up in Nashville, Tenn. (It was on Sunday afternoon, and in my household at that time, we didn't watch television on Sunday.)

True, this was the first of an era of popularity of professional football that still has not run its course. And true, it was a great game with many great players. The stuff of legend, as they say. I don't quarrel with the assertion that it might have been the best game ever.

But really . . . to claim, as the subhead does, that a couple of players "invented" professional football is a bit over the top. It certainly doesn't qualify as being discrete or modest in the use of the language. In fact, it goes too far in the other direction by being splashy and overblow -- and by ultimately being wrong.

But this article, which concentrated far more on Raymond Berry than Johnny Unitas, is actually an excerpt from a forthcoming book, and it got me to thinking that this is not the first time that I have run into this "invention conceit." A quick search of Amazon reveals the following:

• Frank Deford, The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball
  
  
• Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It
  
  
• Arthur DePalma, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times
  
  
• Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
  
  
• Andrew Wilson, Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex
  
  
• Andrew Lycett, The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

The list could go on, and I'm sure you get the point.

These are probably all terrific books. I have read only one of these books: Frank Deford's book on John McGraw and Christy Mathewson. It was okay though in the end disappointing because Christy Mathewson died early and for some very wrong reasons. He was from all accounts a truly fine person and did not deserve his fate. (BSP alert: The watercolor of him at right can be found at First Inning Artworks.)

But nowhere in the book does Deford really make the case tht McGraw, Mathewson and the Giants invented modern baseball. How could he? It is a ludicrous argument to embark on in the first place.

By the same token, I'm pretty sure that the Scots did not invent the modern world. Don't get me wrong. I love Scotland. I lived their for several months once. At no time did I hear any Scot bragging about inventing the modern world. The Scots do brag about inventing golf. I'll give them that one.

Herbert Matthews, I'm confident, did not invent Fidel Castro. If he did, he has a lot to answer for. The Jews didn't invent Hollywood, Mary Rogers and Edgar Allen Poe didn't invent murder (that one goes to a guy named Cain) and Harold Robbins didn't invent sex. I know I'm on solid ground with that last one.

The only one I'm willing to concede is the last one: Arthur Conan Doyle probably did create Sherlock Holmes.

Because that's what authors do.

Updated May 4, 2008.

World Series begins tonight

• The World Series begins tonight. Let's hope for the best.

The World Series:

• two vaunted teams with rich baseball histories,
  
  
• a couple of well-known and wiley managers,
  
  
• big stars on both sides set to make each inning a drama-filled delight,
  
  
• a bit of controversy or personal animus thrown in just to spice things up.

Well, maybe next year.

The Tampa Bay Rays host the Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of the World Series tonight in what could very well be an excellent seven-game set of baseball dramas.

That's the hope.

The Phillies have Ryan Howard, a young slugger who hasn't done much yet in the postseason. They also boast of several other better-than-average players who have had good years.

The Rays have David Price, a huge left-handed pitcher on the mound tonight, to match fastballs and wits with these guys. The Rays have a pretty good manager and a team of young potentials who put together an amazing year after a truly awful year in 2007.

But the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies?

Neither team has a history worthy of baseball's last act of the year.

The Tampa Bay Rays were once known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But that was a long time ago -- like, last year. So much for tradition.

The Philadelphia Phillies have been around for quite a while, but who knew? For a good part of their history, they were the second team in Philadelphia, always second fiddle to Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. The Phillies have never shown up much in post-season play, and you don't need one hand full of fingers to count their World Series appearances, much less championships.

I was in Philadelphia several years ago when the Phillies were playing in the old Veterans Stadium. It wasn't a great trip. It included an encounter with an usher who thought he was Idi Amin and who looked like he would eat me if I didn't follow his unreasonable commands.

The game was less than compelling so I wandered around the interior of the stadium and came upon a plaque that named the All-Time Phillies team, or something of that nature.

This should be good, I told myself, and it was.

Mike Schmidt, of course, was listed as the third baseman, and Robin Roberts headed the Phillies pitching history. Both legit stars, Hall of Famers.

But at shortstop, there was Larry Bowa. Larry Bowa? The Phillies have been around for a century or so, and the best they could do at that position was Larry Bowa? To me, that spoke volumes about the Phillies.

But, I should stop my unfair riffs against the Phillies and enjoy the games, right? Right.

So who will win? (Now starts the riff against sports journalists.)

I think one of the silliest things in sports journalism is for writers to make predictions. They don't know what's going to happen. Neither do I. Neither do the players.

That, as they say, is why they play the games.

A century too soon for Cubs fans

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Now that fans of the Chicago Cubs have been put out of their impending misery (you didn't really think the Cubs were going to the Series, did you?), they can retire for the winter with this book and wish they had been born about 100 years earlier.

When the Cubs really did go to the World Series.

And they did so at end of one of the most exciting pennant races baseball has ever seen. It was a three-way battle between the Cubs (Tinker to Evers to Chance), the Giants of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, and the Pirate of Honus Wagner.

Cait Murphy tells this story with a lot of gusto and a style that sometimes gets in the way of the drama. Still, the research she has done is solid and extensive. I liked this book at the end much better than at the beginning and would recommend it to any fan of baseball history.