Lip Reading

Anyone who watches sports has witnessed coaches and players, in every game, who are afraid of lip readers. They hold their hand, their glove, or their play card up to their mouth to hide what they are saying from opponents and prying eyes. I used to attribute it to paranoia until Ernie Accorsi, the former general manager of the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and the New York Giants, set me straight.

“I’ll tell you an incident that actually won the divisional title for us in 1977,” Accorsi said. “We had an assistant coach named Bobby Colbert, who had been the head coach at Gallaudet School for the Deaf in Washington. He had been educated in lip reading. There’s a science to it. That was the only way he could communicate with his players.

“We were losing to the Patriots in the last game of the season in a game we needed to win to win the division. If we lost, we’d be out of the playoffs. We had third-and-18 at our own 12. Their defensive coordinator was yelling, ‘Double safety delayed blitz.’

“Colbert read his lips with binoculars, got the word to [Colts quarterback] Bert Jones, who checked off and threw a pass down the middle of the field to Ray Chester for an 88-yard touchdown. That basically broke the game open and won the championship for us.”

I questioned how many coaches knew that story.

“That is an extreme example from a person who had tremendous expertise in it,” Accorsi said. “But now, teams have so many coaches — some have 21 — that they have people assigned on binoculars to try to read lips. They do!

“You used to send the plays in with players. Now, the offensive coordinator or the head coach is calling the plays in his headset. The quarterback is listening to it in his headset and the coach has to mouth it [the play call]. That’s why he’s obscuring his face.”

It's Only Words...

As the Bee Gees sang over 40 years ago, “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.” Here are some word abuses that, coming as they so often do from people who are paid to write or speak, are particularly disheartening: 

Enormity
When the slave trader Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) sycophantically addresses the Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) as “Your enormity” in “Spartacus,” he is accurately, if inadvertently, recognizing the excessive wickedness of Crassus. I've heard sports-talk hosts pompously and repeatedly misuse the word as a synonym for enormousness.

Disinterested

It doesn’t mean not interested. It means unbiased or impartial. An arbiter should be disinterested but not uninterested in a decision.

Roll out
A perfectly useful term to describe a football play in which the quarterback takes the snap and then runs along the line of scrimmage with the option to pass or run. Non-sports reporters now habitually write such drivel as “Acme announced plans to roll out its new gadget package.”
      No one, it seems, simply introduces a product or plan anymore. And, by the way, products and plans are out, replaced by “packages.” Which are activated, rolled out across multiple platforms, and ramped up -- whatever that means. Or maybe they have to be ramped up first in order to get them onto the platforms.

Closure

A favorite word of traffic reporters. Roads are no longer closed; they are in a state of closure. Summer resorts, by the same token, would be closured for the winter and secret meetings would be held behind closured doors.

Impacted

Wisdom teeth can be impacted; wisdom can be affected but not impacted by something.

As well

Synonymous with “also,” “too,” and “and.” Memo to sports broadcasters: Tacking on “as well” to the end of any sentence which already includes one of those synonyms does not add gravitas to your statement, only redundancy. Using more than two of the above synonyms together brings new meaning to the term “triple double.”

Fortuitous
It doesn’t mean fortunate or lucky. It means happening by chance or accident.

Activity

According to weather forecasters, we no longer get rain; instead, we get a "rain situation" or "shower activity."

Supposedly Fun Things...

With apologies to David Foster Wallace and Tina Fey, here are supposedly fun things I’ll never do again:

Go to Disney World

The Limbo

Visit Curacao

Eat tomato sauce

Attend the Ice Capades

Take a Lamaze class

Read Dr. Seuss and Stephen King

Sit on a dais

Sing in the rain

Show and tell

Kiss and tell

Be dragged to a cheerleading competition

Ski

Anything scout related

Give credence to anyone who describes something as “incredible”

Pay attention to sabermetrics

Toe the line

Eat toffee

Go to an amusement or water park

Ride a rollercoaster

Improv

Not laugh at anything labeled “iconic”

Make my own sundae

Dunk for an apple

March in a parade

Watch a parade

Read a must-read book

See a must-see movie

Go with the flow

Listen to anyone who speaks of “going forward”

Take seriously any self-help enterprise

Listen to bagpipes

Play golf

Watch golf

Not make waves

Obey exhortations to “clap” at a sporting event

Get a crew cut

Watch the NBA Dunk contest

Wear a dickey

Chest bump

Watch the Pro Bowl

Drink bottled water

Overthink something

Read or view a “feel-good” story

Watch the Grammys

High-five a fellow spectator to celebrate something neither one of us did

Pay attention to “hot button” issues

Call anyone “dawg”

Watch a Super Bowl commercial

Discuss a Super Bowl commercial

Wear a baseball cap backwards

Camp

Mail Call

My brother-in-law Rich arrived home one afternoon to discover a card stuck in his front door. It was from his mailman, advising him that an oversized package was being held for him. Rich drove into town to the post office, waited in line, and, after a few minutes, stepped up to the counter.

“I'm here to pick up  a piece of mail that could not be delivered today,” Rich said. “I had a note from my mailman saying the box was too large for my mailbox and he didn’t want to leave it unattended at my front door.”

“Do you have the card?” asked the clerk, Ed.

“No. I didn’t bring it with me. I didn’t think that was necessary,” Rich said. “The delivery was from this morning.” He told Ed his name.

“I’m not going to go back there [to the parcel room] and look through every package,” said Ed. “I need the card.”

So, Rich dutifully returned home, retrieved the card, and drove back. When he got up to the counter and found Ed occupied with another customer, Rich repeated his story to the other clerk on duty. “I was here earlier today,” he told her, “but I didn’t have the card with me.”

She took the card and retreated to the back. She returned immediately.

“It was the only package back there,” she said.