Clarity.

Branch Rickey in his playing days.

When I was a boy, baseball was about 107-percent of my life and a full 134-percent of my happiness. Even though the sport was already in decline in the '60s, and both New York nines were or were teetering on the edge of abysmal, despite all that, baseball consumed me.

In fact, I learned a lot about people from baseball. And a lot about laughter.

First, when I was about five and playing in some kiddie game, I heard someone, maybe an older brother, scream out, "Aunt Jemima makes a better batter." (Aunt Jemima was a pancake mix--since renamed for racial sensitivity.) 

Aunt Jemima makes a better batter was an order of humor and wit on par, to my young ears, with anything Oscar Wilde could have said, or Dorothy Parker. 

"You swing like a rusty gate," was pretty high up on the Pantheon as well. Nice metaphor. Nice picture drawn in my mind, complete with audio.

There were two other barbs that persisted through my youth, both for ragging pitchers.

One was, "We want a pitcher not a belly-itcher." From the moment I heard that I put the speaker in the 'not worth talking to category.' That's no kind of a putdown, I judged. Especially in comparison to my favorite, "We want a pitcher, not a glass of water." To my tender ears, that was the apotheosis of wit. The guy is not a pitcher...he's merely a weak component of that--a glass of water. Loser.

All this, believe it or not has a semantic point and given that this is a blog nominally on advertising, an advertising point.

We were taught growing up to make words a vector. Spears with points. We were taught--indirectly at least of their power.

Some time ago, something crossed my eye, something I hadn't seen before. They were digitizations of typewritten scouting reports by the great baseball general manager, Branch Rickey. Rickey was the man who signed Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodger--to his major league contact. 

He's in the Hall of Fame, Rickey is. And with the signing of Robinson probably did as much to change the game as Babe Ruth, or more.

During his over 50 years in the game, Rickey played for three teams, managed two and was the general manager of four more.

Rickey's scouting reports were little works of art--like fine caricatures. In just a few lines, a facsimile of a player was created.

Before I get to a selection of Rickey's reports, a counter-point. Late last week I read an article in the horrible sports section of the New York Times--a separate website they call the Athletic. 

I found these two scouting reports in the above. And these two underscored assaults on the English language and communication itself.

Those words I've underlined stopped me. Because they annoyed the pine-tar out of me.

Back when I was five, we'd have said "good stick" to say someone could hit. Or "he gets good wood on the ball." Never in one trillion years would I have thought something as dumb and pure as baseball would resort to "very strong bat-to-ball skills," or "ability to impact the ball for damage." Be careful out there, mbas are everywhere.

As my friend Rob wrote when I shared these clips above:

In any event think about the writing above and below when you're looking at work. Or evaluating people you work with. 

Think about the difference between very strong bat-to-ball skills and good wood. One's bs. One's real.

CAVEAT:
You must forgive certain words in Rickey's reports. He calls African Americans "coloreds," and "boys." Those are marks of the time. They are not redolent of white supremacy or racism.

Fake news.