The Essence of Blogging

I know Will at Deadspin's been promoting the theory for some time that this year's Indianapolis Colts are similar to the 2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. So when the idea showed up at Baseball Prospectus' "Unfiltered" blog, which itself contained an email from Aaron Schatz, head of Football Outsiders, naturally I had to post about it. If that's not what blogs are for, then call me Dee Mirich.

Color Schemes

Don't those Page 2 articles look kind of naked without their yellow page background? The old style black type on a yellow background was pretty easy to read, though not as legible as dark blue on light yellow.

The randomness of yellow pages throughout an internet of mostly black text on a white page always appealed to me. My original choice of light blue on dark grey was meant to similarly separate Get Untracked from everything else on the web.

But making the site easy to read should have been my primary goal (forgive the pun) so in honor of the departed Page 2 scheme, what you see is henceforth what you get. Enjoy.

Tom Hammond Loves This Blog

Not really, of course. But with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, Hammond's already mentioned its name twice, both in reference to the Chiefs' offense.

On a side note, I couldn't remember Hammond's name when I started to write this post, so I looked up who NBC planned to use for the first game of its Wild Card doubleheader. From entertainment blog "Your Entertainment Now" comes the following:

On January 6, 2007, NBC will have a doubleheader of football that night. Tom Hammond (Notre Damn football broadcaster for the network) and Cris Collinsworth (currently a contributer to NBC’s “Football Night In America” as well as part of the NFL Networks Thursday night football games) will announce the first game of the night.

Either that blogger hates the golden dome, or he needs to proofread a tiny bit better.

Get Untracked

Let's get one thing straight. The most unfortunate sports broadcasting development over the last ten years is not Fox's glowing hockey puck, Fox's robot that "warms up" during sponsorship breaks, or Fox's insistence that Tim McCarver and Tony Siragusa are world-class analysts. None of those are as irritating as an announcer telling us that an underperforming player or team needs to "get untracked"

These play-by-play and color men have the best intentions. We know they mean to say "on track." Somewhere along the line, however, it's become acceptable to mangle the phrase into its current incarnation. Common Errors in English explains it this way: "When things begin running smoothly and successfully, they get “on track.” Some people oddly substitute “untracked” for this expression, perhaps thinking that to be “tracked” is to be stuck in a rut."

I don't think that's it. These announcers aren't thinking, "Wow, the Buzzsaw that is the Arizona Cardinals sure is tracked. Dennis Green needs to get them untracked." Most likely, an announcer made the error unwittingly and the director/producer/other guy in the booth didn't offer a correction or call him on it. So each next time someone said "get untracked," there was a bit more precedent for letting it slide. Kind of like Al Michaels describing an injured tailback as "out with a knee."

I can't point an accusatory finger at the first mover for "get untracked," but I wouldn't be surprised if the offending party was a former athlete; therein lies the perfect storm of less-than-comprehensive vocabulary and enough status that nobody will make fun of him. The phenomenon probably began during the time Marv Albert was out of work, because Marv's broadcast partner wouldn't have gotten away with it. Could you imagine how Marv would have responded to Matt Guokas during an NBA on NBC telecast?

Matt: John Starks has yet to get untracked this afternoon.
Marv: Matt, we need to talk this over! That's not what you had in mind!

Anyway, welcome to the site, and here's hoping the name will, in a few years, be as obsolete as a certain ex-Cardinals catcher.