If the Orioles really want to turn things around, maybe they should start with their upside-down-and-backward apostrophe.
The team's players sport two caps, one with a bird and one with a typo.
The latter is on the "alternate cap" that's usually worn once or twice a week. It reads "O's," with the apostrophe flipped so the little round part - the "ball terminal," typographers tell me - is at the bottom instead of the top. It should be "O's."
Baseball is a sport steeped in tradition and nitpicky rules. It's also a game premised on getting a little ball in the right spot. Isn't the wrong-way apostrophe a bit like Brian Roberts running the bases clockwise, either because he messed up or just thought it'd look cool?
The Orioles came out with the "O's" logo back in 2005. How the wayward punctuation went unnoticed all these years is a mystery, given the OCD-ish attention to detail lavished on the sport. Paul Lukas, who is devoted to the "obsessive study of athletics aesthetics" as ESPN.com's Uni Watch blogger, reported sheepishly a couple of months back that he'd just noticed it.
"Now, I realize an argument can be made that there shouldn't be an apostrophe there at all, because plurals don't take apostrophes," he wrote. "But you could also argue that the apostrophe is standing in for 'riole,' plus 'O's' is less visually awkward than 'Os' would be. ... But once you've decided it belongs there, how can anyone who got past the third grade orient it incorrectly?"
He added: "And people wonder why America's going down the [toilet]."
Charles Apple, a longtime news designer, took up the matter this week on visualeditors.com and brought it to my attention. (He rightly concluded that I'm The Baltimore Sun's self-appointed Apostrophe Watcher, having come across my rants about "The Ehrlich's" Christmas card.)
Apple shared Lukas' outrage. But on the Sun grammar blog You Don't Say, copy desk chief John McIntyre says grammarians have bigger fish to fry.
"It's just a logo," McIntyre said. "Logos are made by graphic artists, who tend to be more concerned with visual impact than the niceties of all that word stuff. If you can tolerate that idiotic backward R in the Toys 'R' Us sign, then an incorrect version of the apostrophe shouldn't keep you up nights."
Even so, I wonder if the apostrophe was inverted by accident or on purpose, to make some sort of stylistic statement. I wonder because the Orioles did not respond to my phone and e-mail messages. (Sheesh! It's not like it's a busy week over at Camden Yards or anything.)
