One of my many pet peeves is redundancy in language. When I hear people use terms like "ATM machine" and "PIN number," they just sound stupid. I hear the latter often in commercials, which is even worse, because professional writers, editors, agencies and more are involved, and stuff like that still slips by.
So it drives me a little nutty when I hear or see redundant baseball terms. Today, I was listening to the Red Sox home opener radio broadcast on my computer, and I was following along on Yahoo! In the 7th inning, Yahoo! posted this: "D. Ortiz homered to deep right." Well, he couldn't have homered to shallow right.
Another one that I hear all the time that bothers me is "grand slam home run." A grand slam is, by definition, a home run. You can't have a grand slam triple, or a grand slam sacrifice fly. If you hear "grand slam," you know it's a home run. Or you should.
Sometimes less is more.
©2006 Douglas T. Dinsmoor