LOL! Safire cracks me up, and in fact I'm I'm re-re-re-reading his classic On Language. This one just had me laughing aloud...
"Last time up at bat," said the NBC baseball sportscaster, "he flew out."
This egregious abuse of sports grammar was brought to my attention by James Reston of Fiery Run, Va., a former traveling secretary of the Cincinnati Reds.
"He flew out" is an example of incorrect correction, as in the way "spit 'n' image" is miscorrected to "spitting image" by misguided zealots of conformity.
When a batter has hit a fly ball which is then caught, the past tense of his action is "flied out". The only time "flew out" would be correct is if the batter dropped his bat, flapped his arms, and soared out of the stadium, thereby earning himself the frothiest head in the Guinness Book of World Records.
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