Don’t Trust Them On Sports, Either

We’ve often had fun at the expense of the New York Times’ Corrections section, but this one can only be fully appreciated if you’re a baseball fan:

A chart in the sports section on Feb. 24 with an article about Jimmy Rollins’s 36-game hitting streak with the Philadelphia Phillies misstated the year in which Paul Molitor hit safely in 39 consecutive games. It was 1987, not 1945.

Paul Molitor is a native of St. Paul. He was born in 1956, eleven years after the Times thought he had a notable hitting streak. He retired in 1998, following a brief stint with the Twins, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004. There couldn’t have been anyone in the chain of editing and producing the Times story who knew anything at all about baseball.

The same thing happens all the time in the context of news, but somehow it seems more shocking when it involves baseball.

PAUL adds: True, but in the context of political news the mistakes always seem to go in the same direction. With Molitor, but for the fact that it would have displayed far less ignorance, the Times could as easily have said 1995 as 1945.

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