A rchive Date
[ 23-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[A whole new (linguistic) ballgame
By DAVID CARKEET
New York Times
July 17, 2000, 4:32PM
In sports, there is a great deal of talk about what might have been. Players lament, "If the ball had cleared the fence, we would have won." But they don't always say it like that. Sometimes they say: "If the ball clears the fence, we win."
Let me hasten to point out that the events that happened - and did not happen - are in the past. The ball did not clear the fence; "we" did not win. Although the speaker is describing a past incident that did not come about (a counterfactual), the speaker is using the present tense to narrate the nonevent.
The construction is common in sports and goes back at least as far as a 1984 San Diego Union-Tribune story, in which a losing ballplayer recalls a bases-loaded, shoe-top catch by the Chicago Cubs outfielder Keith Moreland: "To me, that was the turning point. If that ball gets by Moreland, we've got three runs and we're back in the game."
Note the shift from the first sentence, an ordinary assertion about the past ("that was the turning point"), to the second sentence, where the present tense undoes a past-time fact.
Baseball pitchers live regret-filled lives, and their post-game comments provide many examples. The San Francisco Giants pitcher Robb Nen rues an August 1998 homer that he gave up: "I left the ball over the middle, and he did what he wanted to do with it. If I get it a little inside or a little outside, maybe he gets a hit, but probably not a home run."
To a historian of the language, the emergence of a new meaning for an old tense is an earthshaking event, and yet the counterfactual present tense has sneaked into usage without notice.
How the new construction came about is not at all obvious. Linguistic change usually involves a gradual mechanism. "Smug" used to mean "neat," but it took on negative meaning by virtue of a slow shift, year by year, from a preponderance of positive uses to a preponderance of negative ones until the scale finally tipped.
But it is hard to imagine a comparable process that takes us gradually from (a) to (b) below, from the conventional past-perfect expression for a past event that did not happen to the new present-tense way of saying it: (a) "If the ball had cleared the fence, we would have won"; (b) "If the ball clears the fence, we win."
Of course, (b) has existed all along with a different meaning - to express a future possibility. Even today, although it would be decidedly uncool, an eager rookie could shout (b) from the dugout in the bottom of the ninth inning, while the ball is in flight and its destination is yet to be determined.
Note the time reference - the rookie is looking ahead, into the future, yet he is using the present tense. Therein lies the probable explanation for the form of the construction. The English present is an all-purpose tense, used for definitions ("a triangle has three sides"), general facts ("the towhee sings `drink-your-tea' "), recurring actions ("I fish in Vermont"), future possibilities (our eager rookie's shout) and even, in the historical present, past facts ("At this point, Hermann the German annihilates the Roman legions").
The hard-working present tense has taken on one more job, a blend of the last two functions above, now referring to a past possibility that was not realized.
The sports counterfactual is an oral, short, peppery construction that feels inappropriate to the analysis of complex events. Try this, for example: "If the Californian responds to the Titanic's distress signals, not a soul is lost." Or this: "If Nixon shaves before the debate, there is no Camelot." These retrospective sentences are offensively glib. They sound like something John Madden would cry out from the broadcast booth, waving his arms as he rewrites the historical record.
Thus, for negative reasons, the sports counterfactual, unlike a smash by Sosa or McGwire, will probably never leave the ballpark. But there is a positive sense in which the new construction suits the world of athletics. To play sports is to fail, sometimes agonizingly, and declaring that the outcome could have been different gives one solace.
David Carkeet is the author of three novels featuring the linguist Jeremy Cook: Double Negative, The Full Catastrophe and The Error of Our Ways.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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