When I make mistakes here -- and I do, every now and then -- I'm usually fairly quickly corrected by a sharp-eyed BCB reader or three, and I'll acknowledge the mistake, fix it and move on.
I'm kind of bored this morning with no Cubs game till tomorrow night, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to point out an error made by AP writer Dave Skretta in this recap of the Yankees' 3-2 win over the Royals on Saturday. In the notes paragraph at the bottom of the recap, he writes:
Yankees INF Cody Ransom made his big league debut in the seventh, pinch-running for [Jason] Giambi.
Cody Ransom is 32 years old and has bounced around the minor leagues since 1998, mostly in the Giants' organization. He played in the majors for Dusty Baker with the Giants in September callups in 2001 and 2002 and Dusty remembered him well enough to have the Cubs sign him to a minor league deal and invite him to spring training in 2005, where he hit .160 in 17 games (4-for-25, 2 doubles, a HR) and spent about half that year at Iowa.
Before he made his first appearance for the Yankees on Saturday he had played in 133 major league games.
Now, I remembered seeing Ransom in spring training in '05 and knew he had played for the Giants. But even if I hadn't, looking up the above information took about five minutes. Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but then again, I'm not being paid by the Associated Press to write game recaps. Dave Skretta should have done just a bit of research -- and especially when you consider that in the AP recaps posted at Yahoo, player names are linked to their profiles, meaning anyone could click on Ransom's name in the Yahoo recap and see that Saturday wasn't his ML debut.
Incidentally, Ransom celebrated his recall to the Yankees yesterday; he was sent up to bat for Giambi in the 7th inning with the Yankees leading 12-3 and hit a two-run homer off Jeff Fulchino.