Now batting for the Yankees: Babe Goof.
Maybe Esquire Editor David Granger has hired “Bonehead Merkle” as a copy editor.
Let me explain.
Esquire recently introduced something called Esquire Classics to showcase some of the writing from its archives on wars, civil rights, entertainment and politics.
Sometimes it works brilliantly, such as a recent piece about an atrocity where an Army night patrol, eager to engage the enemy, terrorized a South Vietnamese village and raped women, molested a 16-year-old girl and murdered four people, including two children.
The original article ran six months before the My Lai massacre was exposed.
But sometimes the Esquire Classics don’t work as well.
The wheels appeared to come off when Granger tried a tribute to Yankees great Thurman Munson, the catcher who died when the Cessna he was flying crashed short of a runway in Canton, Ohio, in 1979.
The article was originally published on the 20th anniversary of his death, in 1999, and included interviews with friends, family and teammates in a quest to finally get to know the scrappy catcher — who played for 10 years on the Yankees in the 1970s — as they returned to glory.
Esquire thought it would be appropriate to republish the piece as the anniversary of his death approached.
But apparently in the rush to get it posted in time, nobody bothered to read the digitized version first.
One of the players interviewed for the Munson story was Jim “Catfish” Hunter, who at the time was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Unfortunately, in the digital republication, it was spelled “Gherig” in two instances.
“This is the most egregious error in the piece,” said Kevin Haynes, a lifelong Yankee fan and magazine editor who first alerted Esquire — and Media Ink — two weeks ago to about a dozen problems in the piece. “Absolutely inexcusable,” he said.
Somehow, Haynes’ email had not yet reached Granger last week when Media Ink first contacted him.
“It’s the first I am hearing about it,” he said, promising to track it down and get back to us. By Tuesday he had posted a corrected version.
It suggests that no editors read the copy before it was posted and allowed to stand for two weeks.
Among the errors that Haynes brought to our attention: It says that Munson took the “stating” catcher’s job. It should be “starting.”
In another instance, it refers to Munson’s “no de guerre,” which should be “nom de guerre.”
In others, the tense is wrong. “I am not sure how the news gets out” should say “how the news got out.”
In another error of tense, it reads, “He won’t let himself be outhustles.” It should say “outhustled.”
The published piece as it originally appeared uses homonyms — words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings.
“He can’t lift his arms to waive it away,” it says of the author’s visit to see Hunter on his farm several years before he was claimed by Lou Gehrig’s. It should be “wave.”
In the same error category, it says Munson “hits the breaks” instead of “brakes.”
In yet another error, it described how Munson was driving through New Jersey when he came across the dream house that he wanted to replicate back home in Ohio. He marched up to the door and introduced himself to the surprised housewife, telling her he played for the Yankees and wanted to obtain the plans for the home. He promised not to build it in New Jersey.
In the erroneous piece, it says, “The woman eyes his suspiciously.” It should, of course, say, “eyed him suspiciously.”
Said Haynes, “I realize most people would say this is no big deal, there’s no reason to get cranky over a bunch of misspellings, typos and syntax errors. But this story was heralded as an Esquire classic, an example of the magazine’s best work in its literary heyday. It kills me to see how much the editors have let down their guard. Maybe if English had a first name, Esquire would give it the same fawning attention as ‘Women we love.’”
Give Granger a big fat E — for error.