Plus Ca Change, Plus C'Est Le Meme Chose

The New York Times' lousy sportswriting is not a new phenomenon. They put up in PDF the story from Game 6 of the 1918 World's Series, which is the last time the Red Sox played in Wrigley Field (though Game 6 itself occurred at Fenway). It also marked the last time "thereby" was used in a baseball headline. Excerpts:

Flack's Muff Tells Tale: American League Team Corrals Thereby Two Runs Needed to Settle Issue...the 1918 triumph marks the fifth world's series that the Red Sox have brought to the high brow domicile of the baked bean. Boston is the luckiest baseball spot on earth, for it has never lost a world's series... silly errors, and sillier bases on balls. A momentary lapse of control by Lefty Tyler sent two Red Sox runners, Carl Mays and Dave Shean, to berths on the bases on dead-head tickets... perambulated... the ball squeezed its way through Flack's buttered digits... valedictory... Chopin's Funeral March... the gleaming sun of admiration did not shine... Silent was the trumpet voice of the ribald fan... Whitey discovered that his head did not revolve on his shoulders as it used to... Babe Ruth went out into left field and spent a perfectly miserable afternoon... this marvelous condition of elasticity... an outbreak of defensive baseball that was almost uncanny... Leon Trotsky Mann was thrown out by Li Hung Schang... the platter was about four feet in diameter... in years to come, whenever the name of his ancestors is mentioned, people will say, "Flack? Flack? Oh yes, that was the name of the fellow who muffed the ball in Boston way back in war times."

Wow.