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Journalists are advised to beware of citing Wikipedia as a final authority on anything, but I’m ignoring that advice because its discussion of walk-off home runs is exactly on point. Wikipedia traces walk-off as a baseball idiom back to Dennis Eckersley, then an Oakland reliever, in the late 1980s. According to a 1988 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eckersley was given to calling home runs that ended ball games “‘walkoff pieces.” Wikipedia then observes the familiar alchemy that turns fresh language into mindless cliché (of which there’s no better example than mindless cliché): “Sportscasters also use the term ‘walk-off hit’ if any kind of hit drives in the winning run to end the game. The terms ‘walk-off hit by pitch’, ‘walk-off walk’ (a base on balls with the bases loaded), ‘walk-off wild pitch’, ‘walk-off reach-on-error’, and ‘walk-off balk’ have been also applied.”
I actually admire “walk-off triple play” for its absurdity, but it opens the floodgates to walk-off outs. As in, say, “But the rally and game ended in a lazy walk-off fly ball to left field.”
Sun-Times copy editors apparently noticed. The head was cleaned up online to read, “Illinois’ Tim Beckman not alone among coaches looking for greater success in Year 2.”
