Published October 19, 2025
Possible eviction from the media hospitality room is in my future with this one. Or it would be if I still went to events wearing a credential on a lanyard around my neck.
If you see “he threw an 0-2 pitch” in a sports story, do you come to a screeching halt?
Hey! That’s a zero! It’s a zero-2 pitch! Zero balls and two strikes! Change the ‘an’ to an ‘a,’ pronto!
Or, because you’ve been reading, talking and dreaming about baseball all of your life, you see that and hear “an oh-2 pitch” and cruised right through it without a hitch?
Holy cow, the arguments I’ve been in or near over this one!
I’d bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that most readers of sports stories, especially on a subscription site, read it as “oh-2 pitch.”
Or as “oh-and-2.”
But I know there are editors and writers who don’t care what a reader hears, only what’s grammatically “correct.” Gotta be right, right? Even if it sounds wrong to the reader? Even if it makes them stop, gears grinding, taking them out of the sentence and maybe out of the story?
I hear the music of language when I read. Maybe these other editors see scientific equations and sentence diagrams. I’ve never heard anyone say “zero-2 pitch,” and I’ve followed baseball closely since 1969.
There’s precedent for using sound to make some of these calls.
Let’s start with AP Stylebook
First, consider what the Associated Press guidance to its members is on the use of “a/an” articles:
Use the article a before consonant sounds: a historic event, a one-year term (sounds as if it begins with a w), a united stand (sounds like you).
Use the article an before vowel sounds: an energy crisis, an honorable man (the h is silent), an homage (the h is silent), an NBA record (sounds like it begins with the letter e), an 1890s celebration.
In James Bond movies, characters say 007 as “double-oh seven.”
(I’m using “oh” to represent the sound because the letter O looks too much like the number 0.)
Some style guides insist that zero be spelled out in all instances, so that would mean you’d have to write zero-2 pitch or zero-two pitch (depending on the style for numbers). I still say almost no one thinks of it as a zero-2 pitch, as in no balls and two strikes.
But to avoid being dinged in my performance review, I rework the sentence.
Book ’em, Danno!
Here’s a fun and special case: Years ago, CBS clarified that it uses a zero in the title of the show “Hawaii Five-0,” a modern reworking of the TV series from long ago.
The reason? Internet searches. If you typed the letter “O” instead of a zero, you might not get exactly what you’re looking for, CBS decided. That makes it a somewhat different situation than the 0-2 pitch.
And as the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2010: “Because when we talk about this show, we don’t say, ‘Hey! CBS remade Hawaii-Five-Zero. We say Hawaii-Five-Oh. Because we’re cool like that.”
(I used italics to avoid having a lot of quotation marks, singles and doubles, making it easy for you, reader. I’m sure some editors I’ve worked with just had a cow and didn’t know why.)
Remember “Beverly Hills, 9-oh-2-1-oh“? Did you pronounce those as zero?? You did? Come onnnnnnn.
When they lay off all the copy editors and have robots edit (or write) the stories, you’ll probably see “zero-two” pitch (and maybe “zero-three” pitch) when you read about your favorite team.
They’ll probably change every “road trip” to “trip” because “you don’t need the word ‘road’ in there.” Need? We don’t need baseball, if we’re going to go there.
Everybody in sports — coaches, players, announcers, fans, rivals, readers — says “road trip.” Everybody says “oh-2 pitch.” Who are we writing for? Them, that’s who.
Don’t be a spoilsport.
Like I said, though, I write around “an 0-2 pitch” because I don’t want to get sent to the principal’s office. Sometimes I leave “road trip,” and sometimes I shorten it to “trip.” Because I’m a human being, not a robot.
If you think I’m overthinking this, you probably wouldn’t want to work in my professional world, especially with 20 to 25 bosses when it comes to using words.
Update: Six days later, I just heard “7-and-oh for the first time,” “oh-for-3 from long range,” and “they are oh-and-3 on the road.” This is how people hear these things in their head when they read them.
Sending love. Protect your peace — and the plate on an 0-2 pitch.
♥
Thank you
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Featured illustration © Jirawatp | Megapixl.com
“Don’t Have a Cow, Man!” image © Asphoto777 | Megapixl.com
Some perspective, please
I’m taking this time to remind anyone reading that none of this is life-or-death stuff. “Unfair” relative to a man getting a nearly $50 million buyout when he’s fired is not on the level of being unable to pay one’s bills or get affordable housing or health care, guys.
Nick Saban to James Franklin on ‘College GameDay’: “It’s unfair as hell… For [Penn State] not to show enough appreciation for that, and gratitude for all the hard work you did, I’m saying, it’s unfair.” 🏈🎙️ #CFB
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 8:29 AM
I say that as someone who was dog-cussed and complimented by Nick Saban in possibly unfair proportion during my five years of covering LSU football.