Pat Venditte already made history once by becoming the first MLB pitcher in 20 years to earn outs with both throwing arms during the same inning. If one newspaper has it right, that's not the only thing that makes the Oakland Athletics pitcher unique: He might also be amphibious.
Of course, that's not actually the case at all. What presumably happened was this: Editors at East Oregonian newspaper pulled an Associated Press wire story about Venditte's accomplishment, and they decided to run it in their paper.
When it came time to write the headline, they meant to write that Venditte is ambidextrous. But the closest they came was a word with an entirely different meaning.
My phone also changes "ambidextrous" to "amphibious"! I for one look forward to facing the land & water pitcher. pic.twitter.com/MLtLd3I5C4
— Dianne Eulalie (@dxp7) June 9, 2015
Not a great moment for a business that prides itself on knowing words and using them properly. As you can imagine, this image is taking the Internet by storm, serving as that proverbial daily laugh for millions.
The newspaper hasn't made any comments about the error, but we can hope for a hilarious retraction in the paper's next edition. In the meantime, the East Oregonian can console themselves by remembering that their error links them to an infamous quote in baseball history.
Said former New York Yankees great Yogi Berra about one of his peers: "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."
If only that were true.
