Alvarez Grounded

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ third baseman Pedro Alvarez has been away from the team while trying to come back from a recent injury. I was reading about him in Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The leading story in the Sports section was “Pirates’ Alvarez finally healthy; bat not there yet” by Michael Sanserino. Unfortunately, I never got past the second paragraph:

Facing professional adversity, the injured Pirates third basemen credited his wife, Keli, who he married in the winter, for keeping him grounded.

My initial interest in this sentence—the paragraph is only one sentence long—focused on the word “grounded.” Did Keli Alverez keep the ballplayer mentally healthy, or did she keep him from going back to work, possibly against his will? “Grounded” is insufficiently clear.

As it turns out, however, Mr. Sanserio crammed a great number of errors into one sentence. (Does the Post-Gazette employ editors?) For one thing, Alverez is a third baseman, not a third basemen! Finally, “who” should actually be “whom.”

When I get around to it, I may read the rest of the story.