Things that irk you......

You forgot "... in the game." Dammit, of course it was in the game. If it was during batting practice, we wouldn't care.

 

Had a co-worker who would write: "We played a good game," Podunk coach Al Coholic said afterward.

Of course it was afterward. They didn't likely talk during the game.

I will use afterward if reporting on a public meeting to differentiate what was said in the open and what was said later in an interview.

 

AP photo caption division:

"President Donald Trump, left, and ..."
"In this Thursday, April 20, 2017 file photo ..." (for a photo sent Friday)
Cutting and pasting the first three graphs of a story onto the caption.

I could go on ...

 

None of the things listed so far would impact me in any way ...

 

But would they affect you?

 

Effort again ...

 

Slow golfers.
Bad drivers.
Big oil companies and/or the owners of the corner convenience store who hike the price of gas overnight by a quarter a gallon, just because they can.
Slow golfers.
Local TV stations that don't catch a typo on their scroll and let it run that way for two hours.
Airline passengers who hold Zone 5 boarding passes but rush to the gate the moment boarding is imminent.
Slow golfers.

 

I am irked by your ilk.

 

Spitting and littering, including flicking a cigarette butt, in public space.

 

Score the ball
The use of "would" in a sports story unless it's in quotes. Past fucking tense, please.

 

Maybe at the top of my list, which is part of why I don't like watching MLB. It's all spitting and littering (spitting sunflower seed shells all over the field and dugout is littering).

Others:

When a team scores to cut the other team's lead to, say, 50-40, and the announcer says the team is now within 10. No, it's not. All uses of "within" in this way drive me a bit nuts.

Also, and this is a very common SID thing, when team A "plays host" to team B. Garbage.

 

I had an editor, way back when in the beginning of my journalism career, who would not allow us to use the word 'host' as a verb.
It always had to be 'play host.'