Tobin: The Globe agrees: Red Sock is not cool

Or why Rance Mullinix can’t get a blessed thing right!

The story so far: Remy fill-in Rance Mulliniks talked on-air about what Jason Bay has done “since he became a Red Sox. Excuse me, Red Sock.” I mused on what exactly the singular form of Red Sox should be. John Tomase, Red Sox reporter for the Boston Herald, confirmed that the policy of their paper says the singular form is Red Sox, but that they usually write around it. Now I’ve gotten answer from within the Boston Globe, as well, if not directly from the sports desk. A friend of mine there who is not Dan Shaughnessy reports:

  I talked to a copyeditor, and apparently the Globe never says “Red Sock” to refer to a player — if you absolutely must use the singular, it’s Red Sox, but whenever possible we dance around it with “one of the Red Sox,” or “Red Sox player,” etc. I tried a Nexis search for “red sock” in the Globe, and in the past six years the term “red sock” has been used almost exclusively when the writer is talking about the article of clothing, a literal red sock (about half the time, it’s Schilling’s famous one in 2004).

  The only two recent-ish uses of Red Sock to describe a person were also, coincidentally, about Schilling — once he was quoted called himself a Red Sock, and once Alex Beam used it in a column:  “You might say of newly acquired Boston Red Sock Curt ‘The Hope’ Schilling…”