I have noticed that even most baseball folks have become a bit ashamed of the clichés circulating at this time of year.
The three big ones:
1. Players claiming they “were in the best shape of their lives” (as if that should be award-worthy in an industry in which being in your best shape is mandatory and not being in top shape verges on disrespect to your teammates and your profession).
2. Those returning from injury defining how far ahead of schedule they were in their rehabs. (It was generally easy to be “ahead of schedule.” Teams were like airlines fluffing in an extra hour to the estimated time of arrival, so they could be late and still claim to be on time. Organizations don’t want to oversell or to get players to try to beat the quickest possible healing periods. So they say 18 months when maybe they mean 12 or 14 or 16.)
