Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver

May 9th, 2011

Probably the greatest newspaper correction ever published:

Correction: May 8, 2011

An item in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in "The Hobbit"; Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins's sword was called Sting.)

Not that I follow baseball, or had read the original report, but reading this I can't help but ask myself "Would I have noticed their mistake?" I have a horrible feeling that I would have.1

[Via The Awl]

  1. I don't think I'd have remembered whose sort Orcrist was, but I'm pretty confident that I'd have known that Bilbo's sword was Sting, and – for bonus points – that Sting was handed down to Frodo and was used by Sam to would Shelob. ↩

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