Google Results for Commonly Misspelled Player Names: A Pointless Contest
Here’s a fun game, if you’ve already finished the rest of the Internet. Try to find a baseball player where the number of Google results for a misspelled version of his name come closest to the number of results for his name spelled correctly.
For instance… Todd Zeile: 84,100 results. Todd Ziele: 6,240 results.
So that’s not so close.
Think you’ve figured out the trick here? Andruw Jones: 752,000 results. Andrew Jones… any guesses? Amazingly, only 417,000 results. A lot of people write about baseball on the Internet, compared to writing about ordinary people whose names are spelled appropriately.
Maybe the trick is to use obscure players. Marcus Semien: 32,000 results (31,000 of them link to FanGraphs). Marcus Semen: only 486 results, and most of them unsafe for work.
Jhonny Peralta: 923,000. Johnny Peralta: 58,200. Jake Peralta, Andy Samberg’s character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine: 31,400.
Wladimir Balentien: 121,000. Vladimir Balentien: 1,440. Vladimir Balentine: 42 results.
Can you find one where the misspelling exceeds the correct one? That’s your challenge, bored-at-work readers. That’s your challenge.
Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a satirical novel that should make people who didn't go to law school feel good about their life choices. Read more at McSweeney's or elsewhere. He likes e-mail.
First try:
Clay Buchholz – 826,000 results
Clay Buccholz – 1,470,000 results, many from Boston.com and CBS Boston. Great work guys
Weird. For me:
“Clay Buchholz” = About 791,000 results
“Clay Buccholz” = About 90,400 results
“Clay Buckholz” = About 11,500 results
“Clay Buckholtz” = About 6,640 results
“Clay Buchholtz” = About 4,380 results
Checks out for me, though I can’t believe it.
On that note:
Jon Lester – 289,000
John Lester – 527,000