Eggcorn Forum

“Shortshop” for “shortstop.” This has got to be a typo, but I’m surprised at how common it is – over 800 hits. And a number of those are at some very high-profile places – the Boston Globe sports pages (more than once), ESPN (more than once), the official Stanford Baseball site, Wikipedia (more than once), and, uh, Language Log. (Hey, the hardhitting bloggers over here at the Eggcorns Forum don’t play favorites.)

The “t” and “h” keys are close to each other, but this doesn’t look like a common key substitution to me; I think I’d be unlikely to do this as a simple typo, and I’m a really bad typist. Maybe that initial “sh-” exerts a bit of a magnetic pull on the rest of the word. Any other theories? Examples:

You also see examples with the preposition in, like the shortshop at Mississippi State who is said to have “developed into a good situational hitter while honing in his offensive skills in fall practice”, or the young woman in San Francisco who “is focusing on her new digital media company, Steakhaus Productions, after honing in her digital design skills at SFSU Multimedia Studies Program.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language … 00378.html

“The Sox have shipped Nomar to the Cubs in a four-team deal and ended up with shortshop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz.
http://www.boston.com/sports/message_bo … sg12.shtml

Pittsburgh shortshop Jack Wilson may not be in the Pirates’ lineup until Sunday;
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/p … atsId=6693

The first batter in the inning, Raul Campos, reached base on a throwing error by the Stanford shortshop Minaker.
http://gostanford.cstv.com/sports/m-bas … 06aaa.html

Gonzalez swung at one of Rivera’s pitches and blooped a single over shortshop Derek Jeter’s head that won the World Series for Arizona.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Gonzalez_(baseball_outfielder)

Bench Red Sox Shortshop Edgar Renteria
http://www.petitiononline.com/ss3edgar/petition.html