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Rhymes with brats?

Published Tuesday, August 08, 2006 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

Here's a nominee for Gawker's "Great Moments in Journalism" file: In today's Globe, Sasha Talcott describes how the New England Patriots are taking a page out of the Fenway Franks playbook and slapping their football team name on such tailgate-friendly items as hot dogs, sausages and bratwurst. Sounds so simple, you'd wonder why other NFL teams hadn't thought of it before. And yet, the Pats would be first. Read the story here.

A sentence that just begs for attention and doesn't get it: "NASCAR last year launched a line of hot dogs and sausages -- and even created NASCAR bologna. The slogan: 'Taste the excitement.' " Yummy?!

But here's the part that made me pause and think, some editor must've made her do it: "Another submission for bratwurst, "Pats brats" sounded good in theory. But there was a catch: Fans might be way too tempted to pronounce it "brats" (as in spoiled children) because it would rhyme with "Pats." (Pronounced correctly, brats rhymes with cots.)"

Crazy as it sounds, though, I bet more than a few readers found themselves saying, "Oh, I didn't know that!" at the end of that paragraph. Those readers should then be sent to Wisconsin for punishment (just kidding, in case my friends from Madison are reading this, only I'm not really kidding, because I'd like to see how the Cheeseheads react to someone mispronouncing bratwurst...would they be friendly or not?).