Plurals are tricky. If you're a second grader.

South Carolina is Braves country. It's also chewing tobacco country, which is really unfortunate. For a long time, actually, the entire Southeast was the territory of the Atlanta Braves. Florida, my homeland, got two teams in the past 15 years -- the Marlins (for which there was some initial confusion if they'd be known as the Florida or Miami Marlins) and the D-Rays, who are one of the lovably awful teams in sports. Like the Cleveland Browns in football or the United States in the World Cup. But aside from the Florida teams, the Nationals are the nearest team to the Palmetto State, but Southern folk are still a little leery of stuff that comes out of Washington.

Since I am going to become a Georgian shortly (Go Tblisi!), I feel like I need to pay more attention to the Braves. They're doing alright, since they just mad a bunch of trades. There is something about trades that make sports more exciting, isn't there? Anything: marbles, baseball cards, and children are all made more exciting when trading is involved.

Here's the thing, though, one of the important stats in the game of baseball, is, of course, the run batted in. For those of you who are uninitiated, a run batted in (or RBI) occurs when the batter, when up to bat, hits or "bats" in a runner. If there are more than one runner on base, say two, for example, these are called runs batted in. Notice which word is pluralized. So, when the abbreviation is pluralized, it should be RBI. Not RBIs. When some sportscaster says, "Andruw Jones led the Braves with two RBIs" I want to reach through the radio, grab him by the lapels and criticize his grammar. The spelling of Andruw wasn't up to him, so I'll let that slide. RBI is like sheep; it does not change when plurals are involved.

Also, just in general, when prepositional phrases are involved, the pluralization doesn't happen after the preposition. Forces of nature, wheels of fortune, powers of attorney. I don't know why this is so complicated. It's not like we're talking about the begging the question logical fallacy here.

Anyway, I think I need to become a Braves fan.