The Associated Press has been around since 1846 when it was founded by a conglomerate of New York newspapers who wanted to publish news that was coming out of Europe. The sport of baseball traces its roots well before the late 1800's when American newspapers referred to the game as "The National Pasttime" or "The National Game."

One would imagine that during that time, the AP would be able to get their heads together and actually report baseball correctly.

Those who are not involved in the media or casually read sports articles might easily miss a grave error in the AP's judgement regarding their style rules.

Before getting into the details, let me first explain to you, dear readers, what an RBI is for those who may not follow baseball or do not follow baseball statistics much.

Some of the most important stats for offense in baseball are home runs, batting average, runs scored, steals, hits, errors, walks, strikeouts and runs batted in (RBI). Some may ask what exactly an RBI is. Consider this scenario: no outs in the top of the 1st inning (pretty basic, huh?) and the leadoff man hits a single. The second man in the lineup trots up to the plate and hits a triple, allowing the man who was on first to round all the bases and score. The guy who hit the triple picks up an RBI because he drove a run in to score.

So what exactly is my beef with the Associated Press? After all, this is the Associated Press we're talking about. I'm just a regular guy who runs the Sports section of a university newspaper.

My problem is how the AP style booklet tells us that RBI should be written "RBIs" if there is more than one RBI attributed to a player or team. You realize what this means. Instead of "runs batted in," it becomes "runs batted ins." Bizarre? Indeed.

You say deer, not "deers." You say aircraft, not "aircrafts." You say sheep, not "sheeps." I could go on for a good while, people. You get the point.

The Associated Press is wrong. I am right.