Detectives believe alcohol was involved

From Wiki Gonzalez

Detectives believe alcohol was involved because 99 times out of 100 that belief proved to be well-founded.

This running joke is thought to have first appeared in the otherwise sad Dodgers fan killed by SF Giants fan (http://web.archive.org/web/20031210085327/http://www.baseballprimer.com/clutch/archives/00008827.shtml#63) thread of September 20, 2003. penguinmobile made the following observation:

Posted 10:38 a.m., September 21, 2003 (#63) - penguinmobile

From the Chronicle story (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/21/BA263620.DTL): detectives believe alcohol was involved.

If I was a newspaper reporter, I'd have this phrase stored in a macro so I could just hit "F1" and it would write itself into every story. It'd save a lot of typing.

Primates agreed, and began adding it unmodified into random f'ed-up news stories. The modified story still always made sense, somehow.

A post on this page (http://www.bostonist.com/archives/2005/03/04/safety_watch_mbta.php#comment-13359), dated March 8, 2005, is so similar in wording to penguinmobile's post that coincidence seems contraindicated.

I would say there is a very good chance the guy was drunk. I wonder if beat reporters have a special key on their keyboards that when pressed says "detectives believe alcohol was involved." I bet it would save them a lot of time.

Posted by: ed at March 8, 2005 01:33 PM

Also see: Milton Bradley, Sidney Ponson.