The Winston-Salem Dash are the high-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. They are also have a proper minor league team name — a half-silly tribute to the local scene that looks good on a hat.
But the Dash aren’t proper in a grammatical sense. The punctuation mark that joins the two names that identify the consolidated North Carolina city of roughly 250,000 isn’t a dash. It’s a hyphen.
Of course, you don’t hyphen between the bases once the ball is hit. And the internet helped make “dash” a useful substitute for the original word that clocks in at half the syllable load. So Winston-Salem Dash works on multiple levels.
Except for one glorious day, when the grammar nerds will finally be sated.
The City of Winston-Salem and literary scholars have spoken. For one game this season the Dash will be grammatically correct and play as the Winston-Salem Hyphens on May 6 as part of Salute to Winston-Salem!
S-H-O-P 👕: https://t.co/7a1t5nHYQn
B-U-Y 🎟: https://t.co/JEasXO4k9h pic.twitter.com/tcAjfEhxjd— Winston-Salem Dash (@WSDashBaseball) April 20, 2023
On May 6, the Winston-Salem Dash will be the Winston-Salem Hyphens. The franchise that stars like Wade Boggs, Earl Weaver, Cecil Cooper and Chris Sale once called home will, for one night, cater to every English major who looked at the Carolina League standings (or, in 2022 onward, the South Atlantic standings), squinted and softly birthed a “well, actually …” into an indifferent world.
And now, for only $32, they can immortalize that moment with a Hyphens shirsey.
The Hyphens take on the Greensboro Grasshoppers in what could be their only night of existence. It will be a celebration for grammar dorks everywhere.
