"Sabermetrics" Was A Word In The Scripps National Spelling Bee

The Scripps National Spelling Bee, which alongside poker, cheerleading, and hot dog eating constitute the E for Entertainment in ESPN, featured an actual sports word in the third preliminary round of its competition today in Washington, D.C. as "sabermetrics" made its appearance.

14-year-old Emma Ciereszynski—who honed her spelling skills by filling out paperwork requiring her full name—drew the word and successfully spelled it after learning its definition ("the statistical analysis of baseball data") and its origin (an English acronym plus a Greek-derived English part). The word's appearance in the Bee outraged both baseball purists (who deny the legitimacy of sabermetrics as an idea) and stat junkies (who insist on spelling it SABRmetrics). [ESPN]