POLICE WORK IS DIFFERENT THAN I THOUGHT

The New York Times on Sunday had an article about the cooperation between U.S. and Italian police in crushing the mafia. The article draws out the possible parallels to the situation with the drug gangs in Mexico and the possibility of U.S. cooperation with Mexico.

So far so good. However, in talking about the difficulties in the situation with Italy, one of the issues was that the F.B.I. did not trust the Italians. They thought they were corrupt. In describing the situation, one person said "and the F.B.I. was not known for its generosity with colleagues, acknowledged Mr. Sheer, now a security consultant in Florida. 'We were the catchers,' he said. 'They pitched, we caught.'"

Uh. What? I am pretty sure that there were less ambiguous ways to say that. I mean, just a quick trip to urbandictionary should convince the F.B.I. and the New York Times that pitchers and catchers either were not involved here, or the F.B.I. REALLY cooperated with the Italians.