Another story that begins with "Florida Man..."

It wasn't long after I saw a story about Andie McDowell and her daughters sneaking under the fence to get into a closed park because, well, because they are Andie McDowell and her progeny, and laws mean nothing to them, along comes the story of prettyboy quarterback Tom Brady, who is new to Tampa Bay, the home of a perennially bad football team.

Apparently unaware of the pandemic gripping the nation, or being of the mind that his workout meant more than any old "rules," Brady was caught playing in a park and given the bum's rush like the bum he is.

But that's not even the point today, because if I wrote about it every time Tom Brady made himself the south end of a northbound horse, this blog would be called "The Daily Brady," and it isn't.

That point is made. Everyone knows, stay home, social distancing, yada yada, Brady doesn't follow rules.

But the result of that is another example of imprecise language causing confusion.  The mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor and St. Petersburg mayor Rick Kriseman were chatting on Facebook Live, because that's how we handle municipal affairs in 2020. And she said...

“I got to tell you this story, too. I always tell people, ‘Now I’m not one to gossip so you didn’t hear this from me.'”

“But you know our parks are closed down and so a lot of our parks staff, they patrol around just to make sure people aren’t doing contact sports and things and saw an individual working out in one of our downtown parks. And she went over to tell him that it was closed and it was Tom Brady.”

“Oh my goodness," Kriseman replied.

"He has been cited," Castor added.

So her statement that Brady was "cited" for working out in the park was picked up by local sports reporter Eduardo A. Encina, late of the Baltimore SUN.

Brady is renting a house from Derek Jeter, a former baseball player with a team called the "Yankees." It would seem there is not enough room there for Brady to heave the old pigskin around, as they say on the sports pages, so he went to the park and was seen there by a Rec & Parks staffer, who, with complete justification, gave him the gate.

But herhonor the mayor said Brady was cited, as in given a ticket as a notice of violating a law.  Until this update...

4 PM PT -- A rep for the City of Tampa says Tom was not formally "cited" -- but rather "sighted" ... meaning, he was not ticketed.
He was ordered to leave the park -- but he will NOT have to pay a fine.

And after that, the city turned the whole thing into a PSA, tweeting

"Sorry Tom Brady Our @tampaparksrec team can’t wait to welcome you and our entire community back with even bigger smiles -- until then, stay safe and stay home as much as you can to help flatten the curve."

Cite vs sight. The other funny homophone of the week was painted on the side of a pick 'em up truck at one of those "Reopen everything or I'm gonna hold my breath til I turn red" rallies was this ungrammatical trifecta: "NO YOU'RE RIGHT'S"

Sometimes people can't write right.