Can’t help but

Can’t help but…

I was all set to do “out of the ordinary” when JR told me that was easy. It means “uncommon.” There, I did it. But JR told me I had to do something harder, and so we agreed that I would do this tricky one “can’t help but”. A certain group of people in the media can’t help but note that it’s safer to be on vacation in the Dominican Republic than it is to walk around your own hometown, especially if you live in some areas with high crime rates in the United States. That group can’t help but notice that the Dominican is safer in some respects than the US. They can’t help but notice.

When you can’t help but …. something, you don’t have any real control over it. It just kind of happens. You don’t necessarily want it to happen; you don’t necessarily want it to not happen—but it just happens. If you can’t help but notice something, you just notice it. You weren’t looking for it. Some people—when they heard about the crime rate in the Dominican, they did the math and—well, look, it’s less than it is in Baltimore or St. Louis or parts of Chicago. I can’t help but notice that it’s more dangerous in parts of the United States. I can’t help but notice…I noticed it, even though I wasn’t looking for it specifically.

It’s common to say you can’t help but wonder. On Saturday, the Yankees and Red Sox played the first Major League Baseball game in Europe. It’s the middle of the baseball season here, and the two teams went to London to play a quick two-game series. The score of the first game was 17-13, Yankees winning. That’s like an American football score. In baseball, they score 2, 3, 4, maybe six or seven runs a game. 17-13 is an extremely high-scoring game. I can’t help but wonder if the pitchers weren’t thrown off their routine by the time change, all the publicity, the pomp and circumstance. Baseball players are creatures of habit. In the middle of the year, they had to go to London to play a highly-anticipated game. I can’t help but wonder if the break in the routine caused the pitchers to lose their focus, and give up so many runs. I can’t help but wonder…this is making me wonder. I can’t help but wonder; I can’t prevent it. I just watched the game and this made me wonder. Did the break in the players’ routine affect the way they played?

Speaking of the game, the first home run came in the first inning. Aaron Hicks hit one over the right-field wall and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw two youngsters, one wearing a Brussels Baseball t-shirt, caught the ball. They looked like they were eight or ten years old. If you’re a young baseball fan, then catching a home run ball is like, the ultimate dream. And this was the first game in Europe. So I couldn’t help but smile when a kid from Brussels got the first home run ball. That’s a memory for life, and I’m glad someone from Europe got to catch it, instead of some tourist from America. I couldn’t help but smile.

We did an episode right around the new year, Episode 116, about American sports leagues trying to expand their brands abroad. After watching this game and seeing how successful it was in London, I can’t help but think that baseball will try to have games in other cities in Europe in the future. I can’t help but think that because it generated so much publicity not only with Americans in London, not only with Japanese and Korean fans who grew up with baseball, but also with British people who were watching a game for the first time. I can’t help but think, after this success, that they’ll try it again in another city.

This is a tough one, but I hope you get the idea. You can use it with a variety of verbs that are usually reflexive emotions: can’t help but wonder, can’t help but smile, can’t help but notice, can’t help but think, can’t help but feel, can’t help but say, can’t help but worry, like that.

JR’s song of the week

JR tells me we have a song of the week for today. It’s nominated by Junio from Brazil. The song is “American Pie,” by Don McLean. It’s an old one—it came out in 1971—and it’s really long, over eight minutes, actually the longest song to be a Billboard Number 1 hit. But it’s a total classic; everyone knows it. It’s got some meandering lyrics and there’s a lot of debate about what some of them mean. But the main line is “the day the music died,” and that referred to a plane crash in 1959 that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, two of the early, early stars of American Rock and Roll music. Don McLean had a funny line. People would always ask him what the song mean. What do the lyrics mean? And he got fed up with the question and he just said, the song means I don’t have to work again! McLean didn’t really have any other big hits, but this was a big one for sure. “American Pie,” by Don McLean. Thanks Junio in Brazil; thanks JR for this week’s selection. If you would like to nominate your favorite English song, please email your selection to [email protected].

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. By now, you know who will be the finalists in Sunday’s Women’s World Cup finals. I’m recording this early, so I don’t know who goes to the final. But if you’re interested in watching, that will be on Sunday afternoon in Europe, Sunday morning here in the Americas. Thanks again for being with us on this Thursday edition of Plain English—remember, we’re with you ever Monday and every Thursday, and we also send out some great resources with every episode: even more than what we have on the web site. To get those, sign up at PlainEnglish.com/mail . That’s all for today—JR and I will be back with another exciting episode on Monday.