"Not on the Same Page"

There's been a lot of talk recently about whether some members of the Padres organization are "not on the same page" with club CEO Sandy Alderson.

And at least two of those "not on the same page" with Alderson's organizational philosophy became apparent with the departures of bench coach Craig Colbert and hitting coach Wally Joyner.

That got us thinking.

"Not on the same page" seems to be one of those sports cliches that's becoming increasingly more common every day. Hardly a day goes by in which somebody on ESPN doesn't utter the phrase.

We started wondering how this cliche began. Who started it? What were the circumstances?

Well, after weeks of diligent investigative reporting, we can now reveal the origin of "not on the same page."

We tracked down a retired sportswriter by the name of I.M. Bitereaux, who says he coined the phrase while covering a junior college football game in Shreveport, La., in the late 1970s.

"After watching several botched plays, in which the quarterback threw to a receiver who had cut in the opposite direction, I wrote that it looked like they were 'not on the same page,' " Bitereaux said. "I wish I had known then that everybody would be using it now. I would've copyrighted the darn thing, or something."

But sadly, Bitereaux's tale took a turn for the surreal.

When Bitereaux filed his story on that night in the '70s, dictating to his editor over the phone, as was common practice in those days, he and his editor somehow got their signals crossed, and Bitereaux's new phrase didn't see the light of day.

Apparently, Bitereaux and his editor were, uh, "not on the same page."