This is annoying, and I've seen it at least twice today.
First, in a Washington Post article on high-school baseball chatter:
Chesapeake catcher Zach Moore is known as being somewhere between a chatterer and a jockey. He doesn't speak directly to the opponent's pitcher, but he does have a cache of one-liners he employs liberally.
"If he's throwing high," Moore says, "I'll say, 'Get 'em a bucket!' " The jab, of course, being that the pitcher is throwing up.
When the pitches are missing low, Moore's go-to quip is, to put it delicately, the opposite of saying, "He can't keep it down."
And then just now (in another baseball story), from the Associated Press:
Burnitz has one hit in his last 26 at-bats, but was strongly defended by Tracy after being asked if the outfielder had to start producing soon to keep playing.Burnitz also was booed Wednesday for not running hard on a groundball he possibly could have beaten out.
"I'm not talking that, by May 14, if so-and-so doesn't have two hits in a game his (rear end) is out of here," Tracy said. "If you played the game, then you know what he went through. You think those guys are enjoying that, think it's fun for them to be going through it?
"It's no fun for them. And they don't need to get up in the morning and read a lot of stuff from their manager, that he is completely down on them or is disconsolate with them."
Emphasis added in both cases.
Apparently, "He can't keep it up" and "ass" are too obscene for quotation. That's bullshit. If the words are worth reporting, they're worth reporting accurately. Style guidelines that treat readers like fragile Sunday-schoolers are tedious and disruptive.