Every time I read "he had went" or "I had went" in a sports story or a news story I cringe. How hard is it to use the "to go" verb correctly? Consider the following: "Reid was a big reach who wouldn't have stood a chance of being drafted had the Thunder not went out on a limb with him." That is what one unidentified sportswriter wrote--not in a blog post, not in a tweet, but on a respected news outlet (FOXSports) presumably after having passed the piece by an editor or two.
I'll admit that a verb conjugation error (not to mention the "out on a limb with him" metaphor mashup) in a wrapup story assigning grades to all the NBA teams for their performances in the draft isn't going to cause any harm to the language, but it would have been a nice touch if Fox had gone out (or is it "went out"?) and drafted a competent copy reader who knew standard journalistic style and how to employ it.
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