Archive for August, 2007

The Longest and Shortest Major League Baseball Games

by Glenn Vance on August 8, 2007 in History with No comments
Scoreboard

Base­ball, in this day and age, can seem to take an eter­nity to watch. Espe­cially if you’re going into the 8th with a 0–0 tie on your hands. But the longest base­ball game in major league play was played between the Chicago White Sox and Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game started on May 9, 1984, and because of MLB rules, the teams had to quit play­ing at 12:59 am of May 10, so the teams came back the next day to fin­ish what they’d started the day before. All in all, the game lasted 8 hours and 6 min­utes, with a final score of 7–6 in 25 innings. The White Sox won, by the way, on a home run by right fielder Harold Baines. The short­est MLB game on record took place on Sep­tem­ber 28, 1919 between the New York Giants and the Philadel­phia Phillies at the Baker Bowl in Philadel­phia. It took the Giants only 51 min­utes to beat the Phillies, 6–1.1

  1. This infor­ma­tion can be found almost any­where on the Inter­net, but for more infor­ma­tion you can check out the amaz­ingly com­pre­hen­sive Base­ball Almanac. [↩]

A Disturbing Trend in Children’s Birthday Parties

by Glenn Vance on August 6, 2007 in Kids with No comments
Party-time-Excellent

Being a dad I’ve hosted birth­day par­ties in the past and have often had to go to birth­day par­ties of the chil­dren of friends of ours. It’s a trade off — you buy my kid a gift and that enti­tles your child to receive a gift from my kid at your kid’s next party. Every par­ent is pay­ing off the other par­ent so that their kids can get some­thing at the birth­day party when it rolls around to being your child’s time again.

And often you’ll put a lot of effort and car­ing into choos­ing that spe­cial birth­day party gift. What does the child like? What is the age range on the gift? Does it have small parts and do they have a younger sib­ling that might choke on those parts? You want to make sure that you don’t get some­thing that the kid won’t play with because more and more stores aren’t let­ting you return, or even exchange for that mat­ter, toys that don’t have a receipt with them. You end up putting a lot of research into deter­min­ing just what kind of present you’re going to buy.

But lately there’s a new trend that until now I hadn’t noticed — the host of the birth­day party (the birth­day partier, if you will) not open­ing their gifts that the invited got for said partier until after the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.

After your effort, aren’t you enti­tled to a lit­tle clo­sure with that present that you took care to find and wrap? What’s up with that? You take your present to the party, your child has fun, and then you leave with­out the host open­ing their gifts. It’s like watch­ing all the way up until the end of Star Wars and not see­ing if the Rebels destroy the Death Star.

Any­way, I’m sound­ing the klaxon that this is a com­pletely uncool trend. Let it end now, par­ents of would-be present non-openers. Don’t even try it, muthas.

Why is Everyone Scared of You When You’re Wearing a Ski Mask?

by Glenn Vance on August 2, 2007 in Current Events with 1 Comment
Ski-Mask

I remem­ber when I was a kid that some kids (not me) when they were walk­ing to school in the cold would wear var­i­ous things — coats, gloves, hats, and some­times the invalu­ably effec­tive ski mask.

I always wanted one. I never got one.

They were awe­some. Your face would be warm out in the cold. An effi­cient piece of cloth­ing for keep­ing your nose from freezing.

Of course, if you wear one now, peo­ple look at you a lit­tle funny. You can see it on their faces. “Who’s that shady, yet warm, char­ac­ter over there? Is he going to rob me? Kill me? Maybe blow up a bomb?”

Every­one thinks you’re a ter­ror­ist or a bank rob­ber or a mug­ger now if you wear a ski mask. Which is why I want to reha­bil­i­tate the ski mask’s rep­u­ta­tion. Who’s with me?

I want a ski mask just so I can drive around with one on. Peo­ple may stare but I’ll only do good thing while wear­ing my ski mask — help the envi­ron­ment, care for old peo­ple, be kind to ani­mals, go shop­ping for gro­ceries, all while wear­ing my trusty, warm and woolly ski mask.

Why can’t we all love the ski mask again? It never stopped lov­ing us.