Tie o’ the Day #1 is one of those huge, Stacy Adams Big Boys like I’ve shown before. Hard to find, and about an inch longer than regular bow ties. I’m gonna wear yet another Bugatchi this morning. Check out the teeny, tiny light green and gray checks.
I can play a mean game of checkers, but chess has eluded me. I’ve never played it at all. Don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything, although I know it’s a thinking man’s game–difficult, mega-strategic, and requires thinking ahead many moves. To each, her own. The game I truly love, but only watch, is pro football.
At The Pub a few weeks ago, one of the not-regular guys was stumping all The Wise Men sitting at the bar with this question: “What distinguishes baseball from other sports played with balls?” Nobody in the place–and there were only guys, plus me–could come up with the answer. Their thinkers were sore. The guy was stretching out the time to give them the answer, to the point of making The Wise Men almost angry. I yelled from my table to the guy that I had known the answer forever. All eyes turned to me. The guy asked me the question. I demurely answered: “It’s the only ball game in which the defense has the ball.” I win. The guys were dumb-founded. And thus, I became a Pub legend. At least I was legendary for the evening. The non-regular said, “Buy that woman a pitcher of beer.” The bartender quickly said to him, “She only drinks Diet Coke, which she doesn’t even have to pay for.” (There are sports like cricket to which ball/defense thing applies, but that comes under the baseball category, as far as I’m concerned.)
The reason I knew that sporty answer was that, despite the fact that my nephew played pro baseball for around a decade, I cannot stand to watch the game. It, like chess, is referred to as “the thinking man’s game”. I love to play baseball, but watching it makes me sleepy.
I analyzed my impatience with the game a couple of decades ago, and that’s when I realized the thing about it being the only ball game where the defense has the ball. That’s a huge part of why the game moves so slowly–more slowly than even golf to me. I can drive over 300 miles in the time it takes to play an average pro baseball game!
Sorry, pro Ronnie. I love ya, man. And you do hit monster homers. Good on ya!