America's Favorite Pastime

Let's talk for a moment about baseball.  Rather, let's talk for a moment about why I hate baseball.  I recently went to a Durham Bulls baseball game, I had a great seat and someone else was footing the bill for the food, which is always nice.  Still I left early, and by early I mean half an hour into the game.  If I ever have the inclination to attend another baseball game, please stick me in an Iron Maiden and leave me there for half a century (which I am sure will still be much more fun than attending an entire baseball game).  Allow me to share with you my reasoning before you suggest that I malign this historical and long standing American institution. 

First, why are baseball games soooooo looooong?  A baseball game is like the reverse fountain of youth, children who enter a baseball stadium will leave retired with a condo in Florida because baseball games last forever.  Of the baseball games I've attended, even if that number is really small, I've never made it to the end.  There's something like 82 innings that each last 3 hours.  You will seriously be there until you die if you don't leave early.  I could make a fortune if I started a mortuary in a baseball stadium.  I would never go out of business.  By the time the game is over people have rigor mortis.  Nevermind, sounds a little messy.

Second, at any given time you are watching people just standing around and I'm not talking about the audience!!  If you go with good company you kinda chit-chat and then turn around to see what's happening on the baseball field.  I can tell you exactly what you're going to see, and that is grown men in stirrups staring at each other.  I kid you not.  Do people really pay to see this?  I can go to the mall and watch people stand around.  I can go to the pool and watch people stare at each other.  Which brings me to my third beef with baseball, it's a low scoring sport.  At least with hockey there's occasional violence to break up the monotony of nothing really happening.  With soccer, at least people are running around looking like they are doing something (don't forget the rare but priceless head-butt collisions), but baseball  really has no hope of entertainment if there is minimal scoring because people are too busy standing around looking at each other.  Three words, worst sport ever.

Lastly, baseball is a summer sport but that's when it tends to be the hottest outside.  I know some baseball teams that start their baseball games at dusk which can be seen as a kindness in that I'm not marinating in a pool of my own sweat while the hot summer sun beats down on my dripping brow, but that only delays the torturous length of the game.  I don't know which to choose from, expanding sweat marks on every article of clothing (which is incidentally why I left early from the most recent baseball game I attended), or the procrastination of what is surely to be the longest night of your life if you stay an entire game.  Decisions, decisions . . .

In short, why America why?!  To be honest, there is one redeeming quality to the whole baseball experience and that is funnel cake.  Yummy, but even that is overpriced.  The price of food and drinks at a baseball game makes me feel like I live in the dust bowl during the 1930s and my only alternative is to start breastfeeding grown men to help them survive.  It's outrageous!  Why America why?!

Okay, I'm done ranting and raving about baseball.  Thank you for listening to my passionate entreaties to do away with the entire sport.  If, however, you are a baseball lover I guess I'll see you in Florida.

Thinking

There are two types of people in this world, those who think and those who don't.  I'm in the latter category but am greatly disguised by my good memory.  Memorizing and understanding are two entirely different entities.  Let's go back a few generations before I delineate the difference between the two.  My great grandfather was a brilliant scientist and made, from raw materials, radios, matches and all sorts devices that captured his attention.  He was a problem solver.  His daughter, my grandmother, is 86 and still kicks my butt at Scrabble.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it's because she knows how to think.  The point is, I come from a long line of thinkers.  I, on the other hand, tend to regurgitate what others have told me to think which makes me highly uncreative and unresourceful.

Recently I have been exposed (over-exposed to tell you the truth) to the scientific community and realize I am surrounded by thinkers, and I'm not one.  Maybe it's because I'm the second child and my older sibling was the one who solved all the problems.  In fact, I was well into adulthood before I realized I could solve my own problems!  Good times. 

In an academic setting, scientists see problems and then they solve them.  Given, I am simplifying this process a little, but that's the general gist.  For example, I was in a laboratory this weekend where a grad student built a microscope.  Now I know that a microscope has some glass, maybe some mirrors and a light, but far be it for me to actually throw one together.  Apparently the student needed a microscope that suited his specific needs so he decided to construct one from parts "lying around the lab."  Wowzers, that is so not me.  Here's how that situation would have played out if it had been me in that situation:

me:  Self, I need a microscope that does such-and-such.
me again:  There isn't a microscope that does such-and-such in existence.
first me:  Well, I guess we can call it a day.  Pizza anyone?
other mes:  Sure!

Not so scientific.  The problem is, I want to be a thinker.  Someone very wise once told me that I don't have to be smart, I just have to be determined.  Frankly, for me this is very good news, but what if I do want to be smart?  Is that possible?  How do I switch categories?  Endless rounds of Sudoku?  Are there 'thinking missionaries' that can convert me?  Maybe I should begin to start asking questions, get around to asking the right questions, then just assume I have the wherewithall and the resources to answer those questions. 

Well I'm open to suggestions, and in the meantime I'm going to go cure Lupus so if you'll excuse me . . .