We've gone over the edge

Recently I had the opportunity to attend field day at my son's school. Lots of fun and frolicking in the sun by fifty third grade kids while parents root them on from the side lines. Fifty yard dash... hurdles... tennis ball toss... kick ball... sack races... good stuff. We have been attending field days for almost ten years and every year the festivities concludes with a Tug O'War between the classes.

But not this year. The physical education teacher announced that this year the event was going to be called Tug O'Fun... "We're not using the word 'war' anymore" he explained. Oh... My... God... I thought to myself. Political correctness has gone over the edge. We are no longer allowed to use the word war? Good thing this political correctness stuff wasn't around at the turn of the century or that famous race horse Man O'War might have been renamed Man O'Fun... which would have taken on a whole new meaning and spawned countless jokes, no doubt.

There is a place for some political correctness in our lives, for sure. Replace "Firemen" with "Firefighters" but leave Tug O'War alone.
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Reinventing Baseball

Ok, so I'm sitting at my son's baseball game... in the rain. It's cold and windy. I suspect that most of the parents, like me, enjoy watching their sons play baseball... when the sun is shining. Even a cloudy day is ok. As I'm sitting there under my umbrella (which only keeps my upper body dry as the water runs off and drenches my pants) I'm thinking to myself... there has got to be a way to improve the efficiency of baseball. Every time a team takes the field there are warm-ups. Each warm up takes about 5 minutes. This particular game has seven innings. That's FOURTEEN warm-ups. At five minues a warm-up, they spend seventy minutes(!!!) just warming up.

Ok, time to reinvent baseball. In a seven inning game each team will have seven times at bat and each time at bat they get three outs. That's twenty-one outs. If each team only batted once, the first team batting until they amassed twenty-one outs and then their opponent batting until they amassed twenty-one outs (or outscored the opponent), then baseball games would take much less time.

Maybe this could be become a "foul weather rule." I'm ok with spending the extra hour+ enjoying good weather but when it's nasty out, the kids aren't having fun, the coaches aren't having fun, the umpires aren't having fun, and the parents aren't having fun. So why prolong the agony. It's time to reinvent baseball.