Month: June 2024

Decades ago, I needed to cut something in my office at work.  I don’t remember quite was it was nor why I needed to cut that paper; it didn’t matter.  I didn’t have a pair of scissors, so I wandered out to find a pair.  My teammates shared an office across the hall; I made it that far.  I asked my teammate if he had a pair that I might borrow.  He reaches into his desk drawer, pulls out a pair of scissors, and hands them to me.  However, he warns me that they’re left-handed scissors.

“Surely, he toys with me”, I thought.  I did not believe that such thing as left-handed scissors existed.  I simply took the scissors and started to cut, or more accurately I tried to cut.  Though I genuinely tried, I could not get those scissors to function.  Obviously, I could pull the blades apart and then back together, but they didn’t cut paper.  My friend charitably cut the item for me.  I played the fool; left-handed scissors actually exist.

Continue reading “Straight pride month” →

I grew up watching baseball.  I watched no other sports, just baseball.  They adhere to many conventions when it comes to sports in general, and baseball in particular.  When broadcasters (or website) list sports scores, they list the home team second.  If the Dodgers play in Atlanta, they’ll list the LA Dodgers first; sometimes they’ll even say, “LA at Atlanta” for short.  Though that’s just a convention.

The home team bats second in each inning; they actually wrote this into the rules.  There are nuances in game play that extend from this rule.  However, this is a generic rule about baseball.  Major League Baseball established a few additional rules.  As a teenager, I had picked up a book on the MLB rules, I had few other vices.  I found some of the more obscure rules to be rather interesting.

The players’ uniforms need to be consistent color and appearance.  Each uniform may have the player’s surname on the back (or no name at all like some Yankee uniforms); it may not be the first name.  Ichiro Suzuki wore his first name on his uniform, but he needed to explicitly get special permission from the commissioner.  Back in the 1970’s, Ted Turner owned both the Atlanta Braves and TBS (which was often channel 17 on the tuner).  He propositioned Messersmith, the player with the jersey number 17, to change his name to Channel, so that the jersey read Channel 17.

Continue reading “Baseball, fairness, and equal representation” →