I love this so much, I can't wait till it's over


I was at a lunch meeting yesterday, and someone made an announcement about a trip the club had sponsored to take needy kids to a baseball game. The report was "We had a great time, took a whole bus load of kids to the game, and it was the shortest game in a long time - an hour and fifty-seven minutes." It strikes me that this is a common approach to evaluating one's baseball experience. We want to go to the game, we love the game, but we don't want the game to last too long. Even the announcers will once in awhile say something like "This one is really moving along!" If we love it, don't we want it to last forever?

Seems a little like a love-hate relationship - take me out to the ballgame, but good grief, don't get me stuck in a 14-inning nightmare than will scar my psyche. Doubleheader? You must be insane, sir.

Does this translate to other aspects of life? Something we look forward to and enjoy, but on which we impose an unspoken time limit? I propose the following standard scale of enjoyable activity matched with the allowable time spent before it's just going on too long.

Golf....................................2.5 to 4.5 hours
Soaking in a hot tub........15 to 20 minutes
Jogging..............................6 to 7 minutes, or once around the block, whichever comes first
Baseball game/Little League.............70 minutes precisely.
Baseball game/Professional...............2 hours, 20 minutes optimum time. Everything after that is agony. They stopped selling beer in the 7th inning (an hour ago) and now they're on the fifth pitching change. Just shoot me.
Eating a muffin....................................5 minutes. Any longer, it's too big or too gooey. Or maybe I'm chewing the paper.
Any card game or board game..........1 hour. At the 61st minute, dump the table, or fake a seizure.
Movie................................2 hours. There's no reason for a movie to be more than 2 hours. They make a lot of 3 hour movies these days. They are 50% too long.
Sex/Regular.....................9 minutes
Sex/Special occasion.....12 minutes
Sex/Tantric.....................21.7 hours

Follow these time tested guidelines for maximum enjoyment. If you discover you have gone overtime and are still engaged in one of these activities, simply make a graceful exit by saying something polite like "I'm bored now" and go. (Note: do not use this exit strategy during sex.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Barry -This is the funniest post yet. But you left out the NFL. Three hour games are the norm (I love it)and the Super Bowl? Oh yeah, baby - 8 hours + straight, depending on how early you turn on ESPN before the network coverage begins. Half the fun of going to a baseball game, to me, is the off chance you MIGHT get stuck in one of those 14 inning marathons. That's one of the things that makes baseball different is that there is no time limit. Slow down people, live a little. But please, for the love of God, reopen the beer concession if it goes past the 9th.
April 27, 2007 at 11:55 AM
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