Garth,
Your baseball intepreration in right on, but the hearsay definition is a little off.
There is compentent hearsay, and incompentent hearsay evidence. What you have described would be competent hearsay. Statements made by identified persons, recgonized experts in the field in question as to the standard practices of their profession.
The statement concerning your 40 years of observations of the application of the rule would be circmstantial evidence.
Both types of evidence as you describe them would probably be admissiable in the courts of our land. Compentent hearsay and/or circumstancial evidence are often enough to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you go to bed and the ground is dry and clear, and you wake up in the morning and it is covered with several inches of a cold white powder that Blain (having had much experience with snow) tells you will turn to water if it is heated, you now have circumstantial and competent hearsay evidence that it snowed during the night.
Some might argue that that is insuficient evidence. I wouldn't.
Roger Greene
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