[lawump]

Not the quickest but still humorous...

From my minor league days:

Had a July 4th game scheduled for 7:05. Fireworks are scheduled for after the game. This particular year, Independence Day fell during the middle of the week.

GM calls us at the hotel and says they want to move the game time up to 6:00. He says that with the holiday being in the middle of the week, they think they'll get a bigger crowd if they start at 6 with the fireworks starting at around 9 or 9:30 instead of 10 or 10:30. We say no problem.

I was on the plate. We played a full nine innings in 1:43. It was only 7:43 when the game was over. This team was in the northeast and that far north and that early in the summer, they had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes for it to get dark enough to light the fireworks.

After the game Bob Stanley (former Red Sox relief pitcher) who was the pitching coach for the home team said to me, "If you were around ten years ago, I'd still be in the majors!" GM says, "damn if we knew you guys would be done that fast, we would have left the start time at 7."

(As an aside...I heard NOTHING about my strike zone from anyone. Just had a lot of good pitching and a lot of batters swinging.)