[greymule]

A few years ago, on my way out of the park after my FP game, I stopped to watch a LL baseball game. Every batter, before he entered the box, was wrapped with a pad—looked like a thin mattress, maybe an inch thick—that extended from the underarms to a little below the waist. I can't imagine how anybody swung the bat while wearing this guard.

I asked the coach how he liked the pad, and he just shook his head and said, "They make us do it."

I'm certainly not a nanny-stater, but to me it's ironic that if I drive across the river to Pennsylvania, I can be ticketed for not wearing a seat belt. But if I take my motorcycle across, I can remove my helmet and ride around all day.

The deer population in central NJ has grown so much that I once had 19 such critters in my yard at one time. Interesting that the same people who were arguing that hunters should have to store their rifles at the police station on the basis of "if it saves just one child" were absolutely opposed to a hunt to reduce the deer population, even though several people, including kids, were killed in local car-deer collisions over the past few years.