Take Me Back to Sunny Country Side

I have come to the conclusion that homebuilders must be baseball fans.

I will let that thought sink in for a minute, because I can hear the questions: homebuilders? baseball? Hitting the sauce again before lunchtime, Ami?

Here is my explanation (the long version):

Baseball is a game of failure. A good batter has a hitting statistic of .300; an awesome one checks in at .500. As a former softball coach explained to me one time, that means the best of the best in baseball only hit the ball 1/2 the time they are at-bat, and each at-bat, they usually get at least three swings at the thing.

My problem with the coach's explanation to me was twofold: first, we were playing slow-pitch, which I quite frankly thought was a poor analogy, what with the ball taking a slow, loping arc and sailing across the plate at, say, 2 miles per hour, versus the screaming 90 miles per hour at which most baseballs are hurled. I mean, when someone says, "I threw him/her a softball," the idiom describes the opposite of a "hardball" or difficult question, right? If you fail to hit something small hurtling 100 mph at your face and instead do something smart like duck or run, that seems to be a lot less of an indictment than failing to hit something bigger ambling in front of you at a snail's pace.

Secondly, I am not o.k. with 50% In academic terms, that's not even a "C" grade. I don't know if 50% is even an "F" grade. I never looked that low on the report card. My agency is preparing to have our annual chili cook-off. This year, I designed lovely aprons as prizes (courtesy of cafepress - check out the line of Great Dane Rescue of the Ozarks products at http://www.cafepress.com/kateluvly). First place boasts: 2008 Chili Cook-off Winner. I resisted the temptation to print on the other two: 2008 Chili Cook-Off First Loser & 2008 Chili Cook-off Second Loser. In what I consider to be a tremendously selfless act of sacrifice, I instead had the other two aprons adorned with: 2008 Chili Cook-off Runner Up.

An additional observation about the sports analogy: baseball, like many other sports, is an activity where the meaning of time does not correlate with any notion of "real time." After many years married to a television and sports addict, my step-mother learned to always ask the clarifying question, "Are we talking real time, or sports time?" An inning in baseball, just a matter of three outs, can last a lifetime.

So, to make my point. Homebuilders appear to be satisfied with abysmal statistics. Homebuilders do not appear to operate on time that correlates to calendars or watches. Hence the connection between homebuilders and baseball.

But don't just take these wild, unsupported allegations at face value. I present the following demonstrative video exhibit as further proof: