Size Doesn't Matter. . .

. . .except when it comes to softball, neckties, and the Stonehenge scene in "This is Spinal Tap."

Feb 26, 2022

Size doesn’t matter. Except that it does, in certain circumstances. Allow me to elaborate. As a Chicago native, I played baseball, yes, but I have also spent time over the years playing softball. Chicago-style softball. I see several of you nodding knowingly, as I mention Chicago-style softball. Because you know what that means: It means a 16-inch ball (“The Clincher”), played without baseball gloves, which means, yes, plenty of mangled fingers on the hands of regular softballers.

I might be off-base here (you see what I did there?), but I believe Chicago is the only place in the world where softball is played with a 16-inch ball, sans baseball gloves. Likely, the game developed in Chicago that way, because, as Chicago was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire, in 1871 (no, there was no cow involved - that’s apocryphal - and, I’m not even sure there was a Mrs. O’Leary), precious little real estate was dedicated to parks and baseball fields, limiting the size of such fields. Yes, eminent urban planner Daniel Burnham (“Make no small plans”) did reserve vast portions of Chicago’s lakefront as public park space, but that’s a whole different issue, because, as you can imagine, a homerun hit in a lakeside ballpark might require an amphibious retrieval system to return the ball to the field of play. Also, owing to the city’s remarkable engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago river in 1900, redirecting the city’s sewage toward the Mississippi River, rather than into Lake Michigan, errant softballs might also find themselves journeying south into the Mississippi River.

So, perhaps the solution was to develop a softball which wouldn’t travel as far, when struck with a bat. Thus, “The Clincher” was born. As those of you who have played the game know, that ball, when first released from the box (yes, it comes in a box - it’s quite classy, indeed), is as hard as a baseball, so those first few batted balls can pack a punch. After that, the ball becomes soft and doughy, like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Armed with this geographically-based, very specific knowledge, I have taken it upon myself to share this pastime with others in the course of my travels, much as 19th-century Christian missionaries in Australia visited Aborigines, in an attempt to educate them about Christianity, and sanitation, and 5G download speeds. These missions have led me to field “Chicago-style” softball games in such exotic locales as: a field less than a mile from El Paso’s border crossing with Juarez; a field across the street from Philadelphia’s Art Museum (you know, the one with the steps that Rocky charged to the top of); a field in West Toledo, where I severely injured my hamstring in the first inning; a high school field in Downriver Detroit (which, setting aside Windsor, Ontario - the only Canadian location in which one travels south from a point in the United States to reach - in this case, from Detroit, is located where South Detroit would be, if there actually were a South Detroit - sorry, Journey, there is not); and a field out near the airport in Pittsburgh.

Some locals have taken surprisingly well to this unique brand of softball, and enjoy the freedom, and the sprained fingers, associated with the game. I’ve experienced my own fish-out-of-water scenarios when it comes to softball, such as arriving for a softball game at an Accounting Club picnic in Kansas (I know, right?) barehanded, and being asked, “Hey, where’s your glove, man?”

After scoffing at the question, I was tossed a 12-inch softball, which, if you’ve ever played that game, you know that that ball doesn’t devolve into the Pillsbury Doughboy after being batted a few times; baseball gloves are de rigueur in the 12-inch game, if you want to finish the game with your fingers intact.

Which brings us to our next topic related to size: neckties (nice segue, eh?). Although there are currently only twelve gentlemen still wearing ties to the office in the continental United States (you don’t want to know what they’re wearing in Alaska and Hawaii), this has been an issue of concern for me for a long time now.

According to tie-a-tie.net, the necktie emerged in the 17th century, when King Louis XIII of France hired Croatian mercenaries to assist in fighting a thirty-year war, and these fighters featured a bit of cloth around their neck as part of their uniform. King Louis XIII liked the sartorial statement these uniforms made, and dubbed this piece, “La Cravate,” which, based upon my exhaustive app-based French language learning activities, I believe either means “tie,” or “dental imperfection” - I suppose this is an instance in which we should consider the context, and choose one or the other, and march forward. By the way, a thirty-year war? I hope those armies had access to a decent healthcare plan, because seventy-year-old soldiers likely encounter unique medical coverage issues not faced by those who have not spent thirty years on a battlefield.

Apparently, the 1920’s saw the beginning of what we might recognize as a modern necktie - I think they were relatively skinny ties, perhaps with very little color - although, upon reflection, perhaps we imagine that there was very little color, because photographs and movies were produced in black-and-white only, so, maybe color was there all the time, but we were just not able to see it. Perhaps it’s a tree falling in the forest kind of thing. Also, Laurel and Hardy wore ties: Stan Laurel (he was the skinny one, right?) wore a bowtie, and Oliver Hardy sported a tie which extended almost halfway down his stomach. It’s incumbent upon me to point out here that these two men were comedians, and not high-fashion models, so I caution you against mimicking their attire for anything other than comedic effect.

The 1930’s, and the Art Deco movement yielded ties which were wider and with more color, and with wilder design elements. But, maybe that’s only because color photography was becoming more common.

Skinny ties became the thing in the 1950’s - I blame Eisenhower for that. And, the 1960’s featured an expansion in the other direction, yielding the widest ties known to man - we can either blame the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs, or Nixon for that trend. Since those times ties have settled into more of a middle-ground, in terms of length, width, color and patterns. My high-fashion advice to you: stay in the middle (and, stay away from Laurel and Hardy fashion tips - a great name for a band, by the way).

Now, the final instance that we should consider as to when size does indeed matter is the Stonehenge scene in the movie This is Spinal Tap (a photo excerpted from that scene is pictured above). A miscommunication related to size specifications regarding a rock band’s stage set design results in a comically-small Stonehenge, which prompts one of the band members later to suggest that. . .“I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been... that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.” I’ve always thought that the “These go to eleven” scene was the funniest scene in that movie, but my son firmly believes that the “Stonehenge” scenes are actually the funniest - he might be right.

I suppose that any discussion of size mattering or not should include my wife’s input. Wait, what? I was going to share with you that she rarely finishes reading this column all the way through, because she feels that they are typically too long. What did you think I was referring to? Perhaps she’ll find the size of this piece more to her liking. Alright, alright, everyone go home, there’s nothing to see here - I don’t want any of you channeling your inner Michael Scott, by tagging that last line with, “That’s what she said!”

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