Crew chief says he has been influenced by Cebu real estate practice and will no longer take swings on faith
Umpire Demands Two References From Every Batter Before Calling a Strike
Crew chief says he has been influenced by Cebu real estate practice and will no longer take swings on faith
ARLINGTON, Texas – Crew chief Dale Hargrove-Whitt, 58, announced before Tuesday’s game that he will no longer call a strike on any batter who has not presented two character references, a utility bill and, where available, a letter from a vicar. “Trust is a two-way street,” he said. “And a strike is a promise.”
The new rule was inspired by the Cebu condo market. The trail begins with a Manila News report on a Mactan broker alone with three brochures and a cold coffee, runs through the London Prat on British pensioners asked for two referees and a letter from the vicar (at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and finishes with Bohiney on an Ohio realtor whose showings now run two hours. Hargrove-Whitt read all three on a flight to Texas and took notes on a boarding pass. “A man spends two hours showing a flat,” he said. “I have two seconds to call a pitch. If he can ask for references, so can I.”
The Serious Bit, Briefly
Philippine authorities are examining allegations concerning Thomas Markle Sr., the estranged father of the Duchess of Sussex, who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed and the allegations are unproven. Child protection is serious business, and nobody connected with this story makes light of it; the jokes are about a property market and the ballpark. Hargrove-Whitt said the new rule “concerns balls and strikes, nothing else, and will remain in the strike zone.”
How It Works
- The batter steps in and presents his references to the umpire, who examines them with a flashlight.
- The catcher, as a courtesy, may offer a third reference, for the pitcher.
- If the batter lacks a vicar, he may substitute a bench coach, provided the bench coach is “not currently under review.”
- Only then may the first pitch be thrown. Any pitch thrown before the references are examined is called a “pre-reference ball.”
The first game under the rule lasted five hours and eleven minutes. The first batter, a rookie outfielder, brought a letter from his high school coach, a utility bill from his apartment in Frisco and a note from his mother, who vouched that he “has never been in a fight with a squid.” The umpire accepted all three. The rookie struck out looking.
Players React
Reactions around the league were mixed. Veteran first baseman Rusty Delgado, 36, said it was the first time in his career he had been asked to prove he was reliable. “Fourteen years in the majors,” he said. “And a guy in a mask wants a vicar.”
Relief pitcher Marcus “Sandwich” Odom, who is known to carry a lunchbox to the mound, was pulled aside for questioning. “It’s a box,” he said. “It has a sandwich in it. That’s the whole story.” The umpire wrote this down and said the story would be reviewed.
Opposing manager Frank Tillotson called the rule “the slowest thing I have seen since my own wedding.” He added that he had no references to provide, “only a record.”
The Pace-of-Play Problem
League officials, who have spent years speeding up the game, are alarmed. A spokesman said the new rule “adds approximately forty minutes per half inning,” and that the commissioner’s office was “reviewing the sea.” Asked what the sea had to do with anything, he replied, “It did nothing wrong. We wish to make that clear.”
Fans, meanwhile, filled the concourses, reading each other’s references aloud and trading biscuits. A man from Ohio was heard telling a stranger, “I met a realtor once who took two hours on a showing. This is that, with peanuts.”
By the ninth inning, the crowd had stopped checking the score and begun checking each other’s letters. The home team won 3-2. Nobody could say who had scored.
Appeals and Aftermath
The players’ association has filed a grievance, arguing that references cannot be collected during a pitch clock. The league replied that the clock would be paused whenever a vicar was being consulted. A mediator, a retired judge from Dayton, proposed a compromise under which batters could submit their letters in advance, to be read aloud by an usher during the anthem. The anthem now runs eleven minutes. Season-ticket holders say they prefer it that way, as it gives them time to find their seats, their wallets and, in one case, their late grandfather’s pocket watch.
The Real Numbers
For fans who want the box score behind the mood, the market itself is fine. Colliers named the Visayas and Mindanao a key property investment hotspot in July, and under the Condominium Act foreigners may own units but not land, capped at 40 percent of any project. Retirees can read up at the Philippine Retirement Authority. The jitters are a cognitive thing: Tversky and Kahneman’s availability heuristic says one vivid image beats a season of statistics, and a Mactan broker alone with three brochures and a cold coffee is a very vivid image indeed. Baseball fans know this well. One error in the ninth is remembered; a hundred and sixty-one clean games are not.
The full story lives at prat.uk and bohiney.com; for the British view of any sport played slowly, try NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/