Apr 10, 2018

I don’t get into a lot of back-and-forth communication on social media.

Sure, I checked Twitter to see if — to use a totally hypothetical example— the new St. Louis Cardinals closer is through walking Milwaukee Brewers batters. I also may post an occasional joke or photo, but I tend to avoid commenting on what other folks say.

I guess it’s the way I was raised.

The reason I try to avoid commenting on what other folks say on Twitter is because, I figure, if I don’t know the person then what the heck do I care what they say. Well, unless it’s the president of the United States, and then, I’m usually very, very afraid.

But other than that, I generally keep my Twitter thoughts to myself. But I have to admit that I almost broke my Twitter-silence policy Sunday.

I was watching the St. Louis Cardinals on TV. At game time, the announcers said that it was the coldest baseball game ever played in St. Louis.

It was so cold that even I felt cold. And I was sitting in my living room sipping a beer.

It was so cold that most of players had to layer themselves with large wads of $100 bills.

It was so cold that the penguins at the St. Louis Zoo were saying, “Hey, this is nice!”

It was so cold that the Budweiser Clydesdales were pulling a wagon full of hot coffee.

It was cold, is what I’m saying.

At one point during a commercial break, I glanced at Twitter and saw that someone had posted a picture of themselves at the Cardinals game. This is what the person wrote: “It’s cold. But there is no place I would rather be.”

That is when I almost broke my Twitter-silence policy. I almost tweeted the following thoughtful, intellectual bon mot: “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

You read that right, I just used “bon mot” in a sentence.

Look, I don’t care how much you love to watch baseball, nobody likes to watch it in the cold. Baseball is not a cold weather sport. Baseball is a shorts, T-shirt and flip-flop sport.

I mean the song goes, “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,” not, “Buy me some handwarmers and long underwear.”

The first time I took my wife to a Kansas City Chiefs football game, the high temperature was 11 degrees. But that was OK because — follow me here — we were at a football game. In December.

It’s supposed to be cold at a football game in December. It’s not supposed to be cold at a baseball game in April.

Baseball games played in cold weather tend to be kind of boring. You know why they’re boring? Because the players hate to play baseball in cold weather. Have you ever tried to hit a baseball in really cold weather?

Don’t. It hurts. And I don’t know if you know much about baseball, but hitting a baseball is sort of important, which means when players walk up to the plate thinking, “Man, I hope I don’t get a hit,” the game tends to drag a bit.

I have never actually played an organized baseball game in really cold weather. Most of the time my Little League seasons began in May. But I have practiced baseball in really cold weather, and I didn’t like it. None of us did.

If somehow, despite trying hard not to hit a baseball, we actually did hit the ball, it never went very far because it was — to use a technical expression — hard as a frozen carp.

So I’m guessing that deep down nobody at that Cardinals game on Sunday was happy to be there. No matter what they said on Twitter.

Even if someone did buy them handwarmers and long underwear.