It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World

Pittsburgh Tribune Review ^ | 12/15/03 | Ralph R. Reiland

[thesummerwind]

Playing for the Pittsfield High School baseball team in Illinois, Danny Hannant threw a pitch that a Calhoun High School player hit in a line drive right at the pitcher's mound. The ball bounced off Hannant's head.

Rather than blame the mishap on a lousy pitch or a missed catch, or on the intrinsic risks of the game, Hannant sued the maker of the bat, Hillerich & Bradsby. Seeking in excess of $1 million, Hannant's lawyer argued that the company should have put labels on its Louisville Slugger bats warning that the product "could cause a baseball to be propelled with such velocity that when hit directly towards a pitcher it does not allow the pitcher sufficient reaction time to avoid being struck."

[MoralSense]

Gee, too bad Herb Score got hit by Gil McDougald's line drive in the 1950s.

[thesummerwind]

I will not impose any sort of obesity-related lawsuit against the 5 Spot or consider any similar type of frivolous litigation created by a hungry trial lawyer."

I will not impose any insanity-related lawsuit againt the Tin-foil Democrat Party after hearing Mad-Maddy Halflbright (the human equivalent of the 15 watt bulb) say yesterday: "I wonder when George Bush will drag Osama bin Laden out of hiding? Just before the election?"

I will sign my waiver.

[Puddleglum]

When I was a kid we used to climb jungle gyms with nothing but good old asphalt underneath, and we loved it! You fell, you hit a few jungle gym bars on the way now, you hit the asphalt, then you got back up and did it all again.

Pretty soon all kids will be allowed to play on are big circles of foam - and even then someone will sue because of insufficient lumbar support.

[thesummerwind]

Gee, too bad Herb Score got hit by Gil McDougald's line drive in the 1950s.

How about old Don 'Popeye' Zimmer getting plunked in the same era?

[thesummerwind]

ping

[Fresh Wind]

The label this year on the sleds at my local hardware: "Warning: Beware that sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions."

That sounds more like an advertisement than a warning!

[thesummerwind]

Pretty soon all kids will be allowed to play on are big circles of foam - and even then someone will sue because of insufficient lumbar support.

Yes, or from fumes from the foam.

[thesummerwind]

That sounds more like an advertisement than a warning!

LOL!

[Drawsing]

Aaah...playground memories from the '60s. Back when swing seats were good solid pieces of wood. And back when you could lay on your back on the push-it-yourself merry-go-round, watch the trees spin around and get thoroughly sick.

[LibKill]

We have far too many lawyers.

[dis.kevin]

"Warning: Beware that sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions."

That's the sled I want!

[Bottom_Gun]

yea..and my 8 yr old son salivates at a label like that also *L*. Snow speed demon that he is!

[mtbrandon49]

Thanks to the trial lawyers you can no longer walk around with both knees and elbows scabbed over.The days of tackle football in somebody's backyard are long gone.If I had been born 20 years later and walked around with the bruises and scabs of my youth, my parents would be in jail and I would be in a foster home.

[Hatteras]

It's... unda... the BIG............. dubya.......

[thesummerwind]

watch the trees spin around and get thoroughly sick.

Yes, sick after eating about a dozen or so apples you grabbed off your neighbor's 'forbidden' apple tree! My "good old days" were the 50's in Pittsburgh, life was easy back then.

We had a bike trail through the woods that surrounded our post- WWII bungalow neighborhood. There was this one steep, downhill winding part of the trail where the it was surrounded by these really dense (what we called) jagger bushes - thorny, nasty, rigid dense bushes about five feet high. When one of us unhappily careened off the path into those bushes, we came to a halt in about one and a half seconds! The bike remained upright with the rider still on the seat, because the bushes were so dense, stiff and thorny.

Getting one of our friends out of there was not easy. No one wanted to go in and get him! Eventually, the unfortunate rider somehow managed to get out, all cut up and bleeding a little. The next day all 8 to 10 of us were flying down that trail just as the same as the day before. (BTW, the trail ended at the bottom of the long hill in a creek bed with really big rocks sticking out.

The parents weren't too concerned, they just said, "go out and play, and CLOSE THE DOOR."

But, those were the good old days!

BTW, the "jagger bushes" were on the back of a neighbor's property, but lawsuits were not EVER considered. Those were the days!!

[thesummerwind]

Flexible Flyer (post 16) ping.

[thesummerwind]

Back when swing seats were good solid pieces of wood.

Yeh, back when you played neighborhood football without a thought about wearing pads or a helmet!

[thesummerwind]

We have far too many lawyers.

Time for a circular firing squad.

[thesummerwind]

Back when swing seats were good solid pieces of wood.

---- Back when, in the winter after a nice deep, wet snow, we got about six kids on each side, spread about 30 feet apart, prepared about a dozen solid, wet slushballs each, and began firing at the other group until all were finished.

Those were the days.