Here's the kind of thing that really pisses me off. A piece in the NY Times last week (reprinted here) tells the story of a long-established softball field in Texas. A developer buys property next to the field, puts up houses with a lot of windows, and then complains because the ballpayers hit softballs into his property, breaking his windows!
The solutions:
Increase the size of the 20 foot fence by adding a 10 foot net, later increased with another 20 foot net, for a total of a fifty foot fence-and-net barrier
Change the rules so that home runs are outs
Remove batters who hit home runs from the batting order.
I have a suggestion for a solution they seemed to have overlooked:
Tell the asshole who built glass houses next to a softball field to go to hell and get over it.
I mean, I see no reason in this situation why "private property rights" should override the long-standing community use of the field for a legitimate recreational purpose. I suggest that the use of eminent domain to buy those damn house and destroy them -- or perhaps make one of them over into a club house for the players -- would be perfectly justified.
The needs of the many...
Addenda: According to the article, other home-owners near the field have a laudably laissez-faire attitude to the occasional influx of softballs onto their property, and sometimes through their windows -- but they live there and aren't property developers.
Postscript: Hey, maybe I've got the facts wrong, that's possible, especially since the article I'm basing this screed on was so poorly written, and badly organized, by Ralph Blumenthal of the Times.
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Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
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