Player Manager Puns

A chess tournament was hosted in a large hotel. The matches were civil and professional, but the payers would get noisy and brag loudly. It got so bad you could hear it all throughout the lobby Finally the manager shut the whole thing down and tossed all the players out of the hotel. You just can’t have chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!

And he was a very talented guitarist, so good in fact that one day his friend the chicken turned to him and asked would he like to be in a band with him. The horse of course agreed he and the chicken who played the drums went looking for a singer and a bassist. They decided to approach the Sheep who was the best singer on the farm, the Sheep agreed and told them about how the Pig was a pretty good bass player so they all asked him to join the band and he agreed.

So The Barnyard Animals got to work practicing and rehearsing their little hearts out. They started playing open mic nights and gained some traction. After a few years they managed to get signed by a major record label and The Barnyard Animals became an international phenomenon. They toured in every country for the better part of a decade until they finally decided retire. The Horse decided to settle down in English countryside, the Chicken went to Australia, the Pig went to Japan and the Sheep went to New Zealand.

A few years later Gary Barlow contacts the Horse about getting The Barnyard Animals back together for a big charity Live Aid type concert in Wembley. The Horse contacts his band mates and they all agree. So the Pig, the Sheep and the Chicken all fly out to Singapore and get the same connection to London. But in a terrible turn of events the plane crashes and all The Barnyard Animals apart from the horse die in a fiery inferno.

The horse upon finding out that his oldest friends have all died goes into a deep depression. He locks himself in his house and tries to drink his pain away. A few weeks later when every bottle of anything that could be drank had been drunk. He puts on his hat and sunglasses so no one would be able to recognise him and heads to the closest pub. So the Horse walks into a bar and the barman says "Hey, why the long face?"

I have a bunch of stupid baseball questions. I know most of the rules, I just want to make sure I have all my bases covered.

• Imagine there’s a fan of the team that is currently fielding in the stands, and that said fan has a prosthetic arm. The batter hits a pitch and sends it on a home-run trajectory into the stands. If the fan in the stands throws his arm at the ball and diverts it back in the field of play, can they rightfully say that they were just “lending the team a hand” by stopping the home run?

• Consider the exact opposite situation - the fan’s team is at bat and the batter hits a fly ball to the outfield. If Elastagirl from the Incredibles just happened to be the fan in question, can she spring into action and catch the ball before the outfielder has the chance to?

• Now, imagine I smuggled a water gun into the stadium on a particularly hot day, and I managed to squirt sticky black liquid onto the batter. Does that mean he can take a walk since he was “hit by pitch”?

• Consider the freak circumstance where a ball in motion collides with a bird, causing it to spiral in its descent and eventually collide in turn with an umpire. Can the player responsible for the ball’s motion be ejected from the game due to repeatedly flipping the bird at an umpire?

• Can a losing team sub out their man on the mound with a large quantity of beer to prolong the game? There’d still be a pitcher on the mound!

• If a pitcher throws a slider into the strike zone and the batter doesn’t swing, should the umpire consider it a strike, a ball, or the catcher’s dinner?

...And one of the player's name is "Miskin" (Polish setter for Jasztrebski-Wegiel, a very well known club in Poland and Europe). Us being Indonesian, the word "miskin" means "poor" as in not having money.

So during the whole game my dad would say stuff like:

• "How come does he play in a prestigious club and still end up being poor?"

• "Maybe if he gets his paycheck they will finally write "Rich" ("Kaya" in Indonesian) on his jersey."

And other phrases I managed to forget.

When he says them, my mom who isn't watching, would stop whatever she was doing to raise her head to stare into the emptiness and shake her head.

An international chess tournament was taking place at a hotel in New York. Grandmasters from all around the world came to compete. As things were getting underway, everyone gathered in the hotel's lobby to socialize and brag about their skills. All of a sudden, the hotel manager bursts out and orders everyone to leave. The players ask why, and he responds:

"I don't like chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."