“It’s time for … baseball!”*

Yes, baseball season is almost here. And we who live in Los Angeles hope, once again, that our teams will do well. For Jeff it’s the Dodgers. For me the Angels. And both teams look good going into (at the beginning of) the new season.

When baseball season begins in two weeks, many players, especially pitchers**, will be able to play because of the pioneering (to do something for the first time) work of Dr. Frank Jobe. In 1974, Dr. Jobe, who died recently at the age of 88, developed a surgical procedure (medical operation) that has made it possible for more than 1,000 baseball players to continue playing after seriously injuring an elbow.

Pitchers often throw the baseball more than 100 times per game. They throw very hard and their pitching motion (arm movement) twists (turns) and bends (moves it so it’s not straight) the elbow and puts a large amount of stress (force or pressure) on the ligament (strong flexible material that holds the bones together) in the elbow.

After a while the ligament may begin to tear (pull into pieces). And it stretches (becomes longer) so much that it can’t hold the bones tightly together. When this happens, a pitcher begins to feel pain on the inside of his elbow. The elbow may begin to feel loose, and the pitcher may experience tingling (stinging feeling) or numbness (loss of feeling) in some fingers. If the ligament damage is bad enough, it ends a pitcher’s career. Or it did until Dr. Jobe developed what we now call Tommy John surgery, named for the first player to receive the procedure.

To do Tommy John surgery, the surgeon removes a length of tendon (another kind of connecting material) from somewhere in the patient’s body. He also drills tunnels (holes for the tendon to pass through) in the upper and lower bones of the elbow. He passes the tendon through the tunnels, connects the ends to the bones, and adjusts the tension (tightness) of the tendon. When he finishes, the tendon often looks like a figure eight (the pattern or shape of the number eight) as it passes in and out of the tunnels.

After Dr. Jobe operated on Tommy John’s elbow, Tommy went on to have a successful pitching career. According to the Los Angeles Times, he pitched so well after the surgery that Pete Rose, a famous hitter, said, “I know they had to give Tommy John a new arm. But did they have to give him [Sandy] Koufax’s (Koufax was one of the best pitchers ever)?”

If you watch baseball – American or from another country – there’s a good possibility that you’ll see a pitcher who is able to pitch today because of Dr. Frank Jobe’s Tommy John surgery.

* Vin Scully, legendary (famous and admired) broadcaster (person who describes games on TV and radio) who has broadcast Los Angeles Dodger baseball games for 65 years, always begins his broadcasts with, “It’s time for Dodger baseball!”

** For more about pitchers, read my blog post The Knuckleballer.

~ Warren Ediger – ESL tutor/coach and creator of the Successful English web site.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. 

If you’re part of a working couple (two people who are married or in a committed relationship) with children these days, you’re probably sharing more of the household (related to home) work than parents did 50 or 75 years ago.

According to the American Time Use Survey (set of questions asked of many people) conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor, men and women now work roughly (about; approximately) the same number of hours each week, although men still work more paid hours and women work more unpaid hours. And while men report doing more at home, there is still one area where moms do the lion share of the work (do the majority or most of the work): childcare (taking care of children).

You may think, well, if fathers are doing more of the other housework, such as vacuuming (using a machine to remove dirt from floors, rugs, and carpets), then the housework is equally divided (split evenly) and everyone’s happy, right? Not according to sociologists (people whose job is to study how people interact and other social issues).

According to recent research, childcare is much more stressful than household tasks done alone, such as washing the dishes. As one mother put it (illustrated it; explained it) in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “dishes don’t talk back,” meaning dishes don’t argue or reply in a disrespectful or disobedient (not doing what one is told) way. And at bedtime (time when people prepare for sleeping) when parents have to deal with children who are perhaps at their grumpiest (most bad-tempered) and most reluctant (not wanting to do something), it’s moms who are most often doing this duty (work).

According to the American Time Use Survey, in a dual-income (both members of a couple with paying jobs) family, the mother is three times more likely to have her sleep interrupted (caused to stop for a period of time) if the couple has a child under the age of one than the father is, and stay-at-home mothers (mothers not working in jobs outside the home) get up six times more often than fathers. Less sleep and more interrupted sleep means more stress.

Do these figures (numbers) and observations jibe with (agree with) what you’ve observed among families where you live? Are fathers and mothers sharing the work at home equally, not only in the amount of time needed but in the level of stress involved?

– Lucy

Image Credit: François Riss Lullaby from Wikipedia

When you walk into a Ruby’s Diner in southern California, you take a step back in time, into the 1940s and 50s. The red booths (a table between two long seats), white table tops, soda fountains, and colorful 1940s posters (large printed pictures) are typical of (like, similar to) what you would have found across the U.S. during those years. So is their menu (list of food they sell) – mostly hamburgers, French fries, and milk shakes.

If you visit Ruby’s in Whittier, near where I live, on any Friday evening from May through October, you’ll experience more of the 40s and 50s. That’s when the Ruby’s Diner Friday Night Cruise* fills Ruby’s parking lot with dozens of cars – many of them hot rods and custom cars built during those years.

In the 1930s and 40s, many American young men, especially in California, began to buy older classic (admired by many people) cars and “hop up” or “soup up” (modify, change) the engines to make them more powerful. Sometimes they took out the original engines and put in newer, larger engines and took anything that wasn’t needed off of their cars to make them lighter (have less weight) and faster. They called their cars hot rods; unfortunately no one is sure how the name got started. Roadsters (2-seat open cars) were especially popular for hot rods because they were light and inexpensive (didn’t cost much).

These young men with the hot (powerful, fast) cars began a kind of competition, called drag racing – which Jeff talked about in this week’s English Cafe. In drag racing, two or more cars raced side by side on a street to see which one was fastest over a short distance. Street racing was dangerous and was eventually (after a time) outlawed (made illegal), so after World War II, many hot rodders moved to deserted (unused) airports and raced on the runways.

In the 1950s another kind of hot rod – the custom car – appeared and quickly became popular. Custom cars often had modified engines, like hot rods. But what made them different were changes made to the car’s appearance (how it looks) inside and out, like colorful, unusual paint jobs (if a car has a paint job, it is painted again). When creating a custom car, the goal is to make it look different than any other car. Today there are quite a few custom car shops in California, and some people spend thousands of dollars to have their cars or trucks customized.

The young men – the hot rodders and custom car builders – of the 1940s and 50s are older now and many are gone. But the traditions they started are still alive. You can still find them and their cars at places like Ruby’s Diner all across California.

If you’re interested, Pinterest has a large collection of hot rod and custom car photos, and here is a set of photos of hot rods and custom cars made from the classic 1932 Ford.

*Many young people used to drive their cars slowly up and down a particular street, usually the main street of a town, as a way to spend time with their friends. This was called “cruising”.

~ Warren Ediger – ESL tutor/coach and creator of the Successful English web site.

 Photo credit: cb750cafe.