The Lexicographer's Rules

"We would get back from a five-hour bus trip at four in the morning and have to pitch a tent. In the rain. Sometimes it was fun. And sometimes it was a nightmare. At the end of the year, we said, 'At least it can't get any lower than this. This is truly the bottom of the barrel.'"

—ESPN. Jim Caple chronicles his travels with the home-stadium-less minor-league baseball team the Lehigh Valley Black Diamonds. Players such as Steve Reed recount the missing chairs, the days-off at the laundromat and the all-you-can-eat buffets that are the norm in the minors. "As the Black Diamonds dressed before their game with the Newark Bears, stadium workers swept through their clubhouse and removed all the chairs, saying they were needed for a party elsewhere. This left the 25 players with just a dozen small stools... 'You can't count these two,' Black Diamonds reliever Mike Martini said, pointing to two stools missing half their seats. 'These two are only half-stools.'" '

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