​It would be spectacular if we could watch everything we found interesting on television, but that’s never going to happen. Sometimes I try though.
 
It seems weird to say that. Most times when I surf the TV during a boredom spell, it seems like there is NEVER anything worth watching.

Don’t want to see “Naked Hiking in Alaska” or “Old Men Pawn Wars” of “Kick the Chef in the Gut.” You can hit the clicker relentlessly and not find anything worthwhile.

Conversely, sometimes you may watch a show or record one, and find there are four other things on that you’d like to see. What to do then?
 
I’m pretty dedicated to several series on TV that get recorded. The fun and convenience is being able to watch them any time you want, or go through two, three or four episodes in one evening so you can follow the plot and characters more intently.
 
At any given time, there are usually 2-3 shows where I can go back and watch when I want to. But the summer dead period is upon us. Summer shows have ended. Fall series have not started. There’s not much saved right now.
 
It’s at this time of year when I look around at more channels and reaffirm the wasteland of most TV. At the same time, there’s a wake-up to old movies, odd sporting events and long-forgotten favorite TV series that can captivate you and even overwhelm you with choices.
 
You can’t watch everything. That’s something that you must mentally feed yourself. If you find a whole bunch of excellent shows on at the same time, first, you know you can’t watch them right away. Second, depending on your recording apparatus, you may not be able to record more than two or three shows at once. What the heck happens if you want four shows from 8-9 p.m. this Thursday? You’re dead meat is the anwswer.

You have to make a decision. The way to guide your decision is to recognize you can’t watch it all. What do you really care about?
 
This type of choice is more prevalent today than we tend to consider. We have more books, restaurants, brands of toilet paper, cereals, colleges, doctors, magazines, supermarkets, insurance agencies and hair salons to choose from than we did 40 years ago. Way more.
 
That leads to choice overload. Because we have so many options, we often do nothing. Or we stick to the path we’ve worn out over the years and keep watching or eating the same things.
 
My dad had this interesting he would do that he related to us later in life where he’d look for new driving routes to get places. He was pleased with himself when he saved 12 seconds on a 22 minute drive. That’s an engineer for you.
 
I’ve recently started commuting a couple of different routes just to get off the Interstate, and lower my stress level. That leads to pleasurable unintended consequences of seeing new scenery.
 
It’s probably a good tactic to apply to your television habits. Check out a few new shows. Give them a shot. Maybe you’ll find something way better than your “tried and true” shows, and you yourself a jolt of insight.

​It’s a weird time of year. If you like watching sports, there’s a bit of a lull on the pro and college side, so there’s not much on TV to kill a few hours over the weekend and take a snooze.

The last major tournament for golf (PGA) is over. Football season hasn’t kicked in.
 
Though I’m not a junkie on really any of these, I do like to relax with the tube on and veg out. So I’ve found myself rediscovering a love of baseball by watching the Little League World Series.
 
Every couple of years, I find myself surfing in mid- to late-August through the ESPN channels and up pops the little guys from all over the world playing in Williamsport, PA for the international championship of 9-12-year-old kids. Many participants are tiny. Some are tall. Once in awhile you see a mustache. Occasionally someone is HUGE and MUSCLED.
 
You get a mix of sizes, shapes, colors and nationalities. For the most part, the players are talented, well-coached and well-mannered. The fans cheer, the parents and coaches supportive. The setting is idyllic. It makes you want to be there. It’s now on my bucket list.

What drove me to add it? Something struck me this year, something I haven’t thought of in the past.
 
This year, the camera went deeper into the teams (perhaps this is true every year, but that I just haven’t seen those segments), how they interact with each other and get to share things from their countries. What a joy to see this purity of exchanges in our frequently bitter and media-saturated world. These kids care about participating, excited to meet the players from other countries, and if you watch the on-field action closely, they reach out to other teams in a pure and unbounded joyous way.

What more can you ask of a sporting event? Play your best. Have some fun. Get to know people from another town, state, country. Respect your opponent. If you lose, know you lost giving it your best and you walked away richer for having had the experience.
 
One of the segments showed two teams playing ping pong between games. How innocuous. You wouldn’t think something so simple would hit the viewer with a deeper point.

I watched that ping pong exchange between kids from two teams (the teams don’t matter) and their interaction with each other – laughing, giggling, goofing around, trying different shots.  I couldn’t help but be struck with how this event can teach everyone so much about how to get along with others who we’ve never met before, and how something as simple as a ping pong game enriches a life.
 
No, it’s not always that simple. Still, the Little League World Series experience for these kids and their families helps each of them fashion a better understanding of the world in a positive way. Get to know others and seek understating. Do that, and we’ll all enjoy the life game more.
 
Sports can be such an enormously positive part of a girl’s or boy’s development. We seem to forget too frequently what it should be all about – those moments the kids should WANT to remember when they are older because it was so much fun being in the moment. The Little League World Series helps that happen.

​ 
As a kid, when we played backyard baseball, we learned tremendous lessons. Central to this was learning to resolve our conflicts without parental intervention.

We argued. We disagreed. I’m certain we got angry at times, but in all seriousness, I cannot ever remember a fight breaking out (or a shoving match) over whether someone was out or safe at second base.
 
Briefly, someone’s feelings might have been hurt. And I’m confident at times someone ran home in a huff or crying, not wanting to participate any more over not getting his or her way.
 
For majority of those days and years though, we figured things out for ourselves, had a great time and grew in ways that are significantly different when you look at today’s organized sports that begin at very young ages for the participants. Our kids have come through this current system (somehow my wife and I navigated this and we all survived without going nuts). As they grew up, it’s hard for me to remember if they ever played in a backyard game of soccer, baseball or basketball. Whiffle ball, probably. Badminton, sure. But not a kid-organized game where you chose sides and refereed it yourself, figuring out the rules and deciding close calls in the game.
 
When we were short players, back in the day, you’d place an invisible runner if the runner had to come back in and hit. So if he was on second and the next two made outs, and he was up next, he came into hit and there was an invisible runner on second. If he doubled, the runner scored. If he singled the invisible runner went to third. And so on.
 
No one disagreed. We made the rules and enforced them fairly. We figured it out. And we picked up a certain skill and handling conflict and differences by doing that.
 
Central to differences of opinion on a specific call was the incredible concept of the “do-over,” which I sometimes think needs to be instituted in major televised sports. Too close to call?  Have a do-over. Go all the way back to the start of the play and start over.
 
We’d use this when the arguments would get too intense or we clearly couldn’t come to agreement. “Alright, let’s do it over.”
 
Pretty dang simple when you think about it. And effective.

When you watch video replays these days in televised sporting events, there are often game situations that could take our concept from years ago and apply it effectively. The screen lights up and the announcer blabs on about the player being safe or out, or whether the ball was caught before it hit the ground (was it trapped or not?). They hit the replay. They run it in slow motion. They go back and forth showing the ball going in and out of the glove over and over. And they still can’t figure it out.

Do it over. Why not?
 
There are many plays top officials must make instantaneously with an incredibly high degree of accuracy and those men and women are amazingly consistent and correct in what they do. They train for years to get to those positions, just like the players.

But sometimes it really is too close to call. No, the pro and college sports saturating TV are not going to institute a “do-over” policy. But maybe we all could remember there are plays “too close to call.” If viewers would keep that in mind, we’d have a good start.

Praise the sweatshirt – the multi-use piece of clothing. Why? Let us count the ways.
 
It’s the ideal in-between weather warmer-upper. Think it’s going to be cold later in the day? Slide the sweatshirt on.
 
Is it windy and not too cold out, but you know it will bite into your hands because you have to be outside for hours? Time for the sweatshirt. You can stuff your hands in that front pocket to warm up.

Forgot to bring along a stocking cap when it’s cold out? Wait, the sweatshirt has that covered, too. Just pull the hoodie up to keep your ears warm.
 
For those living in southern climates, I’m not sure they really get the full greatness of the sweatshirt. You might wear one to show off your school colors or your favorite sports team. You may slide one on when it gets below 70 degrees. But you don’t get the feel for its full functionality.
 
Going to a football game on a Friday night and it’s 68 degrees with a northerly wind bearing down at 12 mph is okay for a bit standing around or sitting in the stands. But when the temp is going to drop to 56 by the time the final whistle is blown and you know the wind is going to crank up a few extra miles per hour makes it a sweet spot for the trusty hoodie. You might even be able to wear shorts as long as you have your long-sleeved thick-clothed favorite spring-fall article of clothing along with you.
 
Over the years, the sweatshirt has demonstrated its excellence. If you’re a golfer and the morning starts out damp and cool, you can put on a jacket with those sleeves you can unzip later in the day when the dew burns off and it warms up. Or you can pull your sweatshirt on to cover the bases.
 
Even when extreme cold hits your area, the sweatshirt becomes your warm underwear. Layer with it. Put on your tee shirt, throw on a sweatshirt. Then pull on a light jacket. You don’t need to go with full winter gear. Instead you can stay more flexible and adjust your clothing as the weather dictates.

This works extremely well for folks who are active. If you’re in the yard, for example, chopping wood, you typically begin to heat up even on a cold day. You may start out with the sweatshirt and a jacket on a 40-degree day. But then after 23 minutes of chopping away and perspiration prickling through your undershirt, you know it’s time to strip off the jacket and get down to just the sweatshirt. It has you covered. It’s trusty.
They can be thick or thin. Both serve a purpose. The thick ones, clearly, are much better for those days in your house where you don’t want to turn the heat on yet in the fall to conserve energy. The lighter ones are good on those spring days where a cool front hits later than you’d expect and because you’re already wearing shorts around, you don’t want to get the jeans back out. So the sweatshirt suffices to keep the upper body warm.

Sweatshirts are functional, comfortable and relaxing. Put one on, you’ll feel better.