We’re back to ‘baseball’ time, but not everybody’s satisfied about change

I happened to wake up in the middle of the night early Sunday, and when I looked over at my clock, it was 1:59 a.m. Just one minute before the time we’re supposed to re-set our clocks to take into account the change to daylight savings time.

So I literally got to see the instant that my digital clock skipped over the 2 a.m. hour and it officially became 3 a.m.

WE ‘LOST’ AN hour of time (which we’ll get back come November 3 when we go back to standard time). Everybody’s body clock felt a little bit funky Sunday morning because they got one less hour of sleep. Unless, by chance, they were totally lazy slugs and decided to sleep until about the noon hour to make up for the loss.

We make the change in time that, as a child, I was taught in school was meant to give farmers extra time periods with sunlight so they could tend to crops.

Of course, the current trend is to tell stories totally debunking the idea that farmers care in the least. Just this morning, I saw a broadcast report that attributed the idea of Daylight Savings Time to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany during the First World War effort.

Something about needing to burn less coal for fuel if there was more time during the daylight. Who knows what kind of tales future generations of schoolchildren will be taught?

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS think of the time change as further evidence that we’re awfully close to the return of baseball. Because if you look at the dates for Daylight Savings Time, Opening Day will soon take place.

And the World Series will just have ended right about the time we switch back to Standard Time. I still remember reading a magazine feature about baseball during the off-season – with the writer pointing out that the scoreboard clock of old Comiskey Park was never re-set for the winter.

They’d leave it to Daylight Savings Time year round – figuring that baseball fans would never know the difference because nobody would be sitting in the seats some December or January!

Of course, some people like to play their own ideological games. I remember in college one of my fellow students (who happened to be a Hoosier native) would talk it up as a major selling point the fact that he never changed time.

IN HIS PART of the state, it remained on Standard Time year round – which put a large swath of the state out of sync with the rest of the country. And even with the rest of Indiana – as the far northwest corner sets its clocks in conjunction with the time here in Chicago.

Clock never needed resetting. And the Cubs were losing -- what else is new!

Perhaps that’s part of what gives Indiana a split personality that leaves so much of the Hoosier State out-of-touch with the rest of the world (particularly the civilized part that calls itself “Chicago”). Either that, or maybe it’s from the “shame” of having to think of oneself as a “Hoosier.”

Who’s to say?

It does intrigue me that several states are trying to pass measures that would make Daylight Savings Time the official standard for time year-round.

AS IN THOSE people would have changed their clocks Sunday, and would never do so again. They’d get an extra hour or so of daylight – although we should realize that the winter months will naturally have shorter days because of the tilt of Planet Earth and the way it rotates around its axis.

It will be interesting to see how (or if) these legislative maneuvers succeed. Because I’ve also heard from people who try to claim that Standard Time is “natural” time – and that any effort to alter the clock is somehow unseemly.

Almost as though we’re risking the “Wrath of God” himself by tinkering with the time clock. Even though if you want to be downright honest, things such as clocks and calendars themselves are man-made creations.

All I know about the issue at large is two things – we’re even closer to the return of baseball AND we’re a few steps farther away from the most dreadful time of year. As in that mid-December period when we get sundown by about 4:30 p.m!

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We’re back on “real” time. What’s real?

We all did the routine this weekend of resetting our clocks, on account of the fact we’re off Daylight Savings Time and will now spend the next four months on standard time.

Which some people like to get all worked up about. Daylight Savings Time is some sort of artificial scam that takes us away from viewing time in terms of the way the Good Lord willing meant for us to do so.

PERHAPS I’VE JUST been reading too much of the commentary posted by my Facebook-type “friends.”

But yes, the whole issue of time has gotten some of them worked up – particularly those with ties to Indiana. For that is a state that particularly confounds the whole concept of time. Which makes me wonder if their confusion has the potential to spill over the state line into Illinois.

Some of us are just itching for an excuse to rant about something. Perhaps they’ll find a way to blame Daylight Savings Time on Barack Obama!

Indiana is a state in the Eastern Time Zone – except for those portions around Gary and the state's Southwestern portion right on the Illinois/Indiana border. They follow the concept of “real” time – which I define as being whatever time it happens to be in Chicago.

LET THE REST of the world follow our clock, as far as I’m concerned!!!

I do remember a conversation I once had with a college classmate who was from Indiana (Wabash, if I recall correctly) who tried to argue that Indiana was most logical when it came to time zones and Daylight Saving vs. Standard time by saying, “We never have to change our clocks.”

Considering how the whole concept of moving forward or backward an hour confuses many of us, that may be a legitimate point.

Although I wonder at times if the fact that the bulk of Indiana never experiences the once-a-year concept of gaining an hour of sleep means they’re somehow not-quite rested enough. Maybe that’s why Hoosiers are a unique (and, at times, illogical) breed.

PERSONALLY, I VIEW the concept of Daylight Savings Time as the norm – largely because it’s what we experience for eight months out of the year. It is the concept of Standard Time that has become bizarre – and depressing.

Let’s face it. Who really wants the shortened daylight that’s going to literally turn sunset into some time about 4:30 p.m. Although I have to admit those days back in mid-June when the sun didn’t go down until about 9 p.m. seemed equally freakish.

Not as odd as the idea of the midnight sun somewhere in isolated Alaska. But close!

Yet there are those who will vehemently argue for the demise of Daylight Savings Time just as intensely as any National League baseball fan who can’t accept the fact that the existence of the Designated Hitter has become the norm in baseball and that it is THEY who are the oddballs.

I MENTIONED FACEBOOK earlier, literally because I read this debate about whether Indiana should shift time zones, with many insisting their state is Eastern (as though they can’t see on a map that they – and Michigan too – ought to be Central time).

I’d hate to see that shift mainly because I can envision the chaos that would result if State Line Road also became a time zone boundary. The southeastern portion of the greater Chicago metro area would literally be ahead of the rest of us – and would further be isolated.

Where time was a constant

If anything, there is one place that may have the whole concept of time correct – the ballpark. For I still remember a feature story I once read about people who worked at Comiskey Park during the off-season. The writer noted that the clock on the old center field scoreboard (with all its lights, pinwheels and explosives) was an hour off – because it never gets reset.

Because by the time the baseball season begins again, it will once again be Daylight Savings Time – and all will be right with the world.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: My own confusion with the time change involves having to remember which of the clocks around my humble abode need to be reset, and which will reset automatically. If I get careless, I gain two extra hours, and my whole routine is off for days to come.