But that same day came Sam Tewkesbury to the Why Not? about nightfall, and begged a glass of rum, being, as he said, 'all of a shake' …

The first-time showgoer stands ringside during group judging and sees, in the hound group, for instance, a bloodhound, an afghan, a dachshund, a beagle, a borzoi, and a Norwegian elkhound along with all of the other hound breeds.

More recently, specialists like him have had to fend off a new threat: sabermetrics. Baseball has always been a game obsessed with numbers. But sabermetrics, a term coined in 1980 by statistician Bill James in honor of the Society for American Baseball Research, strives to use every available technology to study baseball empirically—its players, its strategies, the statistics themselves.

If you're smart, don't sign the employment contract. Just get out of here while you still can.