WHO KNEW? An Important Money-Saving Tip September 3, 2001February 20, 2017 But first this shocking, copyrighted, exclusive BREAKING NEWS the Borowitz Report: Average Age of Bronx Little League Players Is 35, Officials Say — Pint-sized Horsehide Champs Have 2nd Wives, Mortgages Red-faced Little League officials revealed today that the members of the champion Bronx Little League baseball team are much older than originally thought, with an average age of 35, and with several players well over the age of 40. Officials began to suspect that the Bronx team was considerably older than the league-mandated cut-off age of twelve when they noticed that the players were driving themselves to and from game, as well as taking time out to vote and serve on juries. “What is becoming clear to us,” said one Little League official, “is that the players on the Bronx team aren’t twelve, they’re just real short.” One Bronx Little Leaguer, Jason Burton, 37, defended the right of older members of the team to play in Little League games. “Hey, people should be giving us credit for getting out on the field at our age,” said Burton, a paralegal and divorced father of three who plays shortstop for the Bronx team. “I’ve got a bum knee and a bad back, but you don’t see me bitching about it. I’m busting my ass out there.” The team’s center fielder, Buck Hartnett, 42, agreed. “I don’t think age should be a factor,” said Hartnett, a Gulf War veteran. “I’m just going out every day and trying to be the best goddam Little Leaguer I can.” The controversy about the age of the Bronx players came amid revelations this weekend that the median age of the cast of “Friends” was 47, and that the members of the “boy band” ‘N Sync were well over 50. BOOKMARK THE SITE: http://www.borowitzreport.com And now, that little piece of business out of the way, on to the Amazon: I consider myself pretty Amazon savvy – one of its first enthusiastic customers . . . one of the many authors to obsess over his hourly Amazon ranking (hey! what a good time for you to pre-order the new edition of my book! They say it will ship in January, but I wouldn’t be amazed if it actually arrived before Christmas) . . . one of the first to beg Dorothy to take her gains in its I-thought-then-wildly-overpriced stock. I love Amazon! I live for its one-click feature. And yet I didn’t know what I’m about to tell you, and perhaps you didn’t realize it, either. Quite a while back, I started noticing that Amazon generally offered links to buy USED copies of whatever book or video you were interested in. I turned up my nose and, all these months, paid no further notice. It’s not that I require a shrink-wrapped never-before-viewed copy of The Insider (that video I recommended Friday). Rather, it’s the hassle. I figured, to save $5 or $10, do I really want to start e-mailing some stranger 1500 miles away and handwrite and hand-address a check or start with the Pay Pal stuff and . . . well, One-Click is phenomenal, and I love Amazon’s reliability. So guess what? Someone finally explained to me, and I then went and confirmed for myself: One-Click convenience still works! Amazon routes the order to the vendor (which is often a bookstore or videostore, not necessarily a homeless person selling books on a blanket outside Barnes & Noble) and handles all the payment stuff itself. The one definite drawback, is that there seems to be no way to pay more for faster shipping. The used books go snail mail by what the Post Office formerly called its ‘book rate,’ which Amazon warns typically takes 4 to 14 days, and can take even longer. Still, you’ve waited this long to see ‘The Insider,’ what’s another couple of weeks? Why pay $14 when you can pay $5.25? Plus, at least in my case, there’s something nice about Postal Delivery. Sure it can be slow. But it’s easy. When Amazon sends me a book via UPS, there is first the interruption when the UPS man’s arrival is announced . . . wait, wait, wait while he gets upstairs after visiting 13 other people in the building . . . and then the interruption when he comes and gets my signature. Which is a lot of fanfare for a $5.25 used copy of ‘The Insider.’ In short, one more reason to love Amazon, and one more way to live frugally in case the stock market doesn’t come roaring back.