Bob Costas reads Snapple Facts about lonely Swiss guinea pigs during 19-inning baseball game

Yankees-Red Sox last night was a marathon. The game went 19 innings. In the top of the 14th, David Ortiz hit a probable game-winning homer, but Mark Teixeira tied it in the bottom of the 14th. There was another score-and-answer in the 18th. All-in-all, it took six hours and 49 minutes, not including a 16-minute delay due to lights failing. The game started at 7:05 p.m. and ended at 2:10 a.m.

Bob Costas tried announcing the game for the MLB Network. In the 16th inning, he read the fact on the bottom of his Snapple cap:

This is Snapple Fact #986. (That link features a lovely comic strip about a lonely guinea pig finding true love.)

So, first of all: yes, this is an actual law in Switzerland. If you have “social animals,” you aren’t allowed to have just one, and doing so counts as a form of abuse. Such animals include budgerigars, goldfish, and yes, guinea pigs. Police said they wouldn’t be going door-to-door, searching for rogue guinea pig owners, but that they hoped the new law would bring awareness to animal welfare.

But what happens if you have one guinea pig and the other dies? One guinea pig lover has set up a rental service to make sure others are in compliance with the law. She has about 80 of the little things, so she figured allowing others to have second guinea pigs when faced with potential lonely guinea pig crises was worthwhile.

That said, saying a guinea pig is “prone to loneliness” is probably overselling it a bit. Guinea pigs live in large groups in the wild, and are by nature, social. They will be better off if housed with one or more other guinea pigs.

Saying the emotion a solo guinea pig experiences is “loneliness” is applying one of our human emotions to an animal that doesn’t have all of them. It’s not like guinea pigs left by themselves will stare out the window and listen to songs that its ex-girlfriend used to like. They just won’t be able to have all the guinea pig interactions and activities guinea pigs want to have.

So, there you have it. Bob Costas has taught us much of the plight of the lonely guinea pig, and the brave work the Swiss have done to ensure their happiness. May every baseball game last 19 innings, and may every announcer have Rolodexes filled with random stuff to say when they ran out of baseball things four hours ago.

The bad news is, this game broke our MLB writer Grant Brisbee: