Denton True "Cy" Young (1867 - 1955), for whom the best pitchers in Major League Baseball have been honored each year since his death, lost more games than did any other Major League pitcher in history.
Cy Young also won ninety-four more games than any other Major League pitcher ever did. No one else won 511 games or lost 316 games. He pitched every other day, and his 22-year career spanned the divide between baseball's early days and the "modern era" of baseball. Cy Young set the standard for Major League Baseball pitching for more than the last hundred years.
I have lost seventeen costume contests in over 25 years, which is not an insignificant number until considering that I have competed in more than a hundred. I know a guy with whom I unintentionally compete every several years who always wears the same costume and always wins. Rory is of slight build and stature, and dresses up as an ordinary male adult up to his neck and arms, and behind him he attaches a hooded, masked figure with arms around a captured Baby Rory. Rory's legs are the abductor's, and his head wears a baby bonnet and his arms are the baby's arms. He is just so cute, and when he arrives around 11:30 pm, I no longer have time to travel elsewhere, and the crowd goes wild for him. It has been an exercise in character to congratulate Rory each time.
Women who are allowed to bare their breasts on Halloween always win the costume contests. Sloppy Joe's downtown while open in 2001 encouraged it when I was there, and I prefer to avoid the costume contests that support nudity.
There are a couple of annual charity benefit events sponsored by local organizations that, while they invite the public, the organizations' members win the costume contests.
Conversely, I have attended local costume parties that I discovered on the Internet, where I knew absolutely no one, and I have unexpectedly won memorable prizes and enjoyed myself immensely.
It is late September, and I have already won two of the three costume contests in which I have competed this year. I was a big hit at El Jalisco Mexican Restaurant at North Monroe Street, and at Florida State University's Geek Night 6.0. I didn't buy a ticket to the Leon County Humane Society's Fur Ball before it sold out this year, so I will be attending another Halloween party and costume contest that evening that I know I will not win.
In the later years of my costuming career, it really is all about showing off my artwork and having a good time. Winning is fun, too.
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