Phillies Broadcaster John Kruk Might Melt Your Brain With This Question About Clocks

One of my favorite things about baseball is how, with so much downtime during a game, broadcasters need to get creative to fill the dead air.

Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster John Kruk did exactly this on Monday night and broke some brains in the process.

The Phillies were blowing the Seattle Mariners out of the water on Monday night with a 6-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Phils went on to win 12-7.

But during the game, Kruk talked about something that was on his mind. It had to do with time, but not in a Stephen Hawking way; it had to do with clocks.

And if you really want to space out, maybe put on "Time" by Pink Floyd while you listen to this clip.

"So you know how I think of things when I have free time, and I shouldn't?" Kruk asked his broadcast partner, Tom McCarthy.

"Yep," McCarthy said.

"So, I was wondering," Kruk continued. "The person who invented the clock… the first clock ever. How did that person know what time it was?"

This was met with several seconds of stunned silence.

"That's a really good question," McCarthy said, who called an Alec Bohm getting on base after the Mariners bobbled an infield groundball, then wondered if maybe the sundial was the key.

Kruk wasn't buying it.

"Is that accurate, though?" he asked.

I'm not sure how many stoners are watching Phillies broadcasts, but I promise you, any that were stopped shoveling Doritos and Wawa iced tea into their mouths and just stared at the ceiling with their eyes wide open, pondering the question posed by Kruk.

This has been bugging me. I know the way we measure time is a man-made thing, and perhaps the person who built the first mechanical clock — which appeared in Europe back in the 1300s — was probably just concerned with the clock ticking at consistent intervals.

At some point, someone had to decide how to set the clock, which is insane, because anytime I have to reset the microwave after a power outage, I look at another clock to do it.

But if there was no other clock to look at…

Thanks, John Kruk; I think I have to go lie down now or I might have a panic attack.