Quip attributed to British comedian Ken Dodd / WED 6-6-18 / Kind of off-season baseball league / Town in two Dr Seuss books / Jamboree attendee / Locale of many cookie-cutter homes

Constructor: Richard F. Mausser

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:18)

THEME: Corny quip— 15A: Start of a quip attributed to British comedian Ken Dodd (I HAVE / KLEPTOMANIA BUT / WHEN IT GETS BAD / I TAKE SOMETHING / FOR IT)

Word of the Day: HOT STOVE (39D: Kind of off-season baseball "league") —

In baseball, hot stove league is the sport's off-season. The phrase does not denote an actual league, but instead calls up images of baseball fans gathering around a hot stove during the cold winter months, discussing their favorite baseball teams and players.

The term has also come to refer to the wave of off-season player transactions (contract negotiations, re-signings, trades, free agency, etc.) that occur between seasons. Since most free-agent signings and trades occur during the off-season, this time of significant player transactions (including rumors and speculation about possible trades), is often referred to as the hot stove league or more simply, hot stove. (wikipedia)

Oh god, the quip, the Quip! Why are these still a thing. It's someone else's cleverness, first of all, so it shouldn't even count. Second of all, "cleverness" is generous. Corny dad humor and groaner one-liners don't usually rise to the level of "clever." This quip is something your boss saw in some joke book and then said at a meeting and everyone force-smiled and half-laughed but actually died inside. That's what this quip is. Here, I'll explain the joke (always funny!). So a kleptomaniac is someone who steals, or "takes," things compulsively, so when the quipper says he "TAKES SOMETHING / FOR IT," normally that phrase is understood to mean "takes a pill to alleviate an ailment," but here the "TAKES" is to be taken (literally), i.e. the quipper alleviates his kleptomania by stealing. There, wasn't that fun? I hope you were able to ENWRAP your head around the complexity of it all.
The quip is lamentable and the fill is likewise, with the longer Downs being a notable exception. YORKER (?) ANS ELL OSIS OSA OTRO ANAL SPYS ... there's a lot that's NOT SO good. I forgot MA BELL was a thing because, as the clue says, it is, in fact, "old" (3D: Old telephone service). ST. JOE is a city in MO? News to me. I wrote in ST. LOU. Then LOO. Also had SET AT for SIC ON (5D: Send to attack). Figured the [Cause of a bee sting's sting] was its ... stinger, actually. Pictured actual cookie cutters "living" in cupboards or drawers, but the hyphen in "cookie-cutter" shoulda tipped me that it was an adjective (11D: Locale of many cookie-cutter homes => SUBURBIA). Had STAY IN for STAY AT despite the fact that "in" is clearly in the clue (47D: Spend the night in). For 49A: Y feature I had the "Y" and thought, "well, yes, Y is a feature of ... Y." But it's Y as in YMCA, and the feature is the GYM.



Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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