But as the political stakes here have grown higher, the workdays longer and the barbs between their candidates nastier, the mingling has ground to a near halt.
"It's because the expectations have grown higher," Dan Lissauer, a 28-year-old Mets fan from Huntington Station, N.Y., said "The team has improved, but now they're not improving fast enough".
And as the stakes for the industry have grown higher in Washington, both candidates have at least acknowledged some of its policy priorities, like immigration overhaul and lowering the corporate tax rate.
Since fast-track authority elapsed in 2007, Ryan said, other countries have negotiated 100 trade agreements, and "the United States was party to zero of them". "As a result, barriers to American products have grown higher," Ryan warned.
Even then, in this basketball court, trees had grown higher than the backboards.
She compares Kenya's corruption to a huge garbage dump that has grown higher and higher over the years.
"The barrier between me and the homeless has grown higher over the years," Theodore Faro Gross wrote recently.
As Woods has gone backwards, so golf has gone forwards, meaning the mountain has grown higher as he has scratched around for his gear in the foothills.
He added that although there was no concrete evidence of specific threats against Germany, the level of danger had grown higher.
This is the latest data, but chances seem good that the percentage has grown higher.
Their constitution requires that women hold at least 30% of senior political positions, and since then Rwanda's female enrollment in parliamentary positions has grown higher than 50%, higher than any other country on the planet.
