As you may have heard, the Football Industrial Complex is about to have its big day. Yippee?

Anyhow, every gentleperson of highly evolved opinions knows that the football-related product put out by the NFL is inferior to baseball in a multitude of ways. My opinion or true fact? True fact!

Disagree? First, I’m sorry you hate freedom. Second, please take this opportunity to revisit Thomas Boswell’s classic, “Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football?” Best of all, it’s in list form for today’s busy executive!

Still not convinced? Then please fire up the video embedded below, jump ahead to the 0:30 mark and then ponder how much you regret having done so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezm66VaNL6o

Fierce or friendly?

Since we’re at the forefront of uniform reporting here at NotG, this little gem couldn’t co un-discussed. According to Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie blog, it seems the NBA will give its players the option of wearing only a skin-tight compression tank as the top portion of their uniform. The players wear the tight tanks anyway, so why not give them the option of changing it up?

This is, of course, in line with most fashion trends (and even sport fashion trends – see football jerseys), but there’s more going on here. It’s another chance for the apparel manufacturers to make more money and for the NBA’s stars to show off their physiques. Of course, they might have a problem suiting up Shaquille O’Neal, but hence the ‘optional’ portion of the decision. The NBA also is famous for tinkering with the game in the D-League and All-Star game, so this is just another example of forward thinking.

The obvious question from your NotG correspondent is if this would work for baseball. From a game play standpoint, it would make HBP decisions easier and could make swinging easier. And it would be interesting to see Manny Ramirez turn in his baggy get-up for a slim-fitting situation. But the baseball fan base is probably a little more conservative when it comes to game play and uniforms, so it doesn’t seem likely that this development hops sports.

And one last problem with the idea. Baseball players may be in better shape than they are given credit for, but there are still some outliers. Those outliers (saaay… C.C. Sabathia) might make us shudder if they put on the skin-tight tee. So, file under “maybe not.”

This happened.

There are lists that all of us carry, in our hearts if not our heads, like our personal pantheons of favorite offspring or worst U.S. states or flat-out awesomest baseball players. Most times, there’s no need to spell them out.

But GQ, the magazine, is different from you and me. It’s a magazine, and it needs to publish stuff, so it publishes lists, like the February issue’s 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time. Tim Lincecum is on the list, and I am running — not walking — to say I’m on board with that. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a gentleman? Because I’m a gentleman. A serial door holder. You could be 15 paces away, I’ll wait. There’s more: I’m known to carry groceries for old men and women in my neighborhood. Alright, I’m not really known for that, but if a tribal elder asked me to carry his or her grocery bags, I certainly would.

I do say “thank you” a lot. Probably too much. When I hand over loonies and/or a toonie for coffee at the drive-through every morning, I say “thanks.” It’s out of my control, really; I’m Canadian. Bottom line: I live with chivalry.

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to child-rearing I (a) have no first-hand experience whatsoever but (b) possess an inordinate number of opinions on how strangers could be doing it better. Yes, I’m aware that this is an unattractive combination — one quite hostile to people who’re tasked with the responsibility of raising the leaders of tomorrow. And, yes, I’m definitely about to elaborate on this most indefensible of positions.

Particularly, I’d like to address the pang of hurt that manifests itself in my soul when I read press releases with headlines like this one (courtesy of the Seattle Mariners)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure that I ever considered it possible, until this moment, to feel something like unbridled joy while gazing upon the hirsute visage of Mr. Darrell Porter. But that’s what’s happening this second. And this next second. And now this one, too.

And it can happen to you, bespectacled reader, just by following my seven easy steps to reaching your full potential looking at the images I’ve embedded after the jump.

What you’ll see are paintings by Derek Erdman, a person who, if we’re in the habit of trusting Wikipedia, is a Seattle-based painter and contributes to that city’s generally excellent alternative weekly The Stranger.

All of the following images are stolen shamelessly from Mr. Erdman’s website, where they (i.e. the paintings) are available for what are sometimes very reasonable prices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kommissar Cistulli has already regaled you with the back-story of Billy Ripken’s “Fu*k Face” card, which is beautiful in its awfulness and awful in its beauty. And now we learn that Fu*k Face has a legacy that’s as enduring as any other cherished artifact of Western civilization — like the Magna Carta or Vicky Lawrence. Let Billy’s lesser known older brother Calvin tell the story …

Peter Sagal, host of the show, asked Ripken if he ever gets tired of living up to his good-boy image.

“Does that ever get to be a drag?” Sagal asked. “Do you ever, like, want to go out and behave really badly, but you can’t because you’re Cal Ripken Jr.?”

“The answer to that is yes,” Ripken said. “I’d like to be able to behave really badly and not have it matter. … I’m OK with being out in public, except when you get in a fight with your wife or you get in a fight with your kids or your daughter calls you a name and storms off and you feel pretty helpless to do anything.”

Faith Salie, a panelist on the show, piped up: “Did she call you the name that was on the bottom of your brother’s bat?”

“Sorry,” Ripken said. “My daughter’s name is Rachel. Sorry, Rachel, but yes, she did.”

Because it will make me sound like the Man of Letters that I am not, I’ll leave you with a quote from something called “Mark Twain”: “Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

What should the elder Mr. Ripken take from this? Consolation, that’s what. The next time your daughter calls you “fu*k face,” it should be viewed as something more uplifting and adorable than whispered prayers at bedtime.

Remember, children of the world: Curse without ceasing.

(Curtsy: Da’ HBT)

Name That Mustache!

That mustache is, of course, Robin Yount’s mustache (or is it? see bottom). This is just one in what I can only describe as a fantastic line of baseball t-shirts available at Nike’s website. Although I have to admit that I can’t identify all of the players from their designs, there are a few great ones.

My personal favorites, aside from the obvious Yount shirt, have to be the Mike Schmidt Phillies shirt, the Keith Hernandez Mets shirt, and the Reggie Jackson (glasses included!) Yankees shirt.

Personally, I think this is a great idea, and I would love to see some with more players, both historic and current. A Joe Mauer sideburns t-shirt would be excellent, and a Rollie Fingers t-shirt (A’s or Brewers) seems necessary here. I’m also a big fan of Gorman Thomas’s mustache, but that might be too powerful for one t-shirt to handle.

With only 13 designs already made and only three suggested by myself here, we’re left with what must be endless possibilities. Do you have anybody else you’d like to see added to this line? While I wait for my Robin Yount shirt to get shipped, let me know in the comments section!

EDIT: At first, I didn’t think the curl in the mustache was powerful enough to be Fingers (and I suppose the Brewers yellow of the shirt made me think it was Yount’s blonde mustache). Here are pictures for comparison (looks like it was indeed Fingers).
Fingers:

Yount:

What you see in this image here (which you should right click and open in a new window for intimate viewing) is a selection from Baseball-Reference’s draft database thing. Specifically, it’s a selection from the second round of the 1971 amateur draft — a round in which generational baseball talents George Brett (91.6 fWAR) and Mike Schmidt (110.6 fWAR) were drafted one after the other.

FanGraphs Contributor and Ace of Database Jeff Zimmerman sent this to me and asked the question, “Are there any other HOFers drafted back to back?” To which question I replied both “I don’t know” and “I have zero of the skills required to find out such a thing.”

Luckily, NotGraphs isn’t about “knowing” “facts.” It’s about embedding photos and then decorating them with spirited prose.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have definitely attended SABR meetings before — and even made the acquaintance of a certain National Baseball Editor at one such event — but, owing to a lethal cocktail of poverty and sloth, have never found myself making the commitment to join this most peculiar of fraternities until just recently.

While I’ll share my own experiences with the Society momentarily, here are the official benefits of membership per the SABR website:

• SABR publications, including Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and the SABR Bulletin
• An online membership directory to help you find other members with your interests
• Eligibility to participate in SABR research committees
• SABR lending library
• Eligibility to participate in SABR-L, called by some the “most intelligent general baseball list on the web
• Access SABR Research Exchange
• Access to SABR’s online encyclopedia
• Member discount on annual convention registration
• Regional chapter meetings
• The fun of being part of an international community of baseball fans of all types

As I’m sure is not particularly shocking, some of these things will be more relevant/interesting to one’s experience of the game than others.

What I can say is that, in my week or so of membership, I’ve already used the directory to good effect, having contacted — and been replied to almost immediately — by the co-chairs of the Scouts committee, James Sandoval (who also works as a scout for the Twins) and Rod Nelson. Those connections have already proved quite valuable.

As Justin Bopp of Beyond the Boxscore noted quite recently, the SABR experience is certainly not one saturated in advanced statistics — quite to the contrary, in fact, as most of the presentations I’ve observed have concerned the history of the game more than anything else.

One issue with membership, certainly, is the cost. It’s $65.00 annually for American adults and $45.00 for seniors and people under 30 (a benefit of which I’m no longer qualified to take advantage), which might be expensive for those with only a casual interest in the sport. Whether as a result of the cost or not, meetings are mostly populated by a slightly older crowd — say, 45 and above. I’ll add immediately, however, that I was always treated warmly, and perhaps even benefited from my relative youth.