The 1970s, aka THE best decade for couples yachting.

Ben and Casey Affleck (henceforth “Ben Affleck”) and Matt Damon are working on a movie about the whole Fritz Peterson/Mike Kekich wife-swapping thing from the 70s (tentative title: “The Trade”). To me this sounds ok. The story’s old news, but it could make a good movie.

Unless… wait a second. Is it possible that well-known Red Sox propagandists Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, in making a film about a controversy involving Yankee players, are actually committing a deeply violative act? Is this in fact a veritable crime, being perpetrated upon honest Yankees of yore by partisans of a pathetically incompetent and unredeemably racist rival team? In a dark paroxysm of vindictive hypocrisy?

Yahoo! Sports Contributor Network contributing user Roy A. Barnes thinks so. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to The Great Ejector, we’ll never have to look for that wandering jerk Waldo again.

Waldo, you’re gone!

GQ (née Gentleman’s Quarterly) has continued that Great American Journalistic Tradition of telling us what we already know.

In this case, there is neither harm nor foul, however, as the Thing We Already Know is that supporters of the Philadelphia Phillies are vile miscreants, as said fans have been named Worst by the aformentioned publication.

Tell me more, Adam Winer!

Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus, their own star players, and most absurdly, the recipient of America’s very first hand transplant, whose crime was dribbling in a ceremonial first pitch—thrown with his freshly transplanted hand. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl.

Some nominal research suggests that, so far as nadirs go, intentionally vomiting on a child is one of the nadir-est.

H/T: Mets Blog

As you may have heard, read or intuited all by yourself, Tim Lincecum is, somewhat famously, particularly svelte as professional athletes go. But it’s certainly not for a lack of trying to join the Great American Conga Line of Morbid Obesity:

He dines regularly at In-N-Out burgers, the popular fast-food burger joints on the West Coast.

His traditional fare?

Three Double-Doubles. Two fries. A chocolate-strawberry shake. Ketchup please, but hold the lettuce and tomatoes.

“I’m not a big vegetable guy,” he says.

Let’s see, three burgers at 590 calories. Two fries at 395 calories. A shake at 590 calories.

The grand total: 3,150 calories.

“I’ve gone away from eating more cheeseburgers,” Lincecum says, “and just adding patties.”

I suppose overzealous drive-thru orders are as much a part of the dedicated herbist’s lifestyle as Steely Dan on vinyl and laughing at hiking trails. So none of this is especially surprising. Something also tells me that, unlike a certain Mr. Maybin, Lincecum could cut a swath through Panda Express and manage not to spend the rest of the day yoked to the throne.

That’s musician Glenn Donnellan of the National Symphony Orchestra. Sometimes, he wears black, three-button suits paired with a patterned tie. More relevant to this space, he also sometimes plays a violin made out of a baseball bat.

This is an enchanting video of his playing Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” on said violin made out of a baseball bat. It is very beautiful to me. If the National Symphony Orchestra did stuff like that on a regular basis, then I might consider supporting the arts rather than using an acetylene torch to incinerate any cash that comes my way.

So does this post not have a strong enough baseball connection for you? Fine. Consider that if you swapped out the “Glenn” in “Glenn Donnellan” for something like “Magnus” or “Declan,” then it would sound like someone who played alongside John McGraw and once killed a railcar porter while drunk on Dr. Tichenor’s.

Because you, reader, are a bespectacled person with his finger on the pulse of medias social and otherwise, you might very well be aware that the proprietors of eight fake Twitter accounts (listed below in full splendor) recently descended upon a virtual draft room to pick and choose entirely not-real baseball teams.

Riddles, mysteries, enigmas: you get the idea.

In any case, We the People — thanks to the internet — have been granted the ability to follow this very important fantasy league as the season unfolds via this webpage.

Here are your owners of this fakest of fake leagues: Old Hoss Radbourn, Fake Dayton Moore, Fan Since ’09, Fake Cito Gaston, Fake Fred Wilpon, Dodgers GM, Very Fake Bleacher Report, Faux Frank Wren.

And here’s some crack analysis of the draft, courtesy of Faux Frank Wren himself.

It goes without saying that the lifeblood of any capitalist enterprise is the ability of said enterprise’s brain trust to market their product effectively and creatively. This is known in some circles as “finding synergy” and in others as “relentless douchebaggery.” Whatever you call it, FanGraphs is all in!

It’s with this in mind that Dark Overlord David Appelman has revealed to me just this morning a cross-promotional project that’s sure to raise the profile of the FanGraphs brand.

“What’s the project?” you’re obviously asking, breath hella bated.

The answer: FanGraphs: The Movie.

Read the rest of this entry »

That Ron Gardenhire — the roll he is on! The Twins’ manager is without question this week’s leading quipsmith. First came yuks at the expense of Delmon Young, and now comes this restaurant-quality riff on the subject of The Twitter:

You can tweet that. Just tweet it. You don’t even have to write it. Just fire it through the Internet.

Aaron Gleeman promptly and rightly observed that “Just fire it through the Internet” should become a lasting thing — more specifically, a lasting t-shirt thing. First lo, then behold: It is now a t-shirt, and it is divine.

Classicists will recognize that “Just fire it through the Internet” was originally the battle cry of Diomedes, our pick to click in the Trojan War, but hosannas to Gardenhire for disinterring it in such fitting fashion.

And now a quick proofread of this post before I just fire it through the Internet!

The latest dispatch from Joe West is perhaps the most haunting and worrisome of all …

It may be that Joe West is merely ejecting a fiery celestial body from the firmament. If that’s the case, then nothing here is too surprising. After all, Joe West, when not in umpire blues, wears four-button spats, top hat and monocle and carries in his breast pocket a cigarette case and in his sock a pearl-handled revolver. So ejecting a burning sun is the sort of thing that sort of man does and does well.

But what if this is an urgent cable that tells us Joe West is … in danger? Perhaps Joe West, with his usual righteous certainty, is ejecting something else while this sinister ball of fire — normally tethered to the heavens — attempts to murder the great Joe West. After all, Joe West has a long and unfortunate history of being ambushed by flame-kissed planetoids. To date, he has walked away from all such attacks, but will he this time? If anyone can survive a giant boulder heated up to three million kelvin, it’s Joe West. Right? RIGHT?!?

An urgent people wait with bated breath for the next installment of the Adventures of Joe West, should it ever reach us.

Godspeed, patriot.

(A gentleman’s expression of gratitude to reader Sorry Your Heinous for the unsettling image.)

In the most recent adventure of Joe West’s remarkable career, brilliant and undoubtedly handsome commenter Matt Defalco dubbed our Lord of the Umpires, “The Great Ejector.” I don’t know about you, but I cannot think of a title more apt.

And, in the spirit of “The Great Ejector,” above, courtesy of NotGraphs reader Eric Rood, you find Joe West at an air show. The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has confirmed to me personally that Joe West does indeed love air shows. They are, West said, “the best.”

Thanks, Eric. You did good. You too, Matt.