Click to embiggen… your dreams.
I don’t watch a ton of Pirates games, so I’m no authority on the matter, but, if memory serves, Andrew McCutchen looks less, uh, European in person than on his Yahoo player page.
UPDATE: As of 6:12pm ET, Yahoo appears to’ve changed the image to one much more closely resembling the Pirates’ starting center fielder.
Top Gun-style embrace for my friend Joel.
As someone who derives unusual joy from baseball statistics, I feel sanctioned in observing that this is a positive development for me and some of my fellow travelers:
The device looks like an ordinary box attached to a computer with a rotating straw. A closer look reveals otherwise. Students at Japan’s Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications have created a small device that uses motor rotations with the aim to simulate the feeling of a kiss over the Internet.
…
Upon closer inspection, we learn that the kissing device responds directly to a person’s tongue. On one end, a person rotates the “straw” in one direction and the “straw” on the other end will rotate in the same direction. The result is a powerful tactile response that feels like you’re giving or receiving a kiss.
And best of all!
With the ability to record kissing patterns, the device could be a one-solution-cure to loneliness.
Some observations, bullet-pointed for today’s business traveler …
Smooch!
…but when he is, he prefers to emote in pithy quotes.
Life on the road isn’t always beers, broads, and brats.
There are those other moments, times where the grind gets you down. Those Tuesday double headers, those foggy outfield practices. Those moments of self-doubt. Those existential crises, when, perhaps the day after an oh-fer, you just want to sit on the warning track and emote quietly to the grass.
In those moments, take heart. Emo Juan Uribe knows your pain.
H/T R.J. Anderson
Gordon Ramsay, who is famous for heating up food while acting like a colicky infant, recently insulted the Dodgers by insulting them. This from obscure trade journal TMZ:
“Hell’s Kitchen” star Gordon Ramsay DISSED the Los Angeles Dodgers yesterday — because after he threw out the first pitch — he LEFT THE GAME — so he could sit courtside to watch the Lakers.
The caps lock and puzzling use of the em dash do not lie: this is deadly serious stuff. I’m normally not one to question the instincts of screaming, pink-faced Englishmen, but, look at me, here I am questioning the instincts of a screaming, pink-faced Englishman. Anyhow, why would someone would leave a pleasing game of base and ball for something called the “NBA Playoffs”? I assume the answer lies in the darkened crannies of Mr. Ramsay’s afflicted mind. Much like a meeting of the Junior League of Dallas, it is a place I care not to venture.
Shhh, don’t speak.
Showing an acuity of taste that has become his trademark, my colleague, Mr. Navin Vaswani, elected today to revisit a too-neglected category of posts here at NotGraphs, Great Moments in Spectacles, treating all of us to an image of former Rookie of the Year and Notable Spectacle-Wearer Bob Hamelin.
In this edition of Great Moments of Spectacles, the internet has revealed the image you see skilfully embedded above — namely, an photo of a bespectacled Dick Allen (a person of interest here at NotGraphs) doing his best to lay asunder Indians infielder Luis Alvarado circa August 1974.
I believe I’m speaking the truth when I say that, like a canvas by Pieter Bruegel (Elder or Younger, take your pick), the extent of this image can’t be entirely apprehended in one sitting.
Image courtesy of Dick Allen Hall of Fame via Big Hair and Plastic Grass.
Bob Hamelin. An oldie, but a goodie.
A Great Moment In Spectacles, undoubtedly. And, yes, a most heinous crime against baseball cards, too.
Conservative Canadian props to my colleague and friend Mike Miner for sending the Hamelin gems — this one, too — my way. A quick story, if I may: Monsieur Miner is a Baltimore Orioles fan. Yep, Toronto’s only one. Before he met yours truly, he didn’t mind the Blue Jays so much, he says. Today, he hates them. All thanks to me. This brings me great joy.
Remember, if you know of a Great Moment In Spectacles that ought to be celebrated, please, be in touch: not+tips@fangraphs.com.
Image, by no means easy on the eyes, courtesy of The Trading Card Database.
With a carnival barker’s enthusiasm, I should like to announce: R.A. Dickey names his bats after famous swords! Regard:
One bat is called Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and the other is Hrunting. Dickey, an avid reader, said that Orcrist came from “The Hobbit.” Hrunting — the H is silent, Dickey said — came from the epic poem “Beowulf”; it is the sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s mother.
First and foremost, R.A. Dickey is a Great Man of History because he’s a bearded knuckleballer. But the 11-year-old boy in me — the one who would drift into sleep with the Monster Manual splayed across his breast and dream dreams of a gelatinous cube’s hit points — now holds him in a newer, loftier esteem.
Baseball and swords! What could possibly be next? Hot, delicious pizza, mayhaps?
America loves R.A. Dickey. I declare it to be so, and the rest of America is not free to disavow this love we have for R.A. Dickey.
Early in January, we took a moment out of our busy schedules to appreciate some of the accidental, or pocket, tweets from Mr. Peter Gammons (@pgammo).
Four months later, the man whom no one has ever called George Plimpton for the 21st Century continues to refine his craft.
Below are five notable contributions to the genre of the pocket tweet — all from the past month.
5. This is from today, actually, and features one of the hardest letters to find while playing the Alphabet Game on a road trip.
Courtesy of your attractive friends at Wieden+Kennedy, it’s the newest This Is SportsCenter spot, featuring Jason Heyward, Steve Levy, Scott Van Pelt, and a costume tree.
Secret NotGraphs handshakes for Ted Walker and gondee of Talking Chop.
Take it slow with Ted Danson.
Last week, FanGraphs’ House Librarian Steve Slowinski submitted for the readership’s consideration a post entitled How to Speak Sabermetrics to a Mainstream Audience, in which he (i.e. Slowinski) provided some guidelines for discussing sabermetric concepts with the uninitiated.
While Slowinski’s effort is commendable, it occurs to this author that there’s more work to be done, that “mainstream audience” is rather a broad thing.
To that end, I’ve started a storm in my brain — one that has yielded some brief characterizations of the sabermetric project intended for very specific audiences.
What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list. To that end, if you, the reader, request advice on reaching out to a specific audience, do not hesitate to make note of it in the comments section. Alternatively, if you’ve had some success in communicating with one or more kinds of people the nature of the sabermetric project, certainly do provide this sort of infomation.
With that said, here’s how to speak sabermetrics…
To Your Grandmother
You use the computer for baseball, Grandma. Don’t worry about it.
To an Actuary
It’s like what you do, divided by boring.
To an Italian Person
You apply-a the scientific method-a to baseball-a.
To Ted Danson
Ted Frigging Danson, how you doin’, guy?*
*It’s obvious: you can’t just launch into a sabermetric discussion with Ted Danson.
To Someone Much Larger Than You and Maybe Also Drunk
If you want to believe that “Jeter Rules!” I have no intention of separating you from that opinion.
