Resolve: Is Wisconsin’s Union Terrace our country’s greatest public space?

I don’t think I’m telling any tales out of school, reader, when I submit that the City of New York has played, and will continue to play, a major role in this country’s popular culture.

The films of Woody Allen, sitcoms such as Seinfeld and Friends and 30 Rock, the music of Jay-Z and Mos Def and the Beastie Boys, the ubiquity of publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker and New York Magazine: each features, with some degree of prominence, the city that has been called by all sorts of people the “Biggest of Apples.”

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And so it begins … What “it” is is a thing to determine the Base-and-Ball Cultural Alphabet. And what is that? Allow me to explain …

On occasion, I read this book to my young spawn. It assigns players, based on surname, to each letter of the alphabet. Some of the choices are … curious to the point of suggesting malice aforethought. I shall not pursue civil litigation. This is because I mostly enjoy the book. What I shall do, however, is expand the pool of eligibles to include not only players but also baseball humans of other persuasions, things related to our fair game, ideas, notions both fleeting and timeless, and so on. I do this in the service of, as you might guess, assembling The Base-and-Ball Cultural Alphabet. For that, I need your help, page viewers.

We start with the letter “A.” Below, I will list the 10 candidates for election, and I will also briefly regale you with tales of him, her or it. Voting is enabled and, much like regular applications of imported cologne, encouraged.

Who or what will represent the letter “A” in The Base-and-Ball Cultural Alphabet? That’s up to you, muscled readers …

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The Actual Thing you see pictured here (and which you’re free to click for embiggen-ing purposes) comes to us not from the wild frontier of the internet, but rather from the Dark Overlord of FanGraphs Inc. himself, David Appelman.

While, as per usual, Appelman’s exact whereabouts are unknown, wherever he is is also the sort of place that sells the item which is (a) currently washing over your senses and (b) called the King Pepper-brand Baseball Bat Pepper Mill.

As the cardboard display makes plain enough, this pepper mill possesses the following qualities:

• Ideal für BBQs
• Perfekte Geschenkidee
• Hochwertiges Mahlmechanism
• Grosse Pfefferkapacitat

Per the internet, this item is available for just 29.95 American dollars. How much that is wherever Appelman has found himself — that’s harder to say.

The bottom of the ninth of last night’s KC loss to Texas offers us a bounty of delights. With the Rangers in front 3-2, Organizational Jesus Erik Hosmer hit a spank to tie the score. Then, small miracle of small miracles, Jeff Francoeur drew an unintentional walk (!). Then … Well, let’s just roll tape …

N Feliz J Francoeur 9 0 ___ 3-3 Jeff Francoeur walked. 2.28 0.52 71.5 % .073 0.39
N Feliz J Dyson 9 0 1__ 3-3 Jarrod Dyson picked off. 3.17 0.91 58.3 % -.132 -0.64
N Feliz B Butler 9 1 ___ 3-3 Billy Butler walked. 1.84 0.28 63.8 % .055 0.27
N Feliz M Aviles 9 1 1__ 3-3 Mike Aviles picked off. 2.94 0.54 53.7 % -.101 -0.43
N Feliz W Betemit 9 2 ___ 3-3 Wilson Betemit struck out looking. 1.42 0.11 50.0 % -.037 -0.11

It’s one thing to have two runners picked off at first base in the ninth inning of a tie game. It’s another thing when both pick-off-ees are pinch runners and, thus, notionally in the game precisely not to do such a thing. It’s something else altogether when said pinch runners are the first two pick-off victims of the pitcher’s career.

Viva la Royals!

Denton True “Cy” Young was a great pitcher …

Denton True “Cy” Young was also a great mustachioed pitcher. Denton True “Cy” Young was also a great chinless pitcher. And, as Venn Diagrams teach us, Denton True “Cy” Young was also a great mustachioed, chinless pitcher. So a little respect, please.

So I picked a fight with the Internet, and the Internet is beating me as though it entered a cheat code. The blow-by-blow …

Yesterday, I threatened to Ruin Everything^TM by posting the same thing as Eno Sarris, a mere hour later. Content redundancies are frowned upon, particularly by Dear Leader, so after I spent a sleepless, unmentionable night in the NotGraphs Dungeon of Citizen Reprimand, one would think the scales would have fallen from mine eyes. One would think …

Yet, lo, I awoke, fired a Tweet through the Internet, and watched disaster unfurl before me like Dave Cameron’s rolled-up knapsack of Medieval torture devices …

I thought Jose Reyes’s projected stat line was pretty cool, but it did not rise to the fleetingly rare level of “cool enough to repeat this four or five times in succession.” I don’t repeat things like that. I repeat drink orders just to be sure. And I repeat, usually in moments that don’t seem to occasion it, my refusal to quarter soldiers in my home during wartime because the third amendment means that much to me. But I don’t repeat Jose Reyes’s projected stat line. At least, not unless the Internet makes me.

So what does one say at this point? This? “I’m sorry, Internet. Please leave me alone.” Also: Et tu, Firefox.

The latest Great Moment in Spectacles comes to us via handsome NotGraphs reader Patrick D., who rightfully said, “Ron Kittle demands satisfaction.”

If Bob Hamelin’s Great Moment in Spectacles was, as I put it, “a heinous crime against baseball cards,” Kittle’s is the opposite. Donruss’ Diamond Kings series was the best, Jerry. The best!

Patrick also sent along this gem, via nerdbaseball.com:

True story: I always assumed that if I went to www.nerdbaseball.com, I’d simply be redirected to FanGraphs. You do in fact learn something new everyday.

Anyway, here’s Patrick with the final word:

Remember, certain parts of Ron Kittle’s face may be closer than they appear.

Gracias, Patrick.

In the second inning of Monday’s Brewers-Dodgers game, Carlos Gomez made a fantastic play in center field to rob Juan Uribe of a home run. You should really watch it, as it was pretty dang awesome.

More important, though, was Ryan Braun’s celebration of the play, pictured below.

(Click to embiggen, of course)

Again, this picture is but another reason to watch the video linked above, as images cannot truly capture the magnificence and grace of Braun’s celebration of that thing that other guy did. But the image is pretty good by itself, too.

Via Deadspin, we learn that a most interesting paying customer recently graced CitiField. To the daguerreotype …

I’m not going to suggest that world would be a more interesting place if more adult bodies were topped with grimacing baby heads, but —

Wait, that’s precisely what I’m suggesting. Controlling powers of the universe: More Baby Heads Now!

Note: this post features a poll at the bottom. Rate the Rangers’ radio broadcast for yourself.

Eric Nadel’s alma mater (a) is picturesque and (b) allows students to take every class pass/fail.

Continuing what I started over the weekend with a review of the Atlanta Braves television broadcast, what follows is a review of the Texas Rangers radio broadcast.

For the purposes of the present review, I listened to selections from a pair of games on KESN-FM — the May 11th game against Oakland that was delayed by rain and (ultimately) postponed, and then this past Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Angels.

The broadcast team is composed of Eric Nadel and Dave Barnett. As seems to be the case with other radio teams, the pair seems to call a game in shifts, with Nadel taking the first couple innings, Barnett taking the next couple, and so on.

Analysis
As I’m likely to reiterate elsewhere in this review, Nadel and Barnett provide analysis that, as a listener, I wish were a 3 out of 5, but, given the present level of discourse in America’s broadcast booths, probably rates as a 4 out of 5. There are no citations of FanGraphs, no attempts to integrate advanced metrics, and yet there’s generally a respect for sample size and separating, for example, pitcher performance from team performance.

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