Baseball brings us myriad joys, but perhaps none is greater than the comeback. The specter of losing looms, making everyone involved, from the players to the fans, feel uneasy. Even though it’s one game out of 162, even though there’s another to play tomorrow, losing sucks. And so when the comeback occurs, we are overcome with elation. In that way, the eighth inning of yesterday’s Mets-Brewers game might have been the greatest of the season. It contained two come-from-behind efforts and led to another, although related, joy: the walk-off.
The Mets and their fans felt it first. They came into the eighth inning having done little on offense to that point, but still trailing by a 2-1 score. Their lone run came on a balk in the fourth, but after that they managed just one more base runner. Kameron Loe, who had recorded the final out of the seventh, came back out for the eighth, but that almost didn’t happen. His spot was due up next in the order when Mark Kotsay flied out to end the previous inning. That worked for the Brewers, though, who have relied heavily on Loe this season.
Like my NotGraphs comrade Carson, I am a Peter Gammons pockettweet enthusiast. I am also a firm believer in using images to convey emotion at key junctures in baseball games. Which made me think: Why not combine Peter Gammons tweets with images (of Peter Gammons) that can be used to convey emotions at key junctures in baseball games? It’s perfect! After all, there is a large untapped market for image macros on the web.
So, with that, I am proud to unveil to the world a select sampling of LOLGammos. I encourage you all to make a meme of it. Meaning: create two, three, many LOLGammos!
Old Favorites:
1.
Emotion: sadness/disappointment
Example of proper in-game deployment: Your team is down one run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The bases are loaded and your best hitter at the plate. He works a full count and…strikes out looking.
In case you were watching any of the other 28 teams in action last night, you may have missed Nyjer Morgan apparently having the night of his goddamn life last night. First, he hits a walk-off double for the Brewers against the Mets. That’s pretty awesome, and he shows it in the celebration. Then he has this incredible post-game interview with FSN Wisconsin:
As if that wasn’t enough crazy (again, the good kind) for you, check out his post-postgame radio interview with Bob Uecker’s right hand man, Cory Provus.
It really isn’t any wonder that “Tony Plush” — Nyjer Morgan’s alter ego and “name on the field” — has become such a hit in Milwaukee. Combine his antics with his performance (1.2 WAR in 74 PA!) and you have the most legendary platoon player Wisconsin has ever seen.
Heaven and earth are enduring. The reason why heaven and earth can be enduring is that they do not give themselves to life. Hence they are able to be long-lived.
Therefore the sage puts his person last and it comes first,
Treats it as extraneous to himself and it is preserved.
Is it not because he is without thought of self that he is able to accomplish his private ends?
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter VII
Modern baseball is made of concrete and paper, glinting with pride and sweat. Earl Weaver is our Ayn Rand, the eternal opportunist: champion of a world where the individual and the society combine, and selfishness mingles with virtue. The victors rise to their rightful place, while the bones of Mark Prior and Dickie Thon gleam in the arid dust.
Gone are the days when the nameless uncarved block is but freedom from desire. We’re ruled by ambition rather than sacrifice, and the bunt earns -0.02 WPA.
And yet if justice truly existed in this world, selflessness would be rewarded. The colors and sounds in the video below would represent something that has actually happens, rather than the flickering of lights against the cave wall.
Happily, I can report that beauty does lie in incongruity and that two men in fact did find the Way. The first of these took place during the All-Star game of 1938. I will leave the story to the great John Lardner:
That seventh frame was most distressing to every loyal American Leaguer. McCormick greeted old Mose with a single. Lippy Leo Durocher laid down a pretty bunt in the direction of James Emory Foxx, the Mauler of Margate, Md., who had shifted from first base to third to make room Louis Gehrig.
Foxx charged in, fielded the ball, and threw it straight at Bob Feller, who was warming up in the American League bullpen, miles away. Nobody knows what Foxx has got against Feller, but he almost beaned him. While joe DiMaggio chased the ball, McCormick scored from first. And when DiMaggio let fly with unerring aim for the National League dugout, Durocher came prancing home.
Astros relief pitcher Brian Williams accomplished something similar to this feat on April 27, 1993, but because John Lardner did not write about it, I will consider this description sufficient.
Perhaps someone will once again find the Way. One can envision Durocher running, his eyes closed, at peace amid the cries and chaos. As Lao Tzu nearly said, the bunt home run is very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand it or put it into practice. I know, it doesn’t sound right. But think about it for a while.
Spencer Hall of the ever-fantastic Every Day Should Be Saturday (recommended even for non-college football fans) and SBNation today presented a fantastic piece on 1887 sports cards. Never one to be left out, baseball represented two of the (in the author’s humblest opinion) finer entries. Below is Dell Darling, “champion base ball catcher.”
We’ll let Hall take it from here:
Darling set what was then a record by surviving 14 assaults by batters, who, if they did not flinch upon contact with a pitched ball, were then allowed to swing freely at the “catcher” until their arms grew tired and the wood of the bat itself grew soft. The 1887 matchup between Champion Base Ball Batter James O’Neil and Dell Darling was described by the Providence, Rhode Island police department as “sportive, thoroughly entertaining, and most certainly manslaughter of the first degree.” Be not confused! Dell Darling in this picture is not pleading for his life, but is most certainly taunting the batter with his trademark phrase, “A butter’s whore is bread’s mistress, and your mother is the entire sand-wich!” Being a catcher was stupid in 1887, and still is.
The rest of the piece is highly recommended as well.
UPDATE: Pitch F/x savant Mike Fast confirms what our better selves suspected — namely, that the above is not a splitter. Still, it’s 99 Sexy mph. And Brad Hawpe has no idea what’s happening.
The footage you see here is from the bottom of the sixth inning of last night’s Rockies-Padres game.
According to the Pitch F/x data (pitch id #321), this is Ubaldo Jimenez striking out Brad Hawpe on a 98.7 mph split-fingered fastball with 4.2 inches of arm-side run and 8.8 inches of sink.
Per the Pitch F/x data available at the site (which you can access by clicking “Show Averages” at Jimenez’ Pitch F/x page), the league-average splitter is thrown at about 85 mph, with ca. 5 inches of run and 3 or 4 inches of rise. (Predictably, Jimenez’ version is a bit more intense: his averages are 89.1, 4.6, and 5.9, respectively.)
Whatever’s going on here, it’s obvious that some manner of misclassification has occurred — either by Pitch F/x for calling the pitch a splitter, or by science for suggesting that Ubaldo Jimenez is human.
There are two sorts of sporting bloggers in this world: those who do, and those who do not, know how to make a GIF. Having recently joined the lowest rung of the former camp, I possess that zeal unique to converts.
In this edition of Hot GIF, I’ve endeavored to capture the league’s five best sliders. The idea, I suppose — although I can’t be certain, really — is to get a sense of what an excellent slider looks like. By “best,” in this case, I mean “the top-five sliders by runs above average per hundred thrown, with something like a hundred (or more) thrown” (which leaderboard you can see above and here).
When capturing the above footage, I’ve tried to meet the following criteria as closely as possible, so’s to limit any visual variables:
• Pitcher facing same-handed batter.
• Pitch receives swing and miss.
• Camera straight-on from center field.
• Footage as recent as possible.
After the jump, you can find the GIFs of each pitcher above throwing his slider. Give the page a bit to load, probably. And, click on any image to watch just that GIF by itself.
Here’s Gaylord Perry, crafty righty nonpareil, looking at something …
If not for the faint smirk and baseball clothes, this could be mistaken for the contrived far-off looks common to college-rock liner note photos from the 1986-92 Blue Period. Instead, it’s Gaylord Perry drinking deeply of something aloft and just off stage. What could it be? To this end, some guesses that, in the collective, will prove that a best guess can also be a terrible guess. Gaylord Perry is looking at …
The face of God, which turns out to be demonstrably less awesome and terrifying than we’ve been led to believe; or
A passing stratocumulus that oddly resembles something naughty; or
The ominous descent of Kurt Bevacqua’s trained falcon; or
Angie Dickinson; or
Three of the five people you meet in Heaven; or
The early moments of an incoming Gorilla Monsoon flying elbow; or
Please, call it a comeback
