It has recently come to the author’s attention that, rather than producing actual content, it might be preferable to pass judgment on other people’s content, and then to assemble those judgments into one easily digestible rankings list.

In this edition of Lists and Rankings, we continue our furious pursuit of the Lowest Common Denominator — namely, this time, by reproducing below the day’s headlines which might most easily be conceived as having sexual undertones. Note how the author has included one or two lines’ worth of pithy commentary, lest you find yourself under the impression that absolutely zero effort was expended in the creation of this bloggiest of blog posts. Note also the hilarious use of the words reproducing and conceived in the first sentence of this paragraph.

10. San Francisco Giants: Blah Blah Blah Playoff Push, Bleacher Report
Not a Salt-n-Pepa song, turns out.

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You’ll recall that the Giants, in celebration of winning the belt and the title, cooked up a little contest called the “World Series Baby,” which celebrated and encouraged unprotected sex in and around San Francisco. On that front, we have a winner. Please meet Brooklynn Bird …

If there’s one thing I take seriously, it’s impregnating the Ladies of America, which is a thing that I have done before. Still, it’s hard for me to get past the look of angsty betrayal on the hound’s face. “And so it begins,” he’s surely thinking, encumbered by the knowledge that he’s but an infant’s dander allergy away from a trip to Uncle Tony’s.

If I’m reading sight-lines correctly, it appears that the dog is directing his mounting hostility toward the mother. The 1950s taught us that an unwelcome pregnancy is always the woman’s fault, and it’s oddly heartening to know this lesson has crossed species.

(Impregnation of thanks: With Leather)

If you use the team pages over at Baseball-Reference, you’re familiar with the “Game Results” portions of the team pages, a relatively new addition. If you’re somehow not familiar, or need a refresher, check out a couple of examples, two of last decade’s iconic teams.

First, the 2001 Seattle Mariners, the team that won a whole lot of games:

(With all images, click to embiggen)

Green marks wins, red marks losses, and the height/depth of the bars mark the margin of victory/defeat. The Mariners made a bunch of green, not so much red.

Now, the Detroit Tigers, a team which instead of winning a bunch of games, did that other thing:

You’ll notice the colors are different, but the graph still reads the same. If you are wondering why the colors are different, it’s so I could do this:

This is the two graphs placed on top of each other. Juxtapo-BAM. With the placements of off days and such, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty interesting to me how little overlap there is, and how amazing it is we saw two such incredibly good and then incredibly bad teams appear in such a short span.

Is this a thing that people find interesting? I’m not sure, but I want to find out.

One fine day I got a notion that reviewing baseball video games – in an effort to find the best ones of all time – might be a cool idea. After showing one to Mr. Cistulli, he agreed. Thus today I bring you the first in a series of baseball video game reviews, with notes to help dictate the future form.

Vitals:
Game: Triple Play 2002
Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: EA Sports
Modes: Single Game, Season, Playoffs, and Home Run Derby
Cool Feature: DVD Extras (Luis Gonzalez motion capture)

Columnist Note:
For games that have video footage online, a video would go here.

Categories
Realism: 3/10.
Graphics: 7/10.
Difficulty: 7/10.
Details: 6/10.
Playability: 5/10.
Intangibles: 35/50.          
Total Score: 63/100 (D)

For this first review, let me break down each of the categories a little bit. For realism, I like to think in terms of “could this be a way a game would reasonably play out?” For graphics, it’s definitely relative to the time the game was put out. Difficulty is pretty self-explanatory; is the game extraordinarily easy or hard, or somewhere in between? For playability, I like to think of it as the ‘play again’ factor; would you play it over and over again? For me, for intangibles it was really to get it on a scale of 100, and to help to try quantify some ‘feel’ to the game (and also to help get a Jeterian element into the mix).

To set a few ground rules:
Game will be played with teams of Mr. Warne’s choosing.
Game will be played on a medium skill level.
Game is played in exhibition or single game mode.
No player movement allowed (if applicable).
No part of the game will be simulated.
Game can not be restarted, except in instance of system freeze.
If my wife asks, I am working.

With all these rules considered, if any reader suggests one that should be added, it shall be considered.

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It’s former major-league second baseman, manager and coach Chuck Cottier!

No. 2 pencils up! Please click Prodigy/AltaVista-enabled link below!

(Image, yo: Wrigley Wax)

Everyone who’s anyone knows that photo essays are preferable to real-live essays, on account of they (i.e. photo essays) demand considerably less of both the writer and reader.

It’s with that in mind that we present this, a photo essay of Brandon Allen’s upper-deck home run (video) at Yankee Stadium from Tuesday night.

1. Brandon Allen faces, and makes loud contact off of, one of the few players in the league with a larger body mass than himself.

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Many, many tears have been shed at the Little League World Series. A bit too many, for my liking. But even I have my limits. Even I understand when someone’s gone too far, and when crying in baseball is completely acceptable.

Sure, Cumberland, Rhode Island’s young Christopher Wright struck out to end the game, his New England squad went down in defeat, again, and their dream of a Little World Series title died a gut-wrenching death. But that did kitten really have to die? How many kittens will be sacrificed in the Little League World Series until we all stand up and say, “No. Enough!”

Even Joe West thought the umpire, caught in the despicable act above, went too far. When reached for comment by our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, West said only this:

He’s gone!

At this time, we’re unable to determine whether Cowboy Joe meant the umpire, or the kitten. Both, perhaps.

H/Ts: The Score’s @JerkInTheCorner for the lovely Photoshop-age, and The Associated Press, via daylife, for the original image. Keep up the great work. All of you.

Curiously, much of Dick Allen’s original scouting report is written in Greek.

Over at NY Baseball Digest, the keeper of that site, Mike Silva, has shared with the reader three photos he took from a recent sojourn to the Baseball Hall of Fame — photos, specifically, of three original scouting reports on three excellent baseball players.

It’s a coincidence that, shortly after noon today, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team itself came into possession of a similar item — namely, an original scouting report of Dick Allen.

Curiously, the report is devoid of the sort of language one might expect. There are no comments, for example, regarding Allen’s arm strength or his speed on the basepaths.

Instead we find these somewhat cryptic, barely relevant, notes:

• “Never suckled at his mother’s breast and instead was fed the innards of lions, wild swine, and bear marrow.”
• “Anointed in ambrosia and put on top of a fire to burn away mortal parts of body.”
• “μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν.”

There may come a time in your life, dear reader, when you find yourself face to face with Jeffrey Leonard. It may be at the barbecue of your slightly shady uncle, in the elevator at the building of your investment manager, or perhaps in a high-stakes poker game on a Louisiana riverboat piloted by a man wearing both tattoos of snakes as well as actual snakes. Regardless, the prospect of repartee with Mr. Leonard can be an intimidating affair. Thus, as a public service, we’d like to provide the following set of guidelines regarding his facial expressions, and what he may be conveying through each particular contraction of facial muscles. If you rank your social skills as anywhere below the level of “enchanting”, it may be wise to print this reference out and carry a copy in your wallet.

Be warned that Jeffrey Leonard is a complicated man, a man who has some degree of mastery over his own presence. As such, there can be no guarantee that his facial expression exactly aligns with any specific emotion.  We wish you luck in your future badinage.

1.  Jeffrey Leonard is not sure he should have left his coat lying over there.

2.  Jeffrey Leonard would like to respond to your criticism of the meatpacking industry, but his mouth is still full of peanut butter.

3.  Jeffrey Leonard is stunned that you have chosen the Caro-Kann Defense in your chess game, when his success against the variant is well-documented.

4.  Jeffrey Leonard really is interested in what you have to say, but he probably shouldn’t have watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest this afternoon.

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One will often hear comments about the degree to which a camera can distort the objects of its gaze — this is what people mean, for example, when they say the camera “adds 10 pounds.”

In no case is this more clear than in the case of the above screenshot — taken from last night’s contest between San Diego and San Francisco. In said image, Padre outfielder/first baseman Kyle Blanks, facing Giant right-hander Matt Cain, looks, for all intents and purposes, like a normal-sized person.

In fact, Blanks is not a normal-sized person. That he appears to be one is clearly a trick of perspective.

To get a sense of what I mean, consider all the things that are directly behind, but totally obscured, by Blanks:

• All known works by Italian painter Tintoretto.
• Like seven or eight Arbyses, probably.
• The Golden Gate Bridge.
• A sexy cheerleading squad.
• Dayn Perry’s ego.

While not technically a mathematical proof, this is the sort of thing after which one generally says something like “Q.E.D.” Which, consider that my final thought on the matter.