This guy is sitting on my desk back home in Madison. He is lonely. You can tell by his face.
So I’ve taken to the internet to find him some company. Let’s swim through the sea of bobbleheads available on the grand old internet!
What follows is a day or three old, but I’ve been stranded in the wilds of Nebraska for the last week, so a little slack, please.
Anyhow, Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who has sorta-kinda lost his mind in the most wonderful of ways this season, recently had this to say about maligned evil-doer A.J. Burnett …
“I encourage everybody to just break it down,” Cashman said. “Break it down. Compare him to other people. Look at his start-by-start. Look at his run support. If you smoke the objective pipe, I think the coverage on him would be a little smoother, more accurate.”
“Smoke the objective pipe.” Give this the weighty regard it merits: Brian Cashman asked the thronged New York media to “smoke the objective pipe.” If this doesn’t become a thing worthy of commemoration by t-shirt, then all the faith I’ve placed in CafePress as cultural barometer nonpareil has been in vain.
Age is also a number — a number that informs statutory rape laws in almost every state.
As the reader has probably gathered, it’s the custom of Team NotGraphs to spend the better part of each day at our lushly decorated headquarters lounging about in different angles of repose whilst drinking delicious, peaty scotches and then comparing them to other delicious, peaty scotches, which we then proceed to drink.
It was, in fact, this very thing we were all doing this afternoon when — I don’t know how it happened, really — but when colleague Jackie Moore and I found ourselves discussing what constituted a “playoff race.”
Jackie submitted that, so far as he could tell, only two races remained in the major leagues as of today — those in the AL Central (between Detroit and Cleveland and Chicago) and NL West (Arizona and San Francisco). When I asked Jackie Moore how he defined race, he proceeded, first, to laugh out loud and then to roll on the floor while laughing and then to laugh his ass off. When he’d composed himself, he proceeded, at that point, to suggest that, in any case where a team had a 90% or better chance of making the postseason, that a race ceased to exist involving the team.
No true child of the 80s is able to hear the words “sweep the leg” without feeling inside his heart and his mind and his other, more sordid, parts a sense of loathing for so-called “sensei” John Kreese and his unethical karate tactics.
The five months that Madison Bumgarner spent in the 80s were, very clearly, not enough to produce within him this same aversion to leg-sweeping, as last night, in the first inning of the Giants-Braves affair at Turner Field, he felled not Daniel Russo, but Daniel Uggla, via what appears to be a cut fastball — the footage of which has been GIF’d and embedded below for your pleasure.
It’s only a matter of time, of course, before Uggla himself utilizes a metaphorical crane kick to knock out this metaphorical Johnny Lawrence and win the metaphorical All Valley Karate Tournament.
In the sixth inning of Sunday’s game between the Brewers and the Pirates, Hall-of-Famer Robin Yount joined Bob Uecker in the booth. Discussion turned to newly-inducted fellow Hall member Bert Blyleven, and… well, something about a full moon. We’ll let you figure it out.
[audio:http://www.fangraphs.com/not/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Uecker-Full-Moon.mp3|titles=Uecker Full Moon]Mad PrOPS to our fearless leader Carson Cistulli for pulling the audio at my awesome behest.
Our voyage through multiple layers of meaning continues this week with the storied Cincinnati Redleg franchise. The last sixty iterations of the Reds are somewhat lackluster from a comedy standpoint: never terrible, sometimes excellent, generally consistent. Sure, they have Dusty Baker as a manager, but he has Bronson Arroyo’s elbow to bend back and forth like a Stretch Armstrong doll, so there’s no harm done. The Big Red Machine seemed to destroy the league slowly, inexorably, and humorlessly. There isn’t even a joke in Bill Bray.
There’s an unfortunate drawback for dealing with the older ballclubs: names didn’t appear on the backs of jerseys until 1960, when Bill Veeck was busy ruining the game. The Reds didn’t get on board until 1964. This eliminates some golden opportunities for historically-minded jokesters: there’s no showing off one’s literary chops by throwing on some Coke-bottle glasses and some Jim Brosnan gear, nor can one effectively rock the Dummy Hoy. It’s particularly tragic that there’s no Christy Mathewson jersey, because the combination of unwise trade, twilight appearance, and wonderful old-fashioned bagginess would make it pretty much unstoppable. Alas.
Still, a poor craftsman blames the tools of his ancestors. And so, undaunted, we proceed:
1966 Milt Pappas: The list could never start anywhere else. Pappas was the key piece of the worst trade in Cincinnati history (or second – see Mathewson, above) when an over-the-hill 30 year-old Frank Robinson was sent to the Baltimore Orioles in the offseason. Robinson went on to win the Triple Crown in 1966, and Milt Pappas went on to be Milt Pappas: winning a dozen or so games a year, posting a FIP in the low to mid threes, and complaining about everything from umpires to lower back pain to anyone within earshot. Necessary for wearing this jersey: limb flailing.
In the midst of discussing a graphic produced by Baseball Info Solutions that details Peter Bourjos’s range, Mark Simon of ESPN’s Secret Nerd Squad invokes a catch made by Bourjos last Wednesday — one also mentioned to me of late by FanGraphs Audio’s most recent guest, Sam Miller.
The catch in question is the one embedded abovely that you’ve already watched four times before reading these words. Do consider forwarding it — or, at the very least, describing it as explicitly as possible — to every lover you’ve ever had and/or plan on having someday.
Thank you, Grant Brisbee, for the link. And the memories.
So from time to time teams do cool events for fans. And I must give it to the Dodgers for their 7th annual State Farm Dodgers Dream Foundation Bowling Extravaganza. Most of the team (the big names) roll with families benefitting from the foundation as well as some incredible B-List celebrities. B-List is very generous, with the exception of James Denton. Hoobastank band member…not celebrities, sorry event planners, they just aren’t.
But here are some photos…
Double Secret Suspension! The worst of all suspensions!
Well, needless to say, Chicago’s northside has entered full-on circus mode — an annual tradition for the Cubs. Their one-time ace (though not a real ace by any non-Cubs standards) has essentially left the team after getting blown up by Chipper Jones and the Atlanta Braves.
The Cubs management, ever-eager to dump his contract, have done their darnedest to accommodate his brief flirtations with retirement while the Chicago media does its bestest efforts to paint the portrait of an irate, insane, ungrateful Venezuelan. Well, amidst this fine display of hatchetry, let us delve into the archives of a one Steve Rosenbloom, a lumberjack among woodpeckers, and enjoy a brief UETAMEJ of his piece entitled: “Can the Cubs out-stupid Zambrano?”
What is UETAMEJ? Inventor Dayn Perry defines it as, “Using Ellipses Toward A More Evil Journalism,” and thief Bradley Woodrum pronounces you-da-mage, like a gangsta complimenting a wizard.
In the following article, Rosenbloom chastises Zambrano for flying to Guatemala to adopt his son, but the UETAMEJ helps tell the real story. Engage the ellipses!
Steve Rosenbloom … can make … Zambrano … seem to have a body of stupidity …
It’s a close battle, I’m … a bad … neutered … goof … as tone deaf as the Fanboy Owner … reaching new and difference [sic] levels of stupidity.
Zambrano … pantsed … the big goof … on an airplane. This spasm of lucidity could impact the Cubs’ chances reaching first place in the Frickin’ Idiot League.
Now get a load of this: Zambrano plans to … say “…Dopes all around, it looks like.[“] …
[To which] his manager … says, “Thank you, sir, … I … hasn’t seemed sharp mentally or physically … Stinking it up is certainly a way to guarantee a lifetime in a Cubs uniform.[“]
… [I]t has been … time … for stupidity at Wrigley …
Anyway, back to lesson [sic] here: … Zambrano … was … [t]he only reason … fans … didn’t .. like [the] Cubs … the best baseball organization …
[Now the] Cubs … [will] try to con everybody into thinking … this ought to be exciting …
Seriously, how can a man working for a proper newspaper have 2 very real typos in a column that’s less than 600 words? I have 1 typo between 3 posts of 1000 words, and commenters send me anthrax-laced envelopes!
Kudos to Carlos Zambrano for putting in ten years at the most backward baseball organization outside of Kansas City. I would’ve gone nuts in four.
When is a foul ball something more than a foul ball? When it’s off the thunderstick of “America Brawn” Mike Laga, and it is propelled, with certainty but not vengeance, out of Busch Stadium and into the undeserving firmament.
The Mike Laga Foul Ball from JoeSportsFan.com on Vimeo.
When this happens, you stand, applaud, weep, tremble, genuflect, sign over your first born, and hope that King Laga I shows mercy upon you.
(Laga Love: Joe Sports Fan)
