#Feastmode.

Life: Mike Hampton could pitch, man. When he wasn’t injured, at least. And he could swing the stick, too, a baseball player born to ply his trade in the National League. It’s hard to believe now, looking back, that Hampton, from 1995 through 2004, was good for, at the very least, 150 or more innings. Mike Hampton, defined by injury, threw over 200 innings a year from 1997 through 2001. He pitched, and he pitched well, to the tune of 3.3, 2.4. 5.1, 4.4 and 2.9 WAR those five years, respectively. In 2001, in 86 plate appearances, Hampton hit seven home runs, scored 20 runs, and drove in 16. He hit .291, and put up a wOBA of .366. Mike frigging Hampton!

Spiritual Exercise: Mike Hampton disappeared from baseball in 2005, only to return in 2008, to give it one more shot. And another shot after that. Ask yourself: Faced with adversity, richer than your wildest dreams, would you leave the game you love, leave it behind, and throw in the towel? Or would you have surgery after surgery on your elbow, in order to one day pitch again?

A Prayer for Mike Hampton

Michael William Hampton!
You were so much more than the injuries.
Yet they’re what define you,
And what I remember.
Why?

You won 22 games in 1999.
You have five Silver Sluggers to your name.
Fuck the injuries, I say, Mike Hampton.

But it’s hard.
Colorado won’t forget, they can’t forget.
And after signing you to an eight-year, $121 million dollar contract,
The richest in pro sports history at the time,
Can you blame them?
I don’t. I can’t.
But I don’t blame you either, Mike Hampton.
I would have signed that contract, too.

Tommy John surgery in 2005.
Goodbye, 2006.
“I’ll be back as good as new,” you said.
And I believed you.
A torn oblique muscle in 2007.
Then, the unthinkable: More elbow pain,
Another elbow surgery.
Goodbye, 2007.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know what you’re thinking: “What is UETAMEJ, and what can it do for me?” Like the best acronyms, UETAMEJ is pronounceable (our own Bradley Woodrum pronounces it “you-da-mage“) and fits conveniently on the full complement of CafePress swag. As you’ve probably already guessed, it stands for, “Using Ellipses Toward A More Evil Journalism.” I hardly need to say this, but the practice of UETAMEJ, which is as ancient as it is sacred, entails the use of the ellipsis in tandem with words and phrases ripped from context and stripped of intended meaning.

This week’s victim is America’s Step-Father Dan Shaughnessy, who recently declared from on high that neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees will win the World Series. Yawn, it would seem. But what’s really going on? Peer more deeply and you’ll find an old Shaughnessy staple: the sexy tone-poem!

Release the UETAMEJ!

[S]tare at one another from a distance … Why not? … collision … bursting … four hours and 21 minutes … Deep … every night. Dominant and … laden. Let’s start … A bone … buffeted … in … a bust. [I]s anyone uncomfortable … ? Let’s not forget … the toilet. Mocking the … shape … the mound … the rotund … favorite … ball … Nobody feels good … for the next three weeks.

Behold the evil journalism!

Brawlin’ Brouhaha.

The word embraces two sides of an invisible line somewhere. A ‘brouhaha’ is a uproar and hubbub of some sort, there’s no doubt about that. But, even if the word might make you think of cold brews and a good laugh, the particular shade of that uproar, however, is up to debate. It’s not all bubbles and blow jobs.

Many definitions focus on the sounds and sights of a brouhaha. But most contain a hint of the negative, though. Here it’s a “commotion” or a “confused noise”, there it’s “clamor” or “confusion” over a “minor or ridiculous cause.” There are other signs of the dark side. Synonyms like “fracas” and “melee,” for one. And the origin, from French:

Origin:
1885–90; < French, orig. brou, ha, ha! exclamation used by characters representing the devil in the 16th-cent. drama; perhaps < Hebrew, distortion of the recited phrase bārūkh habbā ( beshēm ădhōnai ) “blessed is he who comes (in the name of the Lord)” (Ps. 118:26)

There’s definitely something to this. To call something a brouhaha is to belittle it slightly.

We can follow the same path of discovery if we start our game of google baseball: brouhaha. Plenty of uproars. Fights! Cheating! Violence against old men! Angry old men doing violence! You know, your typical baseball-related uproars.

But then you run into a few references that give you pause. The sort of thing that makes you think “they’re using this silly word because this whole thing is not very serious.” Like, to talk about the brouhaha between Dusty Baker and Bobby Valentine about icing a reliever while on a goodwill tour in Japan, that is to take slight digs at the whole situation. Or when the word is used to as a transition between a World Series win and a Quidditch match, you know it means the author is laughing inside just a little bit. But when you see the word used to describe a fictional tournament between “the most scandalous juice-heads in the business,” you hear the derisive tone loud and clear.

In the end, though, we know that alliteration wins the day, even (especially?) when used in a derogatory fashion. And so therefore, this poem from Schech’s Place represents a home run in today’s google: baseball brouhaha.

BASEBALL BROUHAHA
When beer hits brain
in Fenway’s bleachers,
that bellicose breed of
bragging, banging,
bare-chested beer bellies
begin bellowing and bleating
like beached, blubbery belugas
boiling to breed.

Alas, there are no endangered species
in Section 41.

September 22, 1991

Thanks to Hannah for the word. Shenanigans and hogwash came before.

The Burj Al Arab in Dubai: where every member of Family Violence was conceived.

The following aren’t necessarily real bands, but they are real phrases taken from this morning’s real-live baseballing headlines.

Family Violence
A tongue-in-cheek Garage Rock Revival quintet with members from Oxford, England; Tokyo Prefecture; and effing space. Their haircuts cost either nothing or $1000, but you can’t tell.

Red-Hot McCarthy
All Punkabilly, all the time. (Thanks a lot, Denver.)

Nyjer Morgan
Is actually just Kool Keith. (Did not everyone know that?)

Lackey’s Stuff
Sort of like Chris Isaak, if Chris Isaak were five mostly overweight quality management specialists from Chelmsford, MA.

Cryptic Swisher
A horrifying Christian-/Anarchopunk group from Paramus, NJ. They have, and will again, try to have sex with your mother.

In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

In today’s episode, Mr. Dick Allen finds himself astride a contemporary work of sky-scraping importance: that email John Mayberry Jr.’s agent sent in an attempt to hook him up with that mermaid …

“I hate to even be sending you this e-mail, and I’m quite embarrassed to say the least, but we have a young client on the Philadelphia Phillies who asked us if we knew any agents at Innovative Artists and could connect him to Dick Allen.

I know you’re not a dating or set-up service, but Dick Allen would love to meet Dick Allen or invite himself to a baseball game sometime. Would this be possible?

Here’s a bio of Dick Allen to give you some more info on him (he’s a great guy, down-to-earth, humble, Stanford-educated, etc.) Thanks for considering this as you know how this business is and servicing clients.”

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

Sí, soy familiar con la tercera base.

News from the internet today reveals that curiously utilized Giant rookie Brandon Belt will play in the Dominican League this fall (or winter or whenever it happens).

To make Belt’s transition to life in a Spanish-speaking nation more comfortable, here are some Spanish phrases from which he’ll derive no little benefit.

[To his coach] ¿Qué veterano del envejecimiento sostendré?
Which aging veteran will I back up?

[To a lady] Permita que ayude con su protector de pecho.
Allow me to assist with your chest protector.

[To clear up confusion] No soy una jirafa real.
I am not an actual giraffe.

[To a lady] Permita que demuestre la posición lista.
Allow me to demonstrate the ready position.

[To a lady] No, gracias. No cuido para tocar con la punta del pie la goma.
No, thank you. I don’t care to toe the rubber.

Jeff Francoeur throws out Michael Taylor at first base from right field.

Your second major league hit was denied by getting thrown out by the right fielder. Yea… that sucks. I bet he remembers that one for a while. At least it wasn’t going to be his first major league hit.

No doubt roused to action by our new “Cakes” category, reader Yirmiyahu, wearer of monocles and four-button spats, calls the writer’s attention to this, which is a surely delicious gingerbread rendering of Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfect game …

If you’re interested in answering questions like “Why would someone do this?” and “Why wouldn’t someone do this?” and “Was graph paper involved at any point during the planning stages?” and “Did the light towers at one time look like tensed and determined phalli?” then please do go here.

As part of our ongoing effort to aggregate all animal- and baseball-related hilarity in one central internet location, NotGraphs presents the abovely embedded video — a video, specifically, in which Cleveland reliever Chris Perez hunts, but fails to kill, a squirrel.

Owing to the lack of urgency in Perez’s gait, one can safely assume that, so far as Perez’s Oregon Trail-related skills are concerned, he skews much more strongly to the Banker from Boston side of things — as opposed to, say, a Farmer from Illinois.

“But he’s not trying to kill the squirrel, you a-hole,” the reader is possibly saying at this moment. “He’s only trying to capture it.”

To which charge I reply: “For one, there’s no Animal Rights Activist from Anna Maria Island in any extant edition of Oregon Trail. And, for two, if what you’re suggesting is true — i.e. that Oregon Trail is not a comprehensive and totally factual guidebook for masculinity in the 21st century — then where is this Indian guide leading me, and why I have just given him my pants?”

Video courtesy Guyism, via Outside the Box Score.

The thinking man’s neo-Agrarian theorist will tell you that before industrialization, people, quite joyfully, walked around with dog heads. We know this because we know this, and not just because Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry insist it’s true. That’s why it was nice to see Braves second baseman Dan Uggla succumb to ancient ethnobiological urges and sprout a pug’s melon atop his muscled, hitting-streaky shoulders. And so, courtesy of Citizens Bankers, comes your Daguerreotype of the Evening, which is of Dan Puggla …

In other Tribe of Uggla news, Deadly Don Hammack, America’s leading Nats fan, calls the writer’s attention to one Magnus Uggla, who exists and actually has that name. As well, Mr. M. Uggla’s Wikipedia page contains this championship description:

He is a member of the Swedish nobility and a descendant of several European rulers, among which John III of Sweden and Gustav Vasa.

Forgive the clunky translation and instead regard again: “[A] member of the Swedish nobility and a descendant of several European rulers …”

That may not describe Dan Uggla, but it describes Magnus Uggla. And it absolutely describes Dan Puggla.