Inspired by the events that transpired last night in the world of baseball (!!!!!) and in the world of Project Runway finales, I spent the afternoon making my own Game Six Win Probability Graph t-shirt (apologies to Dave Cameron, who surely never meant for this to happen).

I hope the judges don’t knock me for my styling

You can make your own memento of the %^(*$%%(@RFJingest game ever. Instructions, kind of: I printed the win expectancy graph and went over the lines with my trusty Sharpie so they would pop when I traced them… Then I just slotted the page under a white t-shirt and traced the lines with a fabric pen. I sewed red beads onto my shirt for hot playz, but you could also just do it in a different color. Embroidery would also be an option and a pretty easy one if you have a water soluble fabric pen (and who doesn’t), but I didn’t have time for that today. Then I cut the collar and sleeves off of my shirt because I’m a girl. Viola!

When I think about the end of baseball season, I think about the soul-crushing Canadian winter: I know it’s coming, there’s nothing I can do to delay the inevitable, it gets worse every year, and there’s no way I can possibly prepare myself; it is utterly depressing. It’s a long season, no doubt, and now there’s only one game left. Where does the time go?

Below, 27 of my inner-most thoughts on baseball — game six, the World Series, and more — as we prepare to say goodbye …

1. About last night: That was some silly, silly shit. I can’t really describe it any other way. It didn’t make sense. The comedy of errors, on the field and in the dugouts; the home runs and the lead changes; the many final at-bats of Albert Pujols’ Cardinals career; Mike Napoli’s ankle; Nelson Cruz in right field; Matt Holliday’s wrist; God telling Josh Hamilton he was about to hit a home run. I mean, I like to think of God as being a pretty busy cat, but even he was enthralled by last night’s baseball game. And can you blame him? It had it all.

2. I don’t think I can call what I watched last night simply a “baseball game.” That doesn’t do it justice. It was so much more. It was theater. I almost felt underdressed, watching the 10th inning on television at home.

3. I saw a billion similar tweets as the drama unfolded: “If you’re not a fan of baseball after this …” and “If anyone ever tells you baseball is boring …” etc., etc. Look, nothing’s changed: Some people are morons. They think baseball’s boring. They don’t appreciate the game. We don’t need them. To hell with ’em.

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A portrait of the artist as a different, less attractive person.

After a series of rigorous medical-type tests and appointments with important cardiologists, it’s come to my attention that the place where I hate the Cardinals is in my heart.

Please recognize: when I say heart, I’m not using the word metaphorically — like in the Rod Stewart song “Faith of the Heart”, for example, or the other Rod Stewart song “You’re in My Heart”. Stewart doesn’t intend to suggest that the unnamed woman he’s addressing is in his actual heart. She’d have to be only, like, three inches tall, were that the case. And even then, there are so many questions to ask: how did she get in there? can she get out? does she live in a particular ventricle? It’s absurd.

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Last night’s game was riveting. But, you see, I am a Phillies fan first, a Peter Gammons fan second, and a baseball fan third. Which is why this snapshot provided me with a great many minutes of enjoyment:

There’s really not much more to say about this except that sometimes God gives Josh Hamilton the strength to hit home runs and sometimes God gives me pictures of Peter Gammons that just LOLGammo themselves.

Here was the great Red Smith’s lede the morning after the Shot Heard ‘Round the World:

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

And here is the just awful Dayn Perry’s lede the morning after the Busch Putsch:

Nerp taaaaa duputoah ploopy snaarfgort baseball loorfgack the fuck? Derpy derp holy grappertom snarfglop. I am shitting out of my stupid mouth.

And so I am left with my drool, my indignities, my gaping maw, and this:

Baseball is love and religion and sex and food.

Well, that was quite the Game Six.

Where are you going to watch Game Seven? I’m going to be hanging out with Patrick Newman in Palo Alto at the Empire Tap Room. Good beers, better baseball/TV setups than other Palo Alto bars with good beers, should be empty enough at happy hour Friday to carve out a spot for the game. If you are in the bay area, you can even take the train there, sorta. Meet me there?

I don’t promise that the game will be as good as Game Six (how could it be). Or that anyone nearer to you will respond on this post to let you know where they will be tonight so you can meet up with them and talk nerd. But I feel like I need to do this, Game Six was that good. I haven’t even cleared this with my wife or the Dark Overloard yet. F it, I’m a rebel.

So! Where are you going to watch Game Seven tonight?

What to do you when your favorite player annoyingly takes advantage of his post-Messersmith/McNally liberties and leaves you with a jersey-shirt that serves as nothing better than a reminder of those grim treasons? You improvise like a champion’s championship champion:

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

It gets hot in these rhinos.

When one reads the play-by-play transcript of World Series Game 5, one is reminded of some of the finer works of Eugène Ionesco.

This is not an excerpt:

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Despite the fact that it happened only just 15 years ago, many people have forgotten Wade Boggs’ overthrow, by force, of the New York government and his brief and frightening reign over that same city.

The photo you see here captures Boggs in 1996, just moments after having wrested — along with a small but loyal faction of the city’s police — wrested control of the city from then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

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A friend pointed out that I misspelled Saltalamacchia in a previous post.

I figure I deserve to be punished. And so why shouldn’t I make the punishment fun?

If you haven’t wasted at least a few hours doing pointless baseball (and non-baseball) quizzes over at Sporcle… well, I’m about to ruin your productivity forever. Because even if you don’t like the quiz I’m about to link you to, I’m pretty sure something over there is going to suck you in (or you are far more immune to the distractions of the Internet than I am… though, really, if you were, would you be reading NotGraphs?).

My self-inflicted punishment for misspelling Salty’s name is that I’ve created a quiz to test how well you can spell the hardest names in baseball (current players only). Yeah, that Marc guy is one of ’em.

Good luck.

[First one with a perfect score wins… about $40,000 less than the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. My last spelling bee was in 4th grade, when I was eliminated from my district’s competition by misspelling halibut. For more than twenty years, I didn’t eat halibut, in silent protest. That streak was broken due to an unfortunate choice of entrees at a wedding a few years ago. I think it must have been something like “halibut or garbage?” because I honestly don’t remember what would have possibly made me choose the halibut and end my lifelong strike. I have not eaten it again since. For those who haven’t already clicked over to the quiz– or a different post!– by now, I spelled it “h-a-l-i-b-i-t.” How many fourth graders frequent the local fishmonger and study the price list??? I’m still convinced it was the pronouncer’s fault. The winning word was refrigerator! Refrigerator!! But I’m over it. Really, I am.]