Apophatic [ap-a-FAT-ik] Theology is that method by which one endeavors to describe God by describing what God is not — the suggestion being that fewer persons and places and things belong to the latter category than the former.

Apophasis [uh-PAW-fa-sis] is also the process by which one might most efficiently compile a list of major-league ballplayers, past and present, who could — via their fists or feet or, perhaps, just a particularly menacing stare — injure NotGraphs’ oldest contributor (by far), Dayn Perry.

Which is to say that, to construct such a list, it’s much easier to identify those players who do not have the capacity to fell Perry. Thanks to the search functions at Baseball-Reference, it’s easy to compile a list of such players.

Image courtesy Jason Thorpe.

Inspired by, and mostly stolen from, this MLB.com piece about Austin Jackson, but this is not really about Austin Jackson, unless saying it’s about Austin Jackson will make you more interested in reading it.

YOUR CITY — Your favorite team has spent part of their offseason looking at alternatives at troubled position, but that doesn’t mean they’ve given up on young struggling player doing things they wish that young struggling player would do.

On the contrary, they still see potential there. But they see some maturing to do in a bunch of critical baseball skills.

Somewhere between the rookie sensation who did something statistically unrepeatable, and the sophomore who reverted back to the mean, there’s the real young struggling player. That’s what your favorite team believes, and they hope time and teaching will bring out that form.

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Thanks to the death-infused search functions at Baseball-Reference, it’s easy to compile a list of ballplayers who selfishly ruined the holidays by dying on Christmas Day. Let us remember their crossing of the Styx and their insistence on doing so while everyone else was just trying to enjoy themselves.

Also remember this: As you open gifts, force chestnuts down the gullet and nod off in the glow of a D-level bowl game, someone somewhere is dying and thus soiling an otherwise fine day.

Ancient papyrus texts and the earliest cave etchings make unmistakable references to HVAC systems and their power to save humanity. As we learned in succeeding years, the world was at once saved, propelled forward and curated by dutiful monks in their scriptoria and the wholesome, restorative power of air conditioning, which was invented by Patrick Henry, Jaco Pastorius and Nipsey Russell in 850 B.C. Shortly thereafter, the same trio invented baseball and then combined the two on the streets of Houston, Texas, U.S.A., Earth:

There are many reasons we can’t have nice things, but only one reason we can. That reason is air conditioning and its sexy possibilities.

(Freon kiss: Reddit)

Inspired by an awesome email from my even more awesome dad, a breakdown of the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates affiliation with the game. In no particular order:

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1. Ron Paul

It is not clear whether Ron Paul is now a Houston Astros fan, but we do know that he is a “good friend” of Nolan Ryan, which suggests that perhaps he has switched allegiances since these glorious photos were taken. I am not part of the “rev-love-ution” or whatever the kids are calling it these days, but everyone looks like a stud to me in this beautiful uniform. I hate how much I love these.

“Ron Paul is the only congressman to have hit a home run over the fence in the congressional baseball game’s 50-year history.”

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Because my wife’s parents’ home is equipped only with the dial-up variety of modem, I do much of my internetting (while visiting and enjoying greatly the company of my in-laws) at the local library.

This is a photo of all the library books at same.

It was a different time, you understand — 1987, or ’88. A time when men like Billy Jo Robidoux and Mark Funderburk were the flying buttresses in the architecture of baseball — beautiful appendages that distract from the innermost works of the structure. Or something.

It was also a time when baseball cards like this were possible:

They gaze on, each to no great end.

The random pairing of players, the dissimilar orientation of the photos, the misspelling of Billy Jo’s name, the prospect emblem in Johnny Rocket’s font — all of these were only possible in the 1980s, when anything went up one’s nose.
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A few paragraphs into this New York Times article about the Mets owners seeking minority investors and I lost track of whether I was reading an actual news piece or something that was trying to be funny. Apparently the Mets think rich people want to give them $20 million without getting anything in return. How is “access to Mr. Met” not a joke? Mr. Met is a guy in a costume. And it’s lovely that they want to give their investors a weekend’s stay at spring training and discounts — discounts! — on MLB.com merchandise. These people have $20 million to spare on a meaningless fraction of a terrible baseball team, that comes with no control over what the team does. I think they can afford to pay full price for a hat, if they even want one. David Brown has already written a piece for Yahoo about ten things someone can do with their “access” to Mr. Met — a more family-friendly list than the one that first came to mind for me — so I’ll skip that angle and try something slightly different.

Eight More Meaningless Perks To Mets Minority Ownership that the Times article inadvertently left out:

1. Free mustard on every full-price Citi Field hot dog you purchase.

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I don’t mean to depress you.  I don’t want to bring you down.  I don’t want to ruin your holiday season.

But no matter what you do…  No matter what happens to you…  No matter what you receive under the tree or in your stocking…

You will never be as happy as Carson Cistulli was in 1989 to receive VCR Baseball.

This is not a failing on your part. It’s simply a fact. No one has ever been this truly, perfectly, unadulteratedly happy before. Read the rest of this entry »

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation team has confirmed, through highly placed sources, that the following is a Thing That Actually Happened. At this time, we know little else about this thing, but it happened and elicited in onlookers emotions ranging from “happy-lucky” to “no more of this; leave me the hell be.” Again, we know it happened:

True, there is no baseball here. But there once was. And there shall be again.