The following images were captured from Ms. Wendy Thurm’s Twitter feed at approximately 12:30am ET, early Friday morning, and clearly document her descent into madness.*
*Note: Ms. Thurm has denied these allegations, suggesting that the following was a result merely of placing her cellular telephone in an airport security tray. To which explanation the unwashed masses respond, “Pssh! Hah! Pfft! Shwa! Therp!”
Exhibit One:
Today we celebrate the life of Bob Uecker, as part of our long-neglected feast-day series.
Life: Over six seasons and more than 800 plate appearances, Bob Uecker was a precisely replacement-level catcher for the Braves, Cardinals, and Phillies. After his playing career, he was hired by the Brewers as a scout — and has been described by then-owner Bud Selig as the “worst scout I (Selig) ever had.” Since 1971, he has been the radio voice of the Milwaukee Brewers — a platform he utilizes to celebrate the relative merits of American beer and encased meats.
Spiritual Exercise: The ethical mandate “Know thyself” is more or less as old as the Western intellectual tradition, attributed alternately to Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, and others. The sense is also preserved by Epictetus, who writes in his Discourses (II.6): “It is good to be clear about the level of your talent… Don’t pretend you have a particular skill if you don’t.”
Uecker’s greatest strength is his capacity not just for acknowledging, but celebrating, his weaknesses. Ask yourself what your weaknesses are. Instead of fleeing from them, become intimate with them, buy them some drinks, introduce them to your work friends.
A Prayer for Bob Uecker
Bob Uecker!
During a 1979 appearance
on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,
millions watched as you resuscitated
a dying man using only
half a Miller Lite
and some grainy images of Bo Derek
eating poutine sensually.
In German, I’ve learned, Uecker is a noun
meaning “one who impregnates women
competitively and is celebrated as a god
for doing so” — is that true?
A medical doctor I know said you
suffer no effects of gout but have
transmitted it to dozens of partners
sexually — is that even possible?
Razor Shines was not a very good Major League Baseball player. He accrued 88 big league plate appearances over four years with the Montreal Expos, which cost his teams 0.6 Wins.
But as you can see here, we was awesome in many other ways.
Joke’s on you: I’m awesome.
Dear NotGraphs,
I recently started dating a girl who has no idea how intense I am about my fantasy baseball league. I’m afraid she’ll freak out when she finds out about how I print out multiple spreadsheets to prep for Draft Day, frequently slobber over prospect reports and field trade offers in the shower. I know I cannot be the only person in this situation so I think it would make for an excellent column on the site.
(note: this is an actual e-mail from an actual reader, swear on my fantasy team.)
Dear Reader,
I hate to start off attacking the premise of the question, but, dude, she knows. I know you don’t think she knows, but she does. Women are skilled like that. My wife comes home and she immediately knows everything I’ve eaten, touched, looked at, anything. “You watched 30 Rock already? I thought we were going to watch it together!” “What? How do you know I watched 30 Rock?” “There’s a crumb of cereal on the floor near the couch, that I can somehow see from fifteen feet away. So I know you were eating cereal on the couch, and so I know you must have been watching something on TV while you were eating it, and since there was nothing else on the DVR, I know you watched 30 Rock without me.” It’s like “The Mentalist.” Which I also watched on the DVR without her.
BEHOLD! THE WORLD’S MOST INSTRUCTIVE SPECTRUM, THE MUSTACHE-SPECTACLES SPECTRUM:
THIS IS THE MOMENT THE PROPHETS FORETOLD, WHEN THEY SPAKE:
…AND THERE SHALL COME A SPECTRUM, A BEAM OF WISDOM AND ETHNICITY THAT STARTS THICK AND FUZZLED AND CURLING AROUND THINE UPPER LIP, BECOMES THINNED AND VAGUELY HISPANIC WITH AN AFRO SQUEEZING FROM YONDER CAP, AND ENDS PURE AND PURELY BESPECTACLED, YET MILDLY UNSURE IF THE PICTURE HATH YET BEEN TAKEN — AND YE SHALL UNDERSTAND THE LOCKED CAPS AND WHY WE HATH TO YOU GIVEN THEM. LET IT BE SO. (AXFORD 5:9)
NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE — LENNY SAKATA, WILLIE MUELLER, AND DANNY BOITANO.
DANNY BOITANO, WILLIE MUELLER, AND LENNY SAKATA. ALL ONE TEAM, ALL ONE SPECTRUM, BUT EACH A SEPARATE GLORY.
In 1988, David Palmer once took to the bases and, upon arriving at third, perpetrated this:
Look at David Palmer flopping about like an astounded halibut. Just look at him.
This is the offseason, and I have been making a GIF out of footage from a game in 1988.
Gary Carter was before my time. I wasn’t alive during the height of his years with the Montreal Expos, and was only four years old when he and the New York Mets did the world a favor, winning the 1986 World Series in seven games. By the time I found baseball, Gary Carter was in the twilight of his career. I don’t remember ever watching him play.
With news of Carter’s worsening condition in his difficult journey with cancer, and having read some of his daughter Kimmy Bloemers’ heartbreaking journal entries about her father’s illness, I’m tempted, as a student of baseball history, to read everything I can about Carter, about his time in Montreal, and his time in Queens. I want to listen to Carter’s Hall of Fame speech, dive into SI’s Vault, and even watch the stupendously thrilling — by all accounts — 1986 World Series. And I’m going to do all that. But, before I do, and most of all, I want to hear from those who watched Gary Carter — revered by all, it seems — play baseball not as journalists, but as fans. I want to know how you remember Gary Carter. I want you to tell me, someone who never watched Carter play the game, what it was like to do so.
What do you remember? What does Gary Carter mean to you?
Tell me about “The Kid.”
Image courtesy The Associated Press, via CBS News.
A line — a beautiful line — from Charles Baudelaire:
See on these canals those sleeping boats whose mood is vagabond; it’s to satisfy your least desire that they come from the world’s end.
A line put to action:
Just this afternoon I’ve submitted an application for employment to baseball’s new Most Interesting Club, the Houston Astros. Here are some notable excerpts.
From the Cover Letter, Page 1:
Mr. Luhnow,
With the announcement yesterday that PITCHf/x expert Mike Fast will be joining the Astros’ baseball operations department — that, coupled with a generous comment about FanGraphs in your Twitter account — it’s apparent that both you and the new-look Houston Astros are looking for fresh ideas. It’s what that in mind that I submit the present application for employment in the Houston Astros organization.
What, precisely, qualifies me to work for the Astros? Allow me to answer candidly: nothing, really. To that admission, allow me to add hastily that I have never, at any point in the roughly 2.5 years during which I’ve worked for FanGraphs, been qualified for even one position I’ve held there — and yet, over that same span of time, both the site’s traffic and presence in the mainstream media have increased exponentially.
“Correlation, not causation,” you say? Luckily for me, I have no idea what that means!
With the news last week that Fausto Carmona is not actually Fausto Carmona, many have been wondering how widespread this fake identity phenomenon actually is among major league players. While it is generally assumed that such players hail from the Dominican Republic, my investigative reporting has uncovered a more surprising poser in the major league mix.
“Hunter Pence” of the Philadelphia Phillies was arrested yesterday outside the consulate my heart, for assuming a false identity. His real name is Rick Nielsen, he is 37 years older than he has claimed, and he is the lead guitarist and songwriter of Cheap Trick.
“hunter pence”
