The Feast of Cory the Snyder

Today we raise a glass to the august glory that is Cory Snyder, in this, the most recent of our feast-day celebrations.

Life: It is futile to seek the essence of Cory Snyder from his Wikipedia article, a handful of sparse, high-school-english-paper paragraphs scattered before him like so many crumbs.  Nowhere does it mention the forearms, the lateral incisors, the dazed optimism.  Nor does it mention that final, willful gesture in the ninth inning of the 1984 Olympic gold medal game, when he hit a home run and proceeded to urinate on the plate in single-minded, feral defiance.  Clearly, philosophers have long skirted the questions that the existence of Cory Snyder has pressed upon the human condition.  This display of intellectual cowardice from our nation is, naturally, quite troubling.

Spiritual Exercise: Select a tranquil outdoor area suitable for meditation.  Seek the twittering of starlings if at all possible.  Then, the moment before your superficial introspection descends into an unconscious calculation of the groceries you will need to buy, tense every single muscle in your body and hold it as long as you can.  As you do, consider Hawthorne’s rejection of transcendentalism, his belief that it is Nature herself who injects the bad hop into every ground ball.  In such a world, what is the sane reaction?  Is it to struggle against the natural forces bent on your destruction, or to allow Heraclitus’ river to sweep you where it will?

A Prayer for Cory Snyder

Cory Snyder!
Any glance at your 1987 Topps Card
Is immediately drawn to the gaudy glitter
Of the golden bowl that was
Your glory, and your education.

Your flaws did not stay hidden long.
In the blurry shadow-world above,
Your posture is a painfully symbolic gesture
Of the game and the world
That was already tailing down and away.

The moment you appeared
You negated our preconceived notions
As to the finite vectors accorded to time, and hair.
Your golden greatness swirled
And eddied about your shoulders like a mantle.

Your magnanimity was evident at the plate
Where the shortstops, in their reedy voices,
Entreated you to “swing, batter,”
Swing, and swing you did.
You swung at everything you could.

Welcome to you, too, CBS Sports ULive.

The college baseball season began this past weekend and, owing to a conspicuous absence of the professional game available for public consumption, I resolved that finding a collegiate game between two talented programs would serve as a serviceable antidote.

After reading Baseball American Aaron Fitt’s preview of the weekend’s games, I settled upon the series between No. 10 Vanderbilt and No. 2 Stanford as the one I’d most like to watch.

As one might expect, the viewing options were quite limited. The series was not broadcast by ESPN, or even ESPN3 (which appears not to carry any sort of collegiate baseball until a pair of games on March 2nd).

I could, however, access an online feed through the sites of both the Stanford and the Vanderbilt baseball programs.

In both cases, I was redirected to the Stanford Videos page — which appears, in this case at least, to serve as a sort of Stanford-themed “skin” for CBS Sports ULive, what I gather to be the streaming arm of the CBS Sports College Network.

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@craigcalcaterra just fyi, I’m in the best shape of my life. Thought you should have the scoop. #motivated #quotes #sigh

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) February 18, 2012

Brandon McCarthy, owner of a popular Twitter account and two excellent fastballs, wants both (a) Craig Calcaterra and (b) everyone else to know that he’s in the best shape of his you-know-what as spring training begins in Arizona.

Some days, we make Peter Gammons tweets looks pretty funny; some days, Peter Gammons makes the funny for us. And then he reaches into our souls with shaky thumbs, and brushes off the cobwebs to flip the rusty lever to make us think and to ponder and to trouble over our own and very and uniquely terrifying existence.

Today is the second day — the day where that thinking crap happens. After the laughing bit:

I’m on an elliptical right now, but have been slowed by glute pull that won’t go away and hurts my back. You’re in Jupiter

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) February 18, 2012

, not Orlando?

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) February 18, 2012

If this accidental poetry does not tug on your heartstrings, festoon your soul with sparkling, golden laughter and secret, shimmering and crimson red regrets — secret pains about secret problems you feel shameful to tell your deepest most dear friends and loved ones — if these two tweet poems do not do all this, then check your heart, man. Or woman. Because the cybermen may have replaced the beating muscle of your existence with a tuft of wiring and cold steel. Just like in that distressing dream I just awoke from.

Also, Glute is a butt muscle… BUTT JOKE! (Discuss.)

A gentleman’s bow, courtly and obliquely disdainful, towards the shareful Yirmiyahu.

A daguerreotype and then 10 observations regarding that daguerreotype …

1 – Gary Carter really was happy all the time, even while being mobbed by the Québécois.

2 – Mr. Carter is in the midst of what you might call “The French-Canadian Captive Embrace.”

3 – The kid atop shoulders is wearing a mime’s shirt.

4 – That other kid is wearing Ron Kittle’s glasses.

5 – You can’t buy those kind of cameras anymore.

6 – The kid in the Playboy shirt raises three possibilities with regard to his upbringing: his parents are burdened with a cultural ignorance of dimensionless dimensions; his parents have a robust sense of humor, or; his parents give not a shit.

7 – The cackling young lady to Mr. Carter’s right, the one with the coconuts smile of a mega-church organist, is surely a disembodied head.

8 – Mr. Carter was not a “velvet rope” type of guy. Hence the bull rope.

9 – That is an actual sunbeam you see. Mr. Carter was followed by them everywhere.

10 – The roof of Stade olympique is actually closed in this photo. What you see is not the sun but rather a heavenly and riverine glow. Mr. Carter was followed by it everywhere.

Jack Moore is currently working a on post about the Yankees’ trade of A.J. Burnett to the Pittsburgh Pirates. This is his first draft, which is clickable for the purposes of embiggening.

Names have been placed into nomination, Gomezes have been eaten, and hamburgers have been sexed. Thus, the time for voting is nigh.

The question before you, the obsequious, poo-slathered citizen steeped in delusions of enfranchisement, is this: which player should be nicknamed “Gomez’s Hamburger”? To the Diebold voting machine/Sybian!

Thank you for exercising the franchise, such as it is.

The forever smile went into the hereafter yesterday. Even with preparation, it was difficult. A picture and then some lamentations for our service today.

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Well done, Kid.

Mr. Gary Carter, 1954-2012 — Husband, father, ballplayer.

(Image courtesy of SI.com)