Below these words is a giant, embedded tweet. The text of the tweet, which comes from the official Twitter account of Major League Baseball, contains an image — and that image is of the Detroit Tigers’ mascot in a giant cardboard box.

Regarding the image, I have nothing to say. Regarding the text of the aforementioned tweet, I would like to deliver a long and impassioned speech.

Would like to, I say. Lo, I am without an audience — nor are my prospects for gathering one very good. Also, I’m not wearing pants.

In lieu of the speech I would — and, America, could — have given, allow me to make only a brief comment on the suggestion that the following image exists, and was tweeted out, “for no good reason.”

As Aristotle (in his Ethics) and R. Kelly (in every song ever) both note, there are things that are valuable not as a means to another, greater end, but as an end in and of themselves. For Aristotle, that end is the pleasure one derives from wisdom; for Kelly, it is the celebration of the sex act. For still another, it is the very real fact that we live in a world where a real, human person dresses up as a tiger and then sits in a box.

A tiger like this one, in box like this one, too:

Read the rest of this entry »

Oakland Athletics Tickets

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s billet-doux pairs for us, the made-love-to readers, base-and-ball squads with representative cans and bottles of wholesome, nutritious alcohol. In some cases (pun!), of course, there’s room for Lincoln-Douglas debate as to the fitness of the union, but an abundance of right-wise American vigor is found in the effort. Please click and admire both girth and artifice:

It is pleasing to me, the Bonapartist scribe, that my preferred team, Cardinaux de Saint-Louis, is paired with my preferred existential lubricant, the stout.

In the end, though, this changes nothing …

Rookie of the Year updated for 2012:

Doctor: I’m sorry to hear you’re out of work, Mrs. Rowengartner, but if you no longer have health insurance then you’ll have to find a way to pay for Henry’s shoulder surgery yourself.

*Smack*

Doctor: FUNKY BUTTLOVIN”!!!

(Later, outside of the doctor’s office, Henry’s Mom sits at the bus stop looking distraught.)

Henry: Don’t worry about that medical bill, Mom. I think I have an idea…

It is the offseason, and baseball players are not playing baseball. They are instead abetting weathermen. In the case of Derek Holland, his disembodied head and arms are abetting the false certainties of Metroplex weathermen. I can prove it:

GIFSoup

This is the offseason, and baseball players are not playing baseball.

(Chance of scattered thanks: Todd)

MLB Trade Rumors reporting (click to embiggen):

Presenting FanGraphs- 2012. Unless you pay us $4.99, here’s what happens:

Player Stat Mixups- A random swapping of numbers on your screen every time you move your mouse. Jeff Francoeur hit -1.3 home runs? Yovani Gallardo’s ERA was 53.6%? Maybe. Maybe not. With FanGraphs-, you’ll never know.

Articles- 11 superficial pieces to help you lose your fantasy league:

-Players who would be keepers if they existed
-BEERf/x and other numbers to help you analyze your favorite team’s concession offerings
-Keeper Conundrum: Nick Punto or Kelly Shoppach?
-Improve your draft strategy by stabbing yourself in the eye with a letter opener
-The difficulty in predicting intentional walks
-Unlabeled graphs that don’t mean anything
-Labeled graphs that mean even less
-Strategies for league formats that don’t exist
-Prospects for high school math teams in suburban Boston
-The 1st Annual NotGraphs Mustache Draft
-Looking for Philadelphia A’s who aren’t dead yet

Very Quick Opinions- Over 1100 one-word judgments about every player who played in the majors last season, mostly in Arabic.

FanGraphs- Complete Internet Takeover- All of your favorite websites, replaced with random posts from the FanGraphs archives, as well as images of Randy Johnson replacing all actors and actresses on any adult websites you happen to accidentally visit.

(Moral of this post: check out Fangraphs+)

In which the current straits of the New York Mets and their discontents are best communicated through the ghoulish works of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes.

As you shall soon see, being a Mets fan in 2012 is not unlike being eaten by a god or ritually slaughtered by a French butcher …

It is like being eaten by a god.

Read the rest of this entry »

In which images of the base-balling Reuschel brothers, Rick and Paul, are paired with befitting movie titles …

It’s not every day — or even once, really — that you see a professional base-and-ball player (in this case, former Giant and Pirate and Philly John Bowker) holding an eel. It’s all a bit mysterious, really.

Luckily, the above image — which gentleman’s gentleman’s gentleman Patrick Newman has found for us at Japanese site Sanspo — is accompanied by a caption.

While the caption is in Japanese, that’s no problem, really: everything is illuminated by Google Translate, as follows.

Matheson grab a giant eel (left) and Bouka = 10 Sun, Miyazaki city to get a giant eel Matheson (Kumiko Chubachi-shooting) (left) and Bouka = 10 Sun, Miyazaki City (Kumiko Chubachi-shooting)

Pretty self-explanatory, really. Bouka = 10 Sun, Kumiko Chubachi shooting: all the normal stuff you’ve come to expect of this world.