As the calendar turns from April to May, perhaps the biggest surprise in all of baseball has been the batting performance of Colorado Rockie Tyler Chatwood. With an on-base percentage of 1.000, Chatwood is tied for the major league lead– and, a tribute to Chatwood’s extraordinary batting eye, neither of the players he’s tied with has walked even once. This flawless performance by Chatwood was hinted at last season, when he went 2-for-3 with two sacrifice hits in five plate appearances. And, indeed, his 1.333 OPS was among the best in baseball last year. But, without even a single walk to his credit, no one could have been prepared for his amazing performance thus far in 2012. Each of the one times he has been to the plate, he has emerged with a walk. For that, Tyler Chatwood wins the NotGraphs Player Of The Month Award for the month of April. Also, he has one save, which I guess is cool too.

Maker of love, babies and fine cabinetry Robert J. Baumann passes along what follows, which is, as the title of this breathless dispatch suggests, Bartolo Colón surrounded by a colon …

Sure, we could have spared you the distressing visuals and instead surrounded Mr. Colón by the punctuational colon (pictured here: :, with this text added in advance of the closing parenthesis so as not to inflict an emoticon upon the unsuspecting reader), but we at NotGraphs have never been one to shy away from the visceral and corporeal. So what you see is Bartolo Colón surrounded by a human colon, the disemboweled colon of David Appelman, it turns out.

Did Bartolo Colón somehow vanquish David Appelman? Of course not. David Appelman, in the service of human amusements, ripped out his own colon, placed it around Bartolo Colón’s neck in a perfect and ceremonial double-windsor knot, polished off a vast belt of scotch and a plate of gorilla legs, and then punched his way out of the county jail.

Mike Krukow: Seabiscuit likes beer, I didn’t know that.
Duane Kuiper: The guys in the truck say it’s obvious: Cain is a horse.
Mike Krukow: That was… ah.
Duane Kuiper: [laughs]
Mike Krukow: Ahh. I love here.
Duane Kuiper: What are you talking about, that could be one of our kids out there.

This was presented in complete reverence for the broadcasting team, for Matt Cain, and for the San Francisco Giants.

I know what you’re thinking, and, yes, you’re right: such a ridiculous catch could only be made against the Kansas City Royals. According to the box score, Billy Butler “lined out to right field,” and, sure, that’s one way of putting it.

You say Brennan Boesch lost the baseball in the lights. I say he was practicing his no-look backhand. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

H/T: This magical Tumblr account.

Last night, Ryan Braun hit three home runs at Petco Park, the second (and probably most impressive) of which reached the top floor of the Western Metal Supply Co. building in left field (video).

The sequence led Bob Uecker, the famous and wise radio voice of the Milwaukee Brewers, to provide — for the benefit of both the home audience and broadcast partner Joe Block — a totally true and in-no-way-fictional history of the Western Metal Supply Co. itself.

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Briefest of giddy dotings for May Day:

Darnell McDonald Does His Best Manny Ramirez

If you’re like me — or, if you’re like Darnell McDonald — you can’t wait for Manny to get to be Manny on a baseball field again. Darnell pays great tribute to Manny, perhaps hoping to harness some of that power.

Manny at left, Darnell at right. Psyche!

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I am less runner gaining purchase on inches,
Scant toe-breadths of this game’s soil, the color of punished citrus,
Than I am boat, loosed from moorings and set adrift,
Pushed away from the dock by a careless hand.
A hand that grasps nothing, least of all you.

On my dumbed feet of mud and oatmeal,
I am left to your vacant mercies.

Your leg doesn’t lift from its considered hinge and hang in half-freeze.
Rather, it slides askance and your arm lurches and rises
Like a grouse flushed from brush.
It is quick despite its heavy power to decide heavy things.
And here I am, lost in tangled heaven.

So stop being a dick and pitch the ball.

1. Harper wears #34 in tribute to Rockies pitching coach Bob Apodaca.

2. Harper’s older brother, Bryan, is half-mermaid.

3. Harper has been featured on the covers of Sports Illustrated, Baseball Digest, The New Yorker, and Every Day With Rachael Ray.

4. In 2008, Harper was Batting Average Leader for the State of Israel.

5. Although Harper played catcher in high school, the Nationals drafted him as a pitching coach.

6. Harper is in the middle of a 5-year contract worth more than the gross national product of over 80 countries around the world.

This is slow-motion footage (courtesy Fox Sports Prime Ticket) from this past Sunday of Kenley Jansen’s ninth inning cut fastball to Xavier Nady, a pitch on which he (i.e. Jansen) struck him (i.e. Nady) out.

Regarding the feeling that said footage inspires in your bosom, to what degree does it (i.e. that feeling) possess the following four characteristics of a mystical state, as defined by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (text from Wikipedia)?

• Transient — the experience is temporary; the individual soon returns to a “normal” frame of mind. It is outside our normal perception of space and time.

• Ineffable — the experience cannot be adequately put into words.

• Noetic — the individual feels that he or she has learned something valuable from the experience. Gives us knowledge that is normally hidden from human understanding.

• Passive — the experience happens to the individual, largely without conscious control. Although there are activities, such as meditation, that can make religious experience more likely, it is not something that can be turned on and off at will.

I like writing about baseball because I like thinking about baseball. I like thinking about baseball because it’s such a complicated game. Often, the thoughts I have are critical, but underneath it all I have a great respect for those that play the game. I was a terrible baseball player, and I’m surprised John Flaherty, my coach, could even look me in the eye and keep a straight face when we talked about my development as a fourth outfielder and sixth infielder for the JV squad. These guys can do things with balls I can’t even imagine.

But I can think a little bit. So don’t ask me not to think.