I would like to present to you all some highlights from the Charm School Guide of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Honestly and without snark, I have always found the bulk of it to be pretty great advice for life in general, regardless of gender or propensity for baseball. I have edited out some less applicable bits, and emphasis is added. Good luck out there, All-Americans!

“If you plan your days to establish an easy and simple routine, so that your meals are regular and well balanced, so that you have time for outside play and relaxation, so that you sleep at least eight hours each night, and so that your normal functions are regular, you will be on the alert, do your job well, and gain the greatest joy from living. Always remember that your mind and your body are interrelated, and you cannot neglect one without causing the other to suffer. A healthy mind and a healthy body are the true attributes of the All-American girl.”
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Minneapolis — Considerable speculation has flooded the internet blogs regarding Albert Pujols’s motives for throwing his glove at Angels teammate Erick Aybar following the club’s 6-2 victory over the Twins on Wednesday (box).

In point of fact, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has learned that the gesture was in response to an ongoing argument the pair have regarding the utility of deconstructionist thought.

“Pujols, he doesn’t recognize the internal contradictions of philosophical discourse,” Aybar said when reached for comment. “The moment we attempt to utilize rhetoric in the service of describing metaphysical reality, we have obscured reality.

Said Pujols in response: “I regard Aybar’s claims only as an attempt to deliberately obscure discourse and nothing else. He argues against language until it no longer exists.

“So how I do refute him? I throw my glove. ‘Deconstruct that,’ I said. Q.E.D.”

A tweet from Brett Lawrie:

So he’s working out with some degree of zeal. He’s doing deep knee bends, leg lifts and trunk twists and then finishing up with a slimming routine, especially after last night’s London Broil, green-bean casserole and gelatin salad. I get it. Right?

Although, a part of me — the part of me that thinks he hears something in the basement even when he’s not at home — believes I’m missing something. From this pathetic remove of years and brown defeats, I wonder whether he’s invoking a rock and or roll Sousa march or perhaps a popular talkie or a dance that forces The Bandstand to aim their cameras above the girdle.

Maybe he really likes to work out, or maybe he’s conjuring up a secret something known only to Young American Thunderclaps and, hence, not to wasted me. I was really hoping he was talking about exercising — good-boy’s push-ups followed by a half-hour on the vibrating belt machine followed by a restorative crap. But I’m sure he’s not.

Brett Lawrie probably talks quite a bit about things I don’t even know exist, being as I am much, much closer to death than Brett Lawrie is.

Below, in cartographic form, the tortuous tale of that Peerless Peripatetic, that Inimitable Itinerant, Octavio Eduardo Dotel (whose membership in thirteen major league ballclubs has set a new standard).

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Are you wondering what Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Sergio Santos is doing whilst on the Disabled List?

Well, the NotGraphs infamous and dowdy Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has been hot on the trail of the erstwhile closer, and has discovered that Santos is the namesake of the Andrew WK-owned Santos Party House club/venue/lounge in lower Manhattan. During his recovery, Santos been hobnobbing with AWK at various of the club’s events:

“We are your mother-father, we are your final friend…”

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Dear NotGraphs,

Thanks,
A Danny Valencia Owner

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On May 20th, the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team is going to invite a former STATS Inc. intern, a Stanford economics graduate, a former All-American athlete, a College World Series record holder, a diabetic, a man with a Wikipedia page containing over 6,300 words in it, a man who eats bullets washed in the tears of his enemies and a few of his friends, and an active major league baseball player in the booth.

Figured it out yet?

THEY’RE ALL ONE PERSON.

That’s right, Mr. Super Sam Fuld will be joining the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team in the booth to talk about sabermetrics. What?! That’s right. Those fancy acronumbers and oozer ratings.
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LaHair with his giant Winner’s Cup, courtesy NotGraphs.

The attentive reader will know that my colleague and champion of the vulgar Dayn Perry has made a practice in these pages — via his Nickname Seeks Player series — has made a practice of (in his words) “assign[ing] cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames.”

While Perry’s point regarding the assignment of nicknames is unassailable, it’s also the case that sometimes nicknames are not assigned at all, but are instead revealed — as if out of the ether.

Such was the case, this afternoon, when out of my friend Dan Woytek’s mind (itself not unlike the ether) and onto his computer email screen came a suitable nickname for major-league baseball’s current leader in BABIP and owner, now, of a career BABIP somewhere north of .385, Bryan LaHair.

This is the nickname in question: In Play, No Outs.

This is your reaction to it: surprise and/or amazement, probably.

This is what you might proceed to do now: tell at least one person.

This is what you’ll probably also do: the other things you had planned.

Follow Dan Woytek on Twitter at @dwoytek, in case he says one more amusing thing before he dies or you die.

1. I actually had to google Carly Rae Jepsen, the artist behind this gummy candy of a song — I had heard the name but had no idea how to identify her otherwise. I found out a bunch of stuff, like: she’s 26 (about ten years older than I figured when I heard the song). She placed third in the fifth season of Canadian Idol, which is, um, Canada’s version of American Idol (this is in keeping with a long tradition of non-winning finalists going on to more success after Idol than the winners, except for Kelly Clarkson, who is obviously the best thing that has/will ever come of that atrocious television show). She was the first musician signed to Justin Bieber’s Schoolboy Records, supposedly after the kid heard her sing and demanded her for his kingdom. She actually is quite pretty, in that kind of approachable (read: brunette) way that other girls aren’t spiteful about. She grew up on James Taylor, which I did as well, so I sympathize with that, but now “spins” La Roux and Kimbra, and I don’t know what those things are.

2. As for Harvard’s baseball team, I learned that they were ranked 233rd among Div I NCAA teams this past season, going 12-30 during the season with a team batting average of .285, an OBP of .350, and a slugging percentage of .368. You know what, though? These guys aren’t getting paid. Baseball isn’t their job and they’re probably pretty good at doing what all college athletes are theoretically at school for anyway (learnin’ and shit). I’m happy for them that despite a pretty dismal season, they decided to choreograph this dance routine to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

3. But more than that, I’m happy for all of us that we get to watch it. It is truly a delight to behold, a present in YouTube form, bound to inspire Actual Smiling — unless your face is paralyzed, in which case, I’m sorry, and I hope you’re smiling on the inside! This is great, really. Thank you, handsome college dudes.

Tuesday night, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton became just the 16th player in major-league history to hit four home runs in a single game (box).

Here are notable reviews of those home runs by some of America’s most celebrated critics (with links to video of each individual home run).

No. 1
“Josh Hamilton’s first home run is taut, terse, brisk and immediately engaging.” – Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

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