Maybe despair gives life to hopes. Maybe three years of just abject, terrifyingly painful existence somehow injects enough power into your flagging dreams that, at least for one shining moment, you can will a thing into being. At least, that’s what I have decided happened Sunday, when Jason Bay hit a grand slam and pushed the ball out with nothing but pure want.

That play, Manny Machado to Mark Reynolds, Monday afternoon in Toronto, was one of the many manifestations of Orioles Magic. I saw it. I felt it. Our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team confirmed it: “Yep, that’s what Orioles Magic looks like,” they reported. Something — someone — kept Reynolds’ toe on the bag.

It’s obvious, especially after Mississippi Matt Smith’s excellent post, I Cannot Use This Website to Explain the Baltimore Orioles, that there’s a higher power at work here. Something greater than all of us. Something we’ll never understand. Jesus, probably. And now that I’ve thought about it, He’s leading us — all of us — to a greater common good, to something that brings all of us together, united in baseball: a potential defeat of the New York Yankees. (Except if it’s the Red Sox who beat them. Then we all lose. Well, except Boston. You see my point.)

It’s not that I’m rooting for the Orioles. I’m too shocked, jealous, and bitter about their random success to root for them. But if the Blue Jays can’t win, I’d rather the Yankees didn’t. That’s just the way I live my life. So the Orioles have become a means to an end.

My point is: That was a fantastic play by Machado and Reynolds. Believe.

GIF credit: Professional GIFmaker @SAJagfire.

In USA today, many of us will slack off as we celebrate the historically important labor of others. It’s a nice detail — considering that this is a site that covers (mostly) Major League Baseball — that the American Labor Day was probably inspired by an annual labour festival in Toronto.

And as we celebrate labor by farting in bed, our laptops searing our thighs, our favorite MLB teams and players will be toiling away for our pleasure. Why not honor the players that have done the most work this season by perusing the following Leaderboards of Labor? There’s no good reason not to — save meat stupor. Meat stupor is the perfect reason to not be able to see straight enough to read these leaderboards.

Those pitchers who have labored most, as measured by Pitches Thrown, Innings Pitched, and Total Batters Faced
This first Leaderboard of Labor (which is sortable) shows the top 20 pitchers in terms of Pitches thrown. It also mostly contains the top 20 pitchers in terms of Total Batters Faced and Innings Pitched. However, pitchers like Homer Bailey and Ricky Romero have faced a lot of batters without cracking the top 20 in terms of IP or Pitches thrown; so, they’re not on this leaderboard.

You can check out the entire leaderboard if you like.

Note: This post was composed on Friday; the numbers have changed since then, and quite possibly for the worse.

I just wanted to take a minute to talk about this. I’ve spent some time on this website, looking at the many numbers. I’m no number-reading expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure that according to this website, the Baltimore Orioles are bad at baseball.

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Here’s an image — following Jason Bay’s first-inning grand slam during last night’s Mets-Marlins game — an image of right-handed pitcher Chris Young next to the aforementioned Bay, a regular-sized person (click to embiggen):