I have been in the same head-to-head, sixteen-team fantasy league for eleven years now. Over that span keepers have come and gone, rules have changed, franchises have arrived and folded. My original four keepers were Ray Durham, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Barry Bonds. My first season, I drafted both Richard Hidalgo and Daryle Ward. My best draft pick that year was Odalis Perez in the 17th round.

These are interesting things, right? They are not interesting. As soon as you read the word “fantasy” in the title, your brain had already sent orders to your eyes to glaze. It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves to talk about their fantasy team and everyone hates to listen to people talk about their fantasy team. It’s one of life’s bitterest ironies, ranking just below Malthus’ theory that increased food production leads to starvation.

I once had a friend in college with whom I would discuss baseball. He was in a deep dynasty league, where teams were made and destroyed in AA. He described his latest trades in earnest, and I enjoyed listening to his superior expertise. The moment I would mention my own team, however, his smile would sag at the corners, the kindness leaving his eyes. He would make that face, and then quickly, he’d excuse himself from the conversation. I caught on fairly quickly, but it still struck me as unfair. We were talking about baseball: something that Billy Crystal had once promised would form an instant bond between all males! Something was wrong.

Fantasy sports are the culmination of what the existentialists first warned us of: a future rich in comfort, where everyone is utterly disconnected from each other. Our own happiness has become meaningless to those around us. As we craft our little life stories through the careful, calculated observation of baseball players, they’re stories that no one else particularly wants to read. We match our wits against the elements, an increasingly faceless online presence. We play the stock market. It’s rarely about the money; it’s rarely even about the bragging rights. I’d be surprised if the majority of players remember who won their league last season. Instead, it’s about the ability to predict the outside world, a world that no longer has anything to do with us. We’re made to feel ashamed for our pride, to lock it away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a completely authentic and totally unadulterated message from avant-garde sportsman Max Scherzer’s Twitter account this morning (click to embiggen):

Yesterday I posted Part 1 of this Q&A with Andy Johnson, a Bradley University reliever who is recovering from Tommy John surgery. This is part 2. Out of 2. Or 6. No, I’m kidding. Just 2.

Have you been able to reach out to any others who’ve had the surgery and compared your experiences? More generally, are there ways for college players to reach out to major leaguers who’ve shared their experiences? Ballplayers, especially in the past couple of years with the rise of Twitter, seem far more accessible than they used to be — but I’m not sure that actually means anything substantive for the ability to reach out and find someone willing to talk.

The cool thing about the surgery is that it’s kind of a brotherhood. If you have the zipper on the inside of your elbow, there’s a talking point right there. I had a friend at Rutgers, Nathaniel Roe, who had TJS just a couple weeks before me and we texted each other a lot wondering where the other was at and how each other was feeling.

During the summer, I interned with the Peoria Chiefs and they had a Cubs pitcher rehabbing with them, Justin Berg, and I was able to chat with him a few times during the season. He’s a real positive guy and even after a rough outing, he knew he was getting better and that helped me keep my attitude up.

Another close friend and coach of mine is Terry Steinbach. He had played with guys who had Tommy John and he told me that it takes time. It might not all be back after a year but give it 18 months and that’s when I’ll see the zip on the ball and feel normal again.

Twitter has actually got me in contact with Brian Duensing. While he was at Nebraska he went through a similar process and I’ve exchanged a few tweets with him. With only 140 characters it’s hard to get a lot out of him but when I asked him questions, it seemed like he went through a lot of the same stuff.

How have you balanced the surgery and rehab with life as a college student more generally? Do you feel more like a student, or a professional ballplayer– how much of a typical week is spent on baseball-related activities, and has that changed with the surgery, and since you haven’t been pitching, have you been able to have a life closer to that of a typical college student, or is there still a lot of rehab and baseball-related activity?

Being a student-athlete is tough. Going to class everyday with homework and tests can be tough enough but throw in practice, games, workouts and rehab and it can get to be a lot.

In a typical week I probably spend 25 hours or so on baseball activities during the season. We have practice for a few hours and weight lifting two or three times a week for about an hour each. Then my rehab takes about four hours a week with all that I do.

In the athletic training room, I work on forearms, rotator cuff, use the hot tub to get loose and the cold tub to rejuvenate.

With surgery came more time dedicated to baseball but even without injury we’re all able to enjoy the life of a college kid. On weekends, we can go out and have fun with friends and blow off some steam. As much as it seems like a chore sometimes, I couldn’t imagine not being a student-athlete…it’d be too boring.

One last thought:

The surgery process has really changed my mindset on life after baseball. I used to think I’d play pro ball and make enough money to retire and never look back. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Such a small percentage of players are ever able to do that.

I read the book Moneyball during my freshman year and it opened my eyes to the other side of baseball, which I fell in love with. Ever since, I have tried to get my hands on any book or article dealing with the business side of baseball or how to improve the game. I loved The Extra 2% and Baseball Prospectus’s Baseball Between the Numbers and Extra Innings and I read FanGraphs everyday trying to learn something new.

My goal after I am done playing is to get into the baseball operations department for a Major League team. I think that side can be just as fun as playing and it keeps me in the game longer.

For anybody who has had Tommy John or has it in the future, remember it is a great time to learn about the game. It’s when you think you know it all and then it comes crashing down that you are always learning.

Young Ichiro wonders what all the commotion is about.

Young Ichiro, if forced to put a name on his look — and he wouldn’t do it unless you forced him — might call it the “Doctor of Love.”

Read the rest of this entry »

One night in 1977, Dennis Martinez was confronted by a decision: fight or go make love somewhere …

When faced with an onrushing and plainly nettled George Scott, a gentleman scampers. “A hasty retreat is what he beat,” Vin Scully might have said if he’d been calling the game. But probably not.

Martinez, it should be noted, lived to feel the breeze on his loins for another many days. Scott, it should be noted, is to this day still being restrained by Martinez’s long-retired teammates among the ruins of Memorial Stadium.

Readers — no fewer than one of them — not long ago sounded the call, clarion in nature and execution, for more classic brawls. So it is with the sense of agency that comes from satisfying a customer that I introduce the new NotGraphs category: “Classic Fu*king Brawls.”

Voltaire: no stranger to the knocking of public boots.

Here are three literary genres, and the parts of each most vital to their success:

A Poem
The first line, probably.

A Novel
The first line, probably.

A Daily News Story About a Couple Using a Yankee Stadium Bathroom Stall to the End of a Spirited and Innings-Long Spell of Urgent Lovemaking
Every word, one realizes almost immediately.

That one time, it was the balmy night of the eighteenth of June. Mike Trout stepped in against Matt Cain, in the bottom of the fourth inning, with one out and runners on second and third. The Angels were down by a run. There were many right things Mike Trout could have done; he had done many of them in the past, and he would go on to do many of them in the future. But on this night, at this moment, Mike Trout did the wrong thing. He dribbled a grounder back to the pitcher, and the lead runner was forced out at home. At that moment, Mike Trout made his team approximately thirteen percent less likely to win.

He also singled that night, and walked, and stole three bases, and scored a run. By the end of the night, balance had been restored: his team was better off with Trout than without Trout. But the damage was done. A fleeting indiscretion, perhaps. And yet its record would be etched in stone forever.

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team — ever purveyors of obscure, tenuous, and breaking news — has discovered that twenty-one-year-old phenom Mike Trout is considering leaving his team (whose playoff chances now stand at just 22.8%) in favor of pursuing a career in comedic performance art. The Investigation Team discovered the below flier, which was tacked to the community bulletin board of an independent bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the weekend.

“…one the American masters of the art of talking onstage.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, I stumbled across (and posted about) the Pitcher’s Duel blog, written by two college students / baseball fans, one a college pitcher at Bradley University named Andy Johnson who recently had Tommy John surgery. I thought the perspective of an aspiring professional ballplayer trying to come back from major injury was an interesting one (and one I’m not sure we get to read about very often), so I asked Andy if he’d be willing to do a Q&A for the site.

It’s long, so I’ve split it up into two parts. This is part one. (Part two tomorrow.) Huge thanks to Andy for taking the time to answer my long-winded, multi-part questions.

Before the injury that led to the surgery, had you experienced arm pain before? What does the typical soreness following a start feel like, and how did this pain compare? Did you know immediately that there might be something seriously wrong, or was it only because the pain kept coming back that you had a doctor take a look?

Before the injury, I really never had elbow pain before. It started in the fall of 2010 following my freshman year but I didn’t think it was anything to worry about. The pain started in my forearm and as the year went on, it crept into my elbow.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to impress the ol’ teammates. Just ask Tim Lincecum:

After Saturday’s game, Lincecum released this statement via his publicist:

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

Which is to say, sometimes you throw a complete game shutout to make some money, sometimes you throw a bunch of sunflower seeds at yo’ mouf to impress, I dunno, is that Ryan Vogelsong?

Hat tip to A. King. No, that’s too obvious. Alexander K.