After the game seven win, Angel Pagan did a celebratory 360 flip at the local skatepark. It was fairly sick. You might have called it underrated.

By means of his 2002 novel, author Chris Bachelder settled for once and all the very important debate over who, “given a relatively level playing field — i.e., water deep enough so that a shark could maneuver proficiently but shallow enough so that a bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity — who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark.”

Very much in the spirit of that question, the author asked himself another, similar one — just to himself, like — this morning: “given a relatively playing field, etc., who would win in a fight between a tiger and giant (i.e. the mascots of the teams in the forthcoming World Series)?”

One begins, of course, by wondering, “Carson, do you really use parentheses in your own thoughts?” To which I respond: “Sometimes almost exclusively.”

After that, one continues wondering: “Indeed, who actually would win in a fight between a tiger and giant?”

To answer this second question (i.e. regarding a tiger versus a giant and who would win in a Mortal Kombat-type scnenario) the author was required to settle what, precisely, one might mean by giant — and was required, therefore, to conduct a Google image search.

Shocking, awful, on the computer: the aforementioned Google search produced results that were all three. And more. Like harrowing, for one. And shocking again, for another — because it’s not like the author is a human fucking thesaurus for chrissakes.

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This is a post that I should have made over a week ago, but I didn’t really think of it until Marco Scutaro emerged as the Gipper of the San Francisco Giants.

Scooter-Gipper

And Scutaro is certainly worthy of the Gipper role, just as much as he’s worthy of the NLCS MVP. He’s 36, has logged nearly 5000 regular season plate appearances for six different teams, and has never made it to the World Series. He’s been a part of just one other post-season as part of the 2006 Oakland Athletics team that was swept in the ALCS by the Detroit Tigers. This postseason, he’s batting .500, and has come up with several big hits. We don’t need to chronicle the illegal slide by Matt Holliday that Scutaro bore the brunt of in Game 2 of this past NLCS.

The thing is, the Cardinals had an equally (if not more) worthy Gipper in Carlos Beltran. Beltran is 35 years old, has logged 8349 regular season plate appearances with five different teams, and has never appeared in a World Series. (Fun fact: he’s been in the NLCS twice, in 2004 with the Astros and in 2006 with the Mets, both of whom were defeated by the Cardinals.)

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The youth are a continual problem in society. They listen to music created by autonomous computers and Canadians, eat cereal comprised entirely of marshmallow, and are occasionally sulky about the incomprehensibly massive national debt they will inherit without representation. They giggle uncontrollably upon hearing the word “fart” and play card games with rules based on statistics far more complicated than anything found on this fair site. Surely, any attempt to understand such creatures is tantamount to madness.

Woe betide, then, the baseball card company whose profits are linked directly to these whimsical beasts. At least, they were until the early 1990s, when the price of a pack of baseball cards tripled in three years and children were crowded out of the market by “investors” and post-philatelists. Sensing a demographic issue, the marketing gurus at Topps and other baseball card companies found a solution: “Kids Cards”, which would appeal to the young soul of the consumer and bring them back into the collectible fold.

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Man, the Blue Jays could really use a guy like Marco Scutaro. *douses self in gasoline*

— Steve Dangle Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) October 23, 2012

Marco Scutaro… why don’t the Red Sox get guys like that? Doh!

— Andy Moore (@moorezilla) October 23, 2012

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Matt Cain is starting tonight for the Giants in their elimination game against the Cardinals in San Francisco. He is also having his name inserted into works of literature — or, at least, extant texts — by the author.

Book of Genesis

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Matt Cain.

Matt Cain said to his brother, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Matt Cain attacked his brother and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Matt Cain, “Where is your brother?”

“I don’t know,” Matt Cain replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Matt Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch.

Adam made love to his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Matt Cain’s brother, since Matt Cain killed him.”

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As the off-season approaches, we’re sure to resume casting for our nascent baseballing epic, MLB: The Movie. For now, a couple of images of New York Tankees have me pondering who should direct this myth.

If you like the composition of this recent image of Raul Ibañez, you might like Paul Thomas Anderson to direct.

Raul said that’s that, mattress man.

Consider these images from Anderson’s 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love:

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That’s Ulysses on the left, Thersites on the right.

When FanGraphs CEO and maker of love David Appelman announced the launch of NotGraphs almost two years ago now, he noted that it would give us, the authorship, “a place to put things that would otherwise not have a place on FanGraphs, that we find interesting and we think you would also find interesting.”

Frequently and violently are the ways in which that original statement of purpose has been abused — and that’s accounting for the work of Dayn Perry alone. Nothing, not even all of the chickens at your local Whole Foods, have been given freer range by the relevant handlers than the contributors to the present weblog.

Still, that’s not to suggest that Appelman’s original and abiding directive is without merit. Indeed, like everything else he touches, it ought to be dipped in gold or stuffed or both. And, in most ways, the work that’s appeared here has reflected the concerns of the modern baseball nerd, purveyor of reason and wearer of spectacles.

It’s apropos both that original statement of purpose, then — and also a recent sojourn by the author into the Great Books section of his home library — that I’d like to introduce (or, as the case might be, to re-introduce) the reader to the only nerd in the Iliad: Thersites.

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Alex Rodriguez is probably the most despised player in baseball history. Rodriguez’ contract is considered among the worst in baseball. Alex Rodriguez has vehemently denied reports he was flirting with two Australian models after getting benched during Game 1 of the ALCS. “So is it fair to accuse him of everything but the Kennedy assassination? No, it’s not fair, but we’ll see what happens from this point on.” The numbers support a player who has expanded the strike zone, which I believe suggests a player “cheating” to catch up to pitches, and is losing plate discipline in the process. And if he cannot play, he’s going to be as easy to live with as a nest of bedbugs for the next five years. He has been degraded, dominated, made to feel insignificant. All that remains is to strip the few final threads from his pride. Brian Cashman refuted a report that the team has spoken with the Miami Marlins about a potential trade of the polarizing third baseman. Alex Rodriguez said that if it is up to him — and it is — he will be a Yankee in 2013, and beyond. Alex Rodriguez’s friend Kobe Bryant has some advice for the struggling slugger. “I just say to him, ‘You’re Alex Rodriguez,’”

[Photo: Giant Albatross]