Here’s a cake! A Detroit Tigers cake!

Looks delish, does it not? The Sommelier of Whimsy shall pair it with a delightful-as-a-daisy Sartre quotation from The Age of Reason, that devil-may-care romp through the sun-dappled meadows of caprice …

He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, common sense stoicism – all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.

This has been your Morning Cake and Quote.

Jason Motte is many things. He is a man, beard owner, baseball player, and, according to this tweet, semi-professional etymologist.

Lack of punctuation aside, Mr. Motte brings up an interesting point. WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS?  What makes a milkshake a chocolate milkshake? Mr. Motte feels that the simple addition of chocolate syrup does not fill the requirements. He suggests also using chocolate ice cream, a choice that may contribute to a BMI in the “overweight” range. Nevertheless, he has drawn a line in the sand. That line is tangential to chocolate (and now also sandy) ice cream.

If I may offer a counterargument to Mr. Motte:

All milkshakes are made with vanilla ice cream you fucking dummy. You add chocolate syrup to make it a chocolate milkshake. You add caramel syrup to make it a caramel milkshake. That’s just the way it is. Do you make a butterscotch milkshake with butterscotch ice cream? Do you make a strawberry milkshake with strawberry ice cream? No. You do neither of those. What you are suggesting is not a milkshake. You are suggesting a disgusting cup filled with pulverized ice cream and corresponding flavor syrup. It’s gross, it’s far too sweet, and it’s an assault on America. If you want to drink your diabetes smoothie, go right ahead you dullard. But leave the word milkshake off of it. WHY CALL IT APPLE PIE IF THE WHOLE THING ISN’T MADE OF APPLES? WHY CALL IT CHICKEN SOUP IF THE BOWL ISN’T MADE OF CHICKEN!? Your logic has holes, profligate.

Tune in next week when I take down Cody Ross regarding his lax definition of what constitutes a “burrito.”

It is the offseason. Our main character — for convenience we’ll call him ZG — sits on a regal yet dingy chaise lounge looking out the livingroom window of the house he is renting. The sun shines, through the vertical blinds and especially, it seems, onto ZG. He watches intently as some kids play hoops across the street.

He goes to his bedroom, slowly walking up the winding stairs. In the bedroom the sun slides through horizontal slats but still attaches to ZG. He begins to strip. We see his sullen ass, his athletic legs. He puts on new clothes, clothes that we immediately might identify as his “basketball clothes,” culminating in a jersey, which is thin, old, but bears his surname. Perhaps his jersey from junior high.

We see his feet from above — from his perspective. They are goofily large.

Next we see ZG in the bathroom, he puts on a blue, yellow, and white headband that hales from a different era, They clash with his athletic goggles. He looks into the mirror and says to himself, “Will I play in the NBA?”

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“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.”
––Earl Weaver

“When rain interrupted matters for an hour and a quarter in the third, with the Cardinals ahead, 4-0, the bleacherites set up a chant of ‘Rain! Rain! Rain!’ hoping for a postponement. This didn’t work, so in the fourth and fifth, with the score now 6-1, the Tigers tried their own methods – long pauses for spike-digging and hand-blowing by the batters, managerial conferences, and inexplicable trips to the dugout, all conducted while they glanced upward for signs of the final and reprieving deluge.”
––Roger Angell, The Summer Game

Angell’s passage describes Game 3 of the 1968 World Series, where the precipitation had drastically altered the dominant strategies of both teams. The Cardinals, in a hurry to complete five innings, saw their odds for winning paradoxically increased with every out they gave away, while the Tigers, while in the field, had every reason to run the score up to a million to one and make fools of themselves in the process, as long as they failed to record an out.

1968 wasn’t the only year to see raindrops ruin a playoff game. The Braves led the Cardinals 1-0 in the first game of the 1982 NLCS, and were three outs from an official game, when the umpire called the game. They started over the next day, and the Braves ended up being swept. It wasn’t until 2008 that baseball finally decided to resume postseason games at the point of their postponement. Regular season games, however, are still bound by Rule 3.10 and the five inning rule, even those that have playoff implications.

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Dear NotGraphs Sartorialist,

Thanks,
Runner-Up

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It’s time to revive a fan favorite. That’s right, it’s another installment of Inserting Dick Allen’s name into works of literature. Because if there’s one thing America needs more than Hot Effing Sports Opinions™, it’s Dick Allen.

Today, we cover J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little Dick Allens playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little Dick Allens, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch every Dick Allen if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch Dick Allen. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher of the Dick Allens and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

The author can certainly relate.

Dedicated to my main man, Dayn Perry.

Podcast veterans and those of right-wise inclinations will know of my affections for Nathan Hale, who invented the gun and the traveler’s check. So it is with a swollen and veiny pride that I present to you, courtesy of brawny frontiersman War2D2, the 1977 Nathan Hale High School Yearbook …

You will observe that that is Nathan Hale’s communist-punching soupbone, be-ringed in Artcarved, seizing the rainbow so as to use it to bludgeon those who wish us harm. The roiling thunderheads and troubled spires do not lie: water-colored trouble is about us.

But Nathan Hale’s soupbone will beat the fucking shit out of it.

Dayn Perry and I are recording his stupid weekly podcast appearance at 11am ET tomorrow (Wednesday).

Feel free to submit questions or comments or a brief description of your nightmares in which Perry has appeared in the comment section below — or don’t, as, after all, we’re all going to die someday.

Hey, man. I just wanted to go over these product updates one more time before we send the brochure proofs to the printers. Oh, hey, is that a baseball on your desk? Wow, cool. Oh, it’s signed, too? Who signed this? I can’t make out the name. Nolan Ryan? He was a pitcher, right? Thought so. Did he play for the Yankees? Oh. I don’t know very much about baseball.

So anyway, the biggest changes were on the second and third paragraphs. Just make sure that the language is right…

Are you sure Nolan Ryan didn’t play for the Yankees? Really? Who did he play for? Who are the Astros? Oh.

Do you think “revolutionary” is too strong a word? I don’t want this thing to sound too flowery, you know?

My cousin lives in New Jersey. He’s a big Yankees fan. He talks about them all the time. I think he has that thing … you know where they like give you all the tickets? Season tickets. Right. He has season tickets to the Yankees.  Pays a crap ton of money for them, too. Season tickets and alimony, that’s where all his money goes.

Traci was worried that that third line there — yeah there — Traci said that it was too long. She said to keep every sentence to ten words at the most. I think it was ten. Maybe it was twelve. There should be an email about it. Do you want me to forward it to you?

So do you go to a lot of games? Yeah? Who’s your favorite player? Just pick one. Hmm, never heard of him. Does Barry Bonds still play?

I’m not really a sports guy. I played lacrosse in high school, but that’s about it. I watch the Super Bowl, I guess. The Giants won last year. Who won the World Series? Really? Wait, there’s two teams in … oh, San Francisco. Isn’t that where Barry Bonds plays? Right, played. Thought so.

All right, so are we cool on this brochure? Great. I’ll finish the proofs and have them ready for the meeting at 2:00. You’re coming to that right? There was an email about it. Do you want me to forward it to you?

It’s old news that the Tampa Bay Rays extended Evan Longoria’s contract through, possibly, the 2023 season. But even the most insightful articles, like the one written by FanGraphs leader Dave Cameron, are ignoring the fact that contractually is not the only way that Longoria is being extended . . . at least not in the following Photoshopped images, anyway.

Extend those obliques, Evan…

Nice try, James Shields . . . NOT!