In which the author scours the online auctions for baseball-themed collectibles that should never, ever, under any circumstances be allowed into your home.

Anna Lee Baseball Mouse 7 inches high

Read the rest of this entry »

With the advent of the offseason, FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron has resumed his role on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential, hosted by the vigorously coiffed Brian Kenny.

One thing Cameron hasn’t resumed is blinking — although mostly because he did little of that sort of thing in the first place.

Below, I’ve recorded Dave Cameron’s blinking stats from the above-embedded discussion of the American League Cy Young award. Beg and End mark the beginning and end marks of Cameron’s time on camera. Time is total time, in minutes and seconds, on camera. Blinks represents the number of blinks during the relevant interval. (Note: there are errors, likely. Scorer’s bias, indeed!)

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not over yet.

Sure, Sandy’s waves aren’t beating down the New Jersey shoreline currently, and the flood waters have mostly receded, but super-storm Sandy’s impact is still being felt. My friends in Jersey City — who live a block from an evacuation zone — just got power back. Today. Cable, and normalcy, to follow. There’s still a shortage of hospitals in lower Manhattan. Long Island is not fully powered. Hoboken still has muck to clear. Families still mourn their lost ones and their losses.

Read the rest of this entry »

The stamp trade.

Nick Cafardo has the scoop:

This is … going to be the story of … fingers … Ben Cherington and his staff … needed some …

“I know they’re trying to sell [fingers],” said a National League general manager, “but it’s just not … that simple.”

The Red Sox … want … the lavish ways … right now.

But when you are the Boston Red Sox and you have $80 million-$90 million to spend, it’s tough … to be disciplined.

Let’s say the Red Sox … fill their needs — all of them.

Then comes the integration part.

…

One of the reasons for hiring John Farrell is that he has some … rough edges. …

… That was a disaster in every way. But will the Red Sox again … go with … karma …?

With every move they make, we’re sure, the Sox are … something …

It’s interesting to devour … Nate Silver … Silver, a former Baseball Prospectus contributor, … used a lot of data and metrics to win the election …

Yet … Giants … are … the godfather of … stamp … trades …

Here’s a cake! A New York Mets cake!

Survey it! Lovely, won’t you agree? Delightful, even! Despite the best efforts of Ikea, craftsmanship persists! This cake would go lovely with a port, or perhaps a scoop of refreshing ice cream!

It would also necessarily go with this quote from Aleksandar Hemon …

There’s a psychological mechanism, I’ve come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment of your existence may be only a breath away from being the last. We would be continuously devastated by the magnitude of that inescapable fact. Still, as we mature into our mortality, we begin to gingerly dip our horror-tingling toes into the void, hoping that our mind will somehow ease itself into dying, that God or some other soothing opiate will remain available as we venture into the darkness of non-being.

This has been Your Evening Cake and Quote.

Young fans of base and ball are likely aware that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel is known colloquially as “Uncle History,” but they may not be aware of the endeavors that earned him that hallowed honorific. The reason is quite simple: Charlie Manuel wrote the fucking Constitution.

While the likes of Bobo Cistulli see that august document as nothing more than a user’s guide to the dole, land-owning Deist Charlie Manuel, its author and smith, saw it as nothing less than the Sperm of the Republic, which over a sprawl of nights and days in the Philadelphia State House in 1787, he sent headlong out of his probing phallus toward the Egg of Liberty.

Uncle History, Huge Daddy of Swaths — Thy name is Charlie Manuel.

A recent pilgrimage to the Smithsonian brought to waking life the most sacred creation stories of this, our sovereignty …

Thank you, Uncle History Charlie Manuel. Thank you for forging America.

Because I not only attended important Northeastern schools, but also because I want other people to know that I attended important Northeastern schools, a thing I like to do is be seen in public reading The Atlantic in either its print or electronic form.

For readers who possess similarly vain aspirations — and who also give one or more damns about baseball — the magazine’s profile of the Arizona Fall League is worth some attention, in which it (i.e. that League) is referred to by author Chris Arnold as “‘graduate school’ for top prospects.”

To wit:

Here in the Arizona Fall League, far from the flashbulbs of the World Series, the future stars of Major League Baseball are trying to make the final leap to the big show. For 20 years, the AFL has served as an off-season “graduate school” for top prospects. In some ways, it feels like the culmination of an antiquated system: While football and basketball have relatively straightforward paths to the pros—paths that lead through the NCAA—baseball stands apart with its scaffolded leagues of minor-league farm teams. But spend some time with the players and scouts at the AFL, and you start to get a sense for how that grueling, long-odds system is uniquely suited for this grueling, long-odds sport.

The grad-school metaphor is pleasant enough that I feel little compulsion to unpack it. I will say this, however: the AFL participants probably read way less Derrida than actual grad-school students.

Today we mark the passing of time, as well as the latest edition of the Ironic Jersey Omnibus, where we examine the jersey as the highest and most subtle form of personal expression. For our latest installment we head west along I-10 on a musty Greyhound bus to the sunny climes of Los Angeles.

I admit: I’ve dragged my feet in moving on to the erstwhile Brooklyn Superbas. This is, I assure you, an entirely personal failing. After all, baseball writers, much like substitute teachers, survive by wielding an essential and almost entirely fictional sense of authority. It’s in this spirit, then, that I am forced to confess that I don’t really know the Los Angeles Dodgers, in the biblical or even the cramming-for-midterm sense.

I know of them, of course. I know that they play in the National League, where the pitching is easy, the fish are jumping, and the cotton, if cotton in this case represents the likelihood of an announcer overpraising the double switch, is high. And I’m not the only writer to lose their way amongst the palms; Roger Angell once complained that the fans needed Vin Scully’s voice broadcast throughout the stadium to tell the fans what they were looking at. It’s a place where the fans are said to arrive in the sixth inning and leave in the fourth. It’s all too easy, I think, to confuse the languid weather of L.A. with the temperament of its paying audience.

You may or may not know how we do things: usually I extract some half-forgotten names of yore, mine the pathos of the franchise’s most recent struggles, make a few pithy comments, hit publish, and go off to bathe in handwashed one-dollar bills. This is still possible! Between 1972 and 2012, with the exception of 2005 and 2006 (when Frank McCourt, in an attempt at nostalgia, stripped the names from the backs of his players), Dodgers lore is filled with the busted prospects and transient former heroes we’ve all come to love.

Read the rest of this entry »

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. – The Toronto Blue Jays have found their next manager, and it’s a man few expected: Philip Seymour Hoffman, who’ll make the unprecedented jump from Hollywood to the big leagues.

NotGraphs’ Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, making the most of their time at the hotel bar at the general manager meetings in Indian Wells, California, is working on confirming that it’s a three-year deal Hoffman has signed with Toronto. Financial details haven’t been disclosed.

The surprising news comes only days after former Oakland A’s manager Art Howe, who Hoffman portrayed in the Oscar-nominated “Moneyball,” expressed an interest in managing the Blue Jays.

Toronto general manager Alex Anthopoulos, normally tight-lipped on matters of, well, anything and everything, was noticeably pleased about his most recent acquisition.

“Philip really impressed us in his interview. His scope of knowledge really blew us away. He has a vision. And that’s not to say we weren’t impressed by Art Howe, who we of course interviewed, as well. It’s just that Philip was more Art Howe than Art Howe was Art Howe. It was a remarkable performance on Philip’s behalf, and we’re really excited to see it continue over the next three years.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigative Team has acquired, through means readily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, this photo tweeted by former baseballer Dmitri Young, featuring he and also-former baseballer Maglio Ordonez attending the World’s Series. In the picture (which is, of course, embiggenable) the two former Detroit players are bookending what appears to be an unidentified vagrant they discovered on the way to Comerica Park. It is easy to tell this man is a transient for the following reasons;

1.That beard and haggard face are classic identifiers of a man of the rails.

2.He is wearing upwards of three layers on his torso, whilst also being indoors. This is very typical for street people, as they have no closets for storing their unneeded layers.

3.Who wears a Diamondbacks hat to a game between the Giants and Tigers? A vagabond who found said hat in an alley, that’s who.

Credit should be given to Young and Ordonez. They were lucky enough to score some sweet luxury box tickets, and, instead of inviting another former Tiger or a perhaps lady of the night, they gifted the game of baseball to a scary old man in a Canadian tuxedo.

My sources are unable to provide details as to how the evening ended, due mostly to the fact that my sources are either dead or camels. However, you are permitted to speculate as I pound the pavement, looking for the factual ending to this totally factual situation I have presented to you, fair NotGraphs readers.