In pathetic fulfillment of Patrick Dubuque’s NotGraphs Villanelle Challenge™…

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The Canadian Press, Chris Young / AP

R.A. & A.A. are optimistic
the Jays’ window widely splayed —
they’ve got they’re own heuristic.

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Today is a day when we as a nation look inward and backward and catawampus, reflecting on the history of baseball and how we can shape it into the past we wished it would have been. And as we watch our benevolent elites erase twenty years’ worth of box scores from their own yellowing newsprint, take a moment to enjoy our national pastime just as it appeared in the early days of Jack Morris. Play, vicariously through me, some Classic Baseball.

Glimpse upon the ball itself, burning fiery crimson with the passion-rage of the athlete who loves his game too much. Consider the bases, each the size of a real man’s heart, the only part of each baserunner visible. Stare at the emerald green of the turf, the quaint dirt path from the mound to the plate. Watch Morris pitch to the .700 OPS of Chris Chambliss, representative average hitter of his generation. Note the conspicuous absence of Lou Whitaker or Alan Trammell.

Jack Morris’ baseball doesn’t have any statistics that can’t be represented by LED lights. There’s no room for FIP, or ERA, or hits, or errors. There are innings, outs, balls, strikes, and the score. There are wins. In baseball, you win or you lose and that’s what you are. Sometimes you hit the ball and it beeps three times; sometimes you hit the ball and it makes an angry sound. That is all there is to say. That is life.

This is real baseball, free of chemicals or graphics or analysis. This is Classic Baseball.

Owing to the generosity and/or oversight of the BBWAA, the present author — provided he doesn’t make a mess of everything, like his family’s always saying he makes a mess of everything — might very well have a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame 10 years thence. It will be a privilege, at that time, to have the opportunity not only to (a) help decide which players receive one of the game’s great honors, but also (b) receive pointed threats from every corner of the internet while so doing.

In the meantime, I’d like to share my ballot for a Hall of Fame by which I’ve already been granted voting privileges — namely, my own Personal Hall of Fame.

Here are my votes this year for same, with a focus on ages 7-11:

Sears Wish Book
Provided very strong reading material while staying at my grandparents’ house. Long length. Lots of beds shaped like cars, if I remember correctly.

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As Villanelle Week continues, one more from me…

Fantasy Choices I Have Made

Fantasy choices I have made
I’ve drafted Travis Snider twice
In every league in which I’ve played

I got Reid Brignac in a trade
In which James Shields was the price*
Fantasy choices I have made

Kila Kaaihue made the grade
Greg Colbrunn sounded awfully nice
In too many years I’ve played

I drafted Manny, I’m afraid
In 2012, and for a price
So many choices I have made

A-Jax or Ellsbury, I have weighed
And dropped them both with bad advice
Before the years so great they played

Oh, Justin Duchscherer! I once prayed
He would come back. I rolled the dice
Fantasy choices I have made
I’ve mostly lost in leagues I’ve played

*Shields for Troy Glaus, Reid Brignac, and Ervin Santana. 2009.

Once upon a time, there was a man. That man was me, although I had a stupid pseudonym back then. And there was another man, woman, child, or self-aware robot defense system reading this, and that was you. You probably didn’t have a pseudonym, and were better for it. And for almost a full year, we were kept apart. But now, thanks to the questionable judgment of your reluctant hipster overlord Carson Cistulli, we’re back together again, bonded forever by our shared love of me, Vin Scully’s magic powers, Wally Moon’s unibrow, and Don Zimmer’s average face. And so shall it ever be.

If I was the same man I was a year ago, I would be over the moon to be back with you all, so sure of the bright future that awaits us all, like a whispily mustachioed Terry Felton back in Spring Training of 1982.

Oh the puppy-dog like earnestness in Felton’s face! The optimism! The certainty that his mustache will kick in and fill out before too long, like his talent.

Alas, it was not to be. Felton spent the entire season in Minnesota and went 0-13 to finish his career 0-16 with a 5.53 career ERA. No one else in baseball history has ever started their career with 16 straight losses. No one else has finished their career worse than 0-12. He was never again to throw a pitch in anger, joy, fear, or lust for a Major League team.

Why do I tell you this? Why do I bum you out even further on a day where we’ll surely find out that no one has been elected to the Hall of Fame? Because despite what early 1982 Terry Felton might think, life is full of disappointment. His mustache will forever be inadequate, as will his fastball. Your Hall of Fame will be short one Bagwell, Biggio, Piazza, Raines, and Trammell for at least another year. People you are counting on will fall short of your expectations, just as you fall short of theirs. Get used to it. Don’t get your hopes up. Set your sights low.

There. Now with our meager expectations, the only way we can go is up. Together. Like Sylvester Stallone and plucky band of survivors in Daylight. Some of us will make it, but a bunch of you are going to die along the way. Sorry. Excelsior.

This GIF of Mike Piazza on stage with Alter Bridge at the 2005 Home Run Derby is provided for the reader after the jump not because it is such a large file that it would render the site inert were it on the front page — although this would definitely happen — but rather because the reader, were he (or she, certainly) confronted by such footage sans warning, his (or her, certainly) heart would explode, like in that one movie where the guy’s heart just explodes.

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The Hall of Fame and who belongs in it appears to be a subject of some import to many fans of base-and-ball — and also of some import, one assumes, to those former players whose careers are the object of much public scrutiny on days and nights like this one.

Were the present author tasked with building a Hall of Fame from scratch, it (i.e. said Hall) would be (a) quite different than the present one and (b) very poorly managed and (c) full of gratis scotch (although not in that order, necessarily).

Also, it would most certainly have an entire wing dedicated to gentleman ballplayers flipping their bats — like in this GIF of Mike Piazza, New York Catcher, flipping his goddamn bat.

Credit to James Kannengieser for bringing author’s attention to — and to Eric Simon for manufacturing with American sweat — the GIF in question.

What do these individuals have in common?

Daniel Davidson
Geremi Gonzalez
Brian Boehringer
Matt Maysey
Randy Ready
Ramon Romero
Don Dillard
Joe Just
Bill Bartley
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In abiding with NotGraphs’ Villanelle Week:

Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat
A feat so large, and yet a man so small
Why would he even try to attempt that?

And during the World’s Series, too, at that
The culprit seems to barely bend at all
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat

Some put-out rage, a wooden tit-for-tat
In failure, something needs to takes the fall
Why would he even try to attempt that?

If scrappiness was actually a stat
Number 8 would, in fact, lead them all
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat

Perhaps it’s better just to utter “drat”
Less painful this, if slightly more banal
Why would he even try to attempt that?

A bruise is formed, a thigh is rendered flat
Bo Jackson’s snickers echo off the wall
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat
Why would he even try to attempt that?

The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):