As a white male, I am no stranger to the world of people who have been given stupid nicknames. The majority of these encounters occurred while in college, where I knew people with nicknames such as Detox, Hot Rachael, Ogre, Boob, Gay Dan, Hot Lindsey, Fathead, Pubehead, and Fahqueef. (Full disclosure: those girls were hot, and Boob was a guy.)

Much like my baseline blood-alcohol content, my interactions with people who had dumb nicknames subsided after I left college. This may be a game of percentages, however, since my interaction with any people took a drastic dive after college, once I realized that people were, in general, vile and terrifying creatures. My wife is involved in roller derby — a sport that requires participants to take on nicknames of sorts — so I do know people who are addressed by odd monikers, but as these names are forced and often self-appointed, it doesn’t really count for me. So as I stand, I really have no acquaintances with nicknames, save for the people at work who I call names behind their backs. As a grown man, I have not noticed this to be abnormal.

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Jose Bautista is a bilingual gentleman. When he tweets, he tweets in full sentences that are often adequately punctuated. Significant tweets, he translates into English if first tweeted in Spanish, into Spanish if first tweeted in English). He is dapper.

Jose Bautista, surely, is not unaware of the sometimes awesome differences of expression in the two languages that he speaks. Consider especially the discrepancy in hashtags of the following tweets — the first the original tweet in English and the second Mr. Bautista’s own translation:

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Friends, it’s a well-accepted fact that old people who are not my grandmothers or Vin Scully are gross. While my grandmothers and Vin Scully are cute and spry, and full of wisdom that you can’t get from all your book-learnin’, it’s an unequivocal truth that old people who are not the aforementioned grandmothers of me or Vin Scully have ears that are larger than is socially acceptable, chew horribly, accidentally spit when they talk, and often prattle on and on about hunting down the Kaisar back in dickety-two (All old people are Abe Simpson, is what I’m saying). Worse, they feel neglected if you don’t pay attention to said prattling and probably cut you out of the will.

Moreover, we know from our own experience with being young that young people are terrible. Just the worst. They are impatient and shallow. They are snide and disrespectful. They refuse, in spite of all of our screaming, threatening, and brandishing of soon to be regulated weapons, they steadfastly refuse to vacate the general area of our lawns. Kids refuse to respect their elders, even the good ones like Vin Scully and my grandmas. If only there was some way to make them tolerable!

Well folks, I’m pleased tell you that you can solve both problems with relative ease. Using my patented system, you can make grandpa shut up about how nobody wants to hear him talk and you can today’s youth put down their GameBoys and Girls, sit still for five minutes, and actually talk to someone who is older than they are without balking. And you can do them both at the same time. And, best of all, surprisingly, we have the Mets to thank for it. Read the rest of this entry »

While perusing society’s flotsam at my local thrift store, I stumbled on this rare archaeological find:

The figure you see before you (photographed at a distance, for I was loathe to touch it) is a lifeless homunculus crafted in the image of former Kansas City Royals pitcher Mark Gubicza. Note the characteristic markings and the telltale mullet that place the artifact in the Bob Boone Era (1994-1996 AD). But this was no mere toy, no pagan idol: nefarious deeds were done to this Gubicza. The talented, troublesome left arm is sheared just below the shoulder, the right ankle fractured where he once took a Paul Molitor line drive. The air around the resin was rank with ill omen.

What I had unwittingly stumbled upon, nestled inconspicuously among the little league trophies, was a horrific monkey’s paw: this token, in the hands of some vengeful man or woman, had brought about the downfall of a once proud franchise. Through some voodoo trick or some unholy pact, this villain obviously destroyed both Mark Gubicza and the Kansas City Royals in one cruel motion.  It can safely be assumed that only when the arm is returned, and the ankle repaired by some master craftsman, will the curse be lifted.

Did I embark on this quest? I did not. You may judge me a coward, dear readers, from your comfortable swivel chairs and your well-lit cubicles. You may judge me thus, but you cannot think me a fool. After taking this photograph, I fled from the thrift store in haste, drove home, and showered relentlessly.  I dare not bring down the Curse of Gubicza on my own house, dear readers. I have a family to think of.

Dear Ben Bernanke,

As an economist and sabermetrician, my life was changed recently by the following passage from the Wall Street Journal concerning your reading habits:

“Blogs have become a pretty important source of intellectual exchange,” the Fed chief said, noting that the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Atlanta both maintain active blogs. But is that how he spends his time browsing online?

“I follow a lot of baseball blogs myself, actually,” he said.

So Ben — do you mind if I call you Ben? — you like sabermetrics and economic policy. I like sabermetrics and economic policy. I know who you are, and it seems like you might just know who I am. And also, we should be BFFs. Just imagine it.

“Oh, hey Matt, what you are up to today?”
“Not much. I’m working on a new piece about why first basemen get paid so much. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m just pulling the strings of the world economy.”
“I hope you don’t mean pushing on a string.”
“Bahaha. Okay, let’s go catch a game and I’ll tell you all about the fight over Quantitative Easing.”

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This post is weird.

1. Fellow Writer I Met On the Internet

Age	Gender	Height	Weight	Eats	Spd	Dpth	OTP	HLP	WARF
28	M	5′ 10″	165	R	60	30	0.348	0.435	1.5

Fellow Writer I Met on the Internet is my top new friend prospect for 2013. Despite a low on-time percentage (OTP), he has a strong willingness to help with annoying errands (HLP) and easy-to-accommodate regular (R) eating habits. He scores very highly on e-mail response speed, averaging just under 60 minutes. Though he shows a low conversational depth score (30 on the 20-80 scale), the hope is that this will further develop as he grows more and more comfortable in the friendship. Putting it all together, he is a solid 1.5 Wins Above Replacement Friend (WARF), and looks to be a loyal and worthwhile addition to the 2013 lineup.

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In the not very distant past (i.e. 45 minutes ago) my colleague David Temple challenged the readership to answer certain questions about Delwyn and Delmon Young — and to establish the differences lying therein.

While Temple was mainly concerned (like Isaiah Berlin’s proverbial hedgehog) with depth — that is, many qualities between just two Youngs, Delmon and Delwyn — here we concern ourselves (like the fox) with width, and the breadth (or, four, which is two more) of Youngdom that Western Civilization has produced.

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Believe it or not, fair NotGraphs readers, the 2013 season is coming upon us. What have you done to prepare? Oh, that seems like less that optimal. Allow me to assist you in jogging your memory regarding at least a few baseball-related things. It’s time to play America’s favorite game: Delmon Young or Delwyn Young?

Take the quiz below to find out if you are ready for the upcoming season!

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Today we celebrate the life of Steve Balboni as part of our on-again, but mostly off-again, feast-day series.

Balboni the Ample

Life: A native of noted City of Champions and Bare-Knuckled Violence (i.e. Brockton, Massachusetts), Steve Balboni parlayed two plus tools (power, mustache) into a major-league career that saw him hit home runs in over 5% of his plate appearances. That his peak seasons overlapped with the increased popularity of card collecting in the mid- and late-80s has likely contributed to his own enduring popularity among the children of that era.

Balboni the Ample teems with animal desire.

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As a well-traveled and well-practiced “explorer” of the World Wide Web, I assumed that I knew everything there was to know about finding my way around in “cyberspace.” Thus it was with considerable shock and disorientation that I learned, somewhat recently, of the possibility of exploring the web in an entirely new way. Google’s Search by Image feature, to put it bluntly, promises to do for the web search experience what Providence Grays shortstop Arthur Irwin did to the baseball glove: revolutionize it, or, at least, add some comfortable padding.

Because this innovation pertains so directly to our own experience as “tech-savvy” 21st-century sports enthusiasts, I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight its possibilities. As with so many great innovations, I find that it reveals truths that we knew all along, but could not have fully embraced — until now.

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