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[Author’s Note: Due to forces totally within the author’s control, such as the fact that he went to see a show last night, the results of Villanelle Week will be posted on Monday. This gives you a couple of days to polish off your half-finished poem or, alternately, a few extra days of suspense. Please schedule your lives accordingly.]

As evidenced by the Call to Action made by our Fearless Leader on Tuesday, we have in the midst of our poetics taken a moment to consider the essentials of our being. That is, we have asked ourselves and all of you, that defining question: “What is a NotGraphs?” You answered, dear readers, and you answered pithily.

Now I’d like to take a moment, if it pleases you, and if it doesn’t, to follow with a second query: “Why is a NotGraphs?” But first, an aside.

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An expensive teak desk, not entirely unlike the author’s.

The author’s submission to Patrick Dubuque’s ridiculous Villanelle Challenge concerns less a baseballing theme proper and more the cursed insolence of Dubuque himself — and also, it turns out, the entire world.

Hey, Patrick Dubuque: you’re not the boss of me.
Did you consider that before assigning me an effing villanelle?
In point of fact, I’m the boss of you. Literally.

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Hmmm. Unexpected.

(click to embiggen)

FanGraphs CEO and founder and ubermensch David Appelman has alerted the author to the presence of a Sammy Sosa Pinterest account. Now, said author does the same for all of probably less than 0.00001% of America — while noting, at the same time, that Sosa’s account is mostly just a record of him wearing two outfits in a tastefully decorated home-office.

The internet visitor does, however, become slightly more acquainted with how Sosa might react in certain, more routine and workaday situations. Here, for example, is what Sammy Sosa looks like when you interrupted him using his smart phone, but he’s not upset about it:

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Against my better judgment, Villanelle Week continues.

Albert, we knew you as Joey then,
When yours was still a world with room for doubt,
Before you took your leave of lesser men.

You had a family once; you were a twin,
A model teammate and an Eagle Scout;
Albert, we knew you as Joey then.

Before the hurled balls, the cork, the gin,
Before the costumed vandals ranged about,
Before you took your leave of lesser men;

Before you had to face the pressing din
And twist your voice into a vulgar shout,
Albert, we knew you as Joey then.

You can’t have known the judges of your sin,
Or known the crushing sentence meted out,
Before you took your leave of lesser men;

That in black dreams you’d mourn what could have been,
And stalk those gilded halls that kept you out.
Albert, we knew you as Joey then,
Before you took your leave of lesser men.

More on the new T-Mobile bullpen phone deal…

[scrippet]
EXT. WHITE SOX BULLPEN

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Your daguerreotype  of the evening, lovingly hand-stitched with the magical fibers of Photoshop, is a digital quilt of the 2013 Hall of Fame vote. Bask in the ennui.

This has been your despair-soaked daguerreotype of the evening.

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

News broke yesterday regarding Major League Baseball’s new partnership with wireless phone provider T-Mobile, in that the traditional bullpen landlines will be replaced by T-Mobile cellular phones in a way that won’t be ostentatious at all, I’m sure. The following are possible mishaps that will spiral from this new, most executive of partnerships:

The influx of camera shots on the bullpen will force bullpen managers to stay awake for the whole game.

Makers of fart apps will see a drastic spike in profits come April.

Everyone’s walk-up music will be that “One, Two, Kalamazoo” song.

At least one person is getting Favre’d from the dugout.

Double-Bubble Groupons.

Attempting to text in his request, Bud Black asks for Miles “Molpjwa” to warm up.

Upwards of 10,000 “Can you hear me now?” jokes from television broadcasters.

T-Mobile Girl totally botches the National Anthem at the Wild Card play-in game.

Glitch allows T-Mobile customers to use their MLB At Bat app to change scoreboard messages.

Tim Lincecum gains 70 pounds, as he is now able to order pizza from the dugout.