Hey, I bet you’re tired of Spring Training highlights, projection systems, talk of position battles and depth charts, and probably just baseball in general. I mean, that’s why you’re at this baseball website right now, instead of working, chillin’ with family or friends, or pursuing a more productive hobby.

In that case, won’t you participate in this distracting internet-quiz, which asks you to identify whether a given photo depicts belovéd NotGraphs editor Carson Cistulli or former pre-teen heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas? Thank you.

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“Top-left corner, second pack from the bottom,” my friend told me. He didn’t remember where he had heard it from, or why it worked. All we knew is that he was the proud owner of the Holy Grail of baseball cards: the 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken error card, the one with the expletive bared on the bottom of the bat for all the world to see. It was the ultimate taboo, a premature interruption of adulthood into our adolescence.

Of course, there were plenty of Holy Grails in that era of baseball cards, enough to occupy our feeble attention spans. There were the Gregg Jefferies rookie cards, the Dale Murphy reverse negative, and later, Ken Griffey, Jr. We looked at the numbers next to the names in our Beckett Baseball Card Magazines and dreamed our stock market dreams, anticipating the envy of a new generation the way we envied the adults whose collections hadn’t been thrown out.

It didn’t happen, of course. We became adults, and the forbidden terminology of Bill Ripken’s bat became just another everyday word in the lexicon. Meanwhile, a generation of parents, chagrined by the tales of zealous mothers past, saved those baseball cards in pristine condition, and the supply outpaced the demand of a dwindling base of collectors. Given the wide production of the late 80s baseball card sets, it isn’t a stretch to claim that there’s a Bill Ripken error card out there for everyone who wants one. They currently go for a couple of bucks on eBay.

This didn’t kill the collector’s spirit, however: the search for errors and variations has long lived in the human heart, and is not limited to the baseball card. Witness the 1955 Philadelphia Double Die, or the Inverted Jenny. The search just goes deeper, now.

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ESPN Deportes reported that Ramirez has reached a verbal agreement to play for the EDA Rhinos of the Chinese Professional League.

First, Brandon Morrow said he’d “rather look at the nerd stats.” Then he shows up to Ricky Romero’s first start of the spring with notes on Romero from Brooks Baseball, which he passed on to his teammate.

Witness, via John Lott in the National Post, a fine Canadian newspaper:

Brandon Morrow’s research startled Ricky Romero. It showed that Romero had almost given up on a key pitch during his disastrous 2012 season.

In 2011, when his ERA was 2.92, Romero threw sinking two-seam fastballs 22% of the time. Last year, his sinker rate fell to 11%. His ERA was 5.77, worst among big-league starters.

Morrow found those figures on the Brooksbaseball.net website, printed them out and gave them to Romero.

“I was a little bit amazed by it,” Romero said Tuesday, pulling the sheet from his locker.

Brandon Morrow is going to, hopefully, start a revolution.

Every now and then, usually on my walk to work in the morning, I whisper to myself: “Brandon League for Brandon Morrow.” I can’t let myself forget; I won’t. And I can’t wait for that no-hitter.

Image credit: David Lykes Keenan Photography.

Last Wednesday, in one of my weaker moments, I asked for your opinion regarding which headline you would be most likely to click on. The winning headline is, of course, above. I regret this decision, as democracy remains a profoundly stupid thing.  As we all remember from last year’s Ron Swanson Hall of Fame debacle, if you want a decision made right, you need an enlightened despot and absolute sovereign to do it.

Nevertheless, I refused to impose my will on you all as I should have, and we devolved into the depraved preferences of the common public. Indeed, let it be forever remembered that the rabble will gladly choose mindless dance competitions populated by familiar, vapid faces,  police procedurals, and (worst of all) The Big Bang Theory over unparalleled genius like Breaking Bad and the first three seasons of Community.

Damn you, the plurality decided they would like to watch a billionaire (a modern day monarch who, by rights, should rule us all if there ever was one) flattened by an blacksmith’s anvil, as strumpets gyrated  in celebration of his bloody and painful death, rather than the exquisite beauty of a perfectly performed nutshot on TJ Simers. You stupid souls would rather see the tragic end of a tone-deaf titan, rather than see a boorish, whiny, ungrateful relief pitcher deservedly cast into a pit of alligators during a picnic.

Well, the 20.5 percent of you who voted enthusiastically to witness wholesale slaughter and titillation will get your wish.  I am a man of my word, having entered myself into a binding social contract to provide you the base entertainment you crave like decadent Romans eager to see early Christians disemboweled in front of you.  Here then. Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?  Very well. Feast your eyes:

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Recently when scrolling through baseball news I glimpsed the following extraordinary headline: “Booty Wins Knuckler Show.” I probably shouldn’t have pursued this any further, since any additional information can only dilute the pure joy of such a perfect sentence. But pursue I did, with the help of the Google, and after a few false steps:

– Urban Dictionary’s definition of “Booty Knuckle”: “The skin or fold that the butt creates when standing up, and dissappers when bending over.” (Filed next to “Monkey Knuckle,” “Penis Knuckle,” “Nut Knuckle,” “Knuckle Hugger,” and “Knuckle Trumpet.”)

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One of the biggest stories of this very young preseason is that Yankees’ outfielder Curtis Granderson will be sidelined for a while with an arm injury. This has led many to speculate who will be his replacement. Opinions have been opined about free agents, trades, and internal candidates. Allow me to offer three options no one has mentioned yet.

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In this site’s grand tradition of “taking pictures of stuff on the author’s table or floor,” the author has provided here a picture of something on the latter of those things.

The “stuff” in question is an art painting composed lovingly by NotGraphs contributor Patrick Dubuque and then sent via US Post to the author and then placed on the author’s floor — where it remains — for the purpose of taking this picture.

As great art does, Dubuque’s piece asks the biggest possible questions. Questions like: “How does one construct meaning?” And also like: “How ought one to resolve life’s horrors and its mundanities?” And finally, like: “In what correctional facility’s art class did Dubuque craft this work?”

I’ve recently been irked by this article at The Barnstormer by Mike Spry, which seems to hold that fans who are “into advanced stats” can’t appreciate the abstract beauty of the game, or that such fans are unable to participate in true, scintillating arguments about baseball topics. It’s a tired argument that shouldn’t need to be refuted again. Even if there are such closed-minded “statheads,” if you don’t like them, don’t read their blogs, don’t engage them. There are enough baseball fans and websites that there should be conversation and internets enough for everyone. While there are plenty examples of statistically-minded baseball fans making fun of those who eschew advanced stats, I think we’d be hard-pressed to find a stat-fan who’d say that stat-haters are not fans at all, which seems to be something that is often argued or at least heavily implied in the other direction.

A player like Liván Hernández is, for me, one of so many examples of how looking at the stats can lead to fun and productive arguments. His stats can create any number of narratives, any number of discussions about the usefulness of stats, where they still fall short, etc. They can lead us to consider — in conversations with palpable friends over analog beer and under the analog sky — about the value of an innings eater, what makes an average player, what sorts of teams would most benefit from a guy like Liván this season — the list approaches infinity. Any of these would be a fun conversations to have, with real room for dialog and insight. I know that I have had many such exchanges with friends, and if there’s a “stathead” who hasn’t had the same, I truly feel sorry for him/her, but I suspect that such specimens are few and far between.

Whether you’re already starting to petrify in front of your basement-computer or need to have your MLB-video-archive-cherry popped, please join me now in celebrating a pinnacle in the career of Liván Hernández, one of MLB’s “lesser freaks” of the late ’90s and early ’00s: his record-setting 15-strikeout game in the 1997 NLCS against the Atlanta Braves. (Video after jump.)

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It is an unassailable fact of the historical record that Jim Palmer was tasked with writing very specific passages of the Constitution. “But James,” Gouverneur Morris cautioned him, “pen only the sexy parts.”

Jim Palmer, framer-to-be, was en route to the Constitutional Convention to fulfill his obligations as a member of the Patriotic gentry when the urges of Jim Palmer, passionsmith, took firm yet tender hold. “Milkmaids,” he said to them, “when the loins speak, the heart can’t help but listen.”

No one ravished another, yet there was ravishment …

In Philadelphia there was heard the unmistakable click of many fingernails against a single headboard. Hamilton sighed resignedly. “Lord Palmer will not be joining us, it seems,” he said. “Jefferson, you may write the soiled parts.”

On this, that and every day and night, Jim Palmer set these prairies ablaze with dirty rapture.