Recently spotted headline: Emerging Craig, Cards agree on 5-year deal. This seemed like an appropriate time to reflect on that miracle of nature — a miracle transpiring each year, like clockwork, in our own back yards! — of the emerging Craig.
I had the privilege of galavanting around Chicago on Tuesday night with Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry — two men who are grotesquely affectionate towards each other. After imbibing at a local dive — wherein I performed a twenty-minute bowel movement — we hailed a cab, which almost didn’t pick us up due to the fact that Mr. Perry was attempting to engage Mr. Cistulli’s groin in a boxing match on the sidewalk.
A cab not unlike the one we took.
Upon entering the cab, the cabbie conveyed that we would be his last ride before he went to join a friend for some hard-earned sliders-and-buckets-of-beers. “You work hard, you play hard. But you have to earn some money. Some people want to be handed everything. But if you work hard, you earn some money, then you can drink whatever you want.”
To which Mr. Cistulli tellingly responded, “What if you neither work nor play hard?”
Some interesting, meaningless numbers:
** Lou Marson (CLE), 3 for 14, all singles, with 8 walks. SLG .214. OBP .500.
** 8 times on base for Ezequiel Carrera (CLE) (5 hits, 4 walks, but one of those hits was a home run)… 8 stolen bases. 1 caught stealing. He is making quite an effort to run. (Last spring, 5 times on base, 2 steals.)
** BJ Upton leads the majors, caught stealing three times. But he’s also batting .429, so not too much to complain about.
** There have been two intentional walks so far this spring. Jason Jaramillo (HOU) and Xavier Paul (CIN).
** Darin Ruf (PHI) has been hit by four pitches. No one else has been hit more than twice. Do people not like Darin Ruf?
** Hector Noesi (SEA) has walked 8 batters in less than 5 innings. He has also given up 11 runs (9 earned), including 2 homers. Worst pitching stats of the spring? Sam Demel (HOU) probably doesn’t think so. 11 runs in 2 1/3 innings, 4 home runs, 3 walks and a strikeout. Batters hitting .556 against him. Jordan Lyles (HOU) also has a case. 18 runs and 26 hits in 8 innings (.553 AVG against him). And Pedro Villarreal (CIN). 14 runs and 19 hits in 4 2/3 innings. Batters hitting .633.
** Jimmy Henderson (MIL) has allowed 6 stolen bases (leading the majors) in just 3 1/3 innings On the other hand, David Huff (CLE) has picked off 3 baserunners in 10 innings.
When it comes to fighting his own battles, above-it-all Aaron Sele can scarcely be bothered. If he happens to prod and poke George Bell to the point of brandishing soup-bones, then, well, perhaps someone else more comfortable with the thankless toil of beating ass will do above-it-all Aaron Sele’s work for him. Luckily for above-it-all Aaron Sele, Mo Vaughn, whose chest is a barrel made of boulders and also filled with boulders, is preternaturally delighted by the prospect of taking out the trash …
Have we just witnessed an example of “taking out the trash” or “making love the Mo Vaughn way”? Yes.
Most of all, file under “Classic Fu*king Brawls.”
Vine.co user Carl Skanberg provides a most excellent artist’s rendering of what Jim Leyland ate this morning, and every morning previous.
Here is Ozzie Smith, doing what he did — i.e. turning all balls hit within 40 feet of him into outs.
If you’re an American resident between the ages of 18-49, it’s statistically probable that you’ve played Apples to Apples, the perfect board game for every unambitious party or evening with extended family members.
It’s somewhat less likely that you have played its evil twin, Cards Against Humanity, which replaces the amiable fun of the original with blasphemy and gall. Cards Against Humanity is a visceral experience, the board game equivalent of a Jackass movie. It should, in the author’s opinion, be experienced at least once, regardless of the reader’s personal idiosyncrasies and hang-ups.
Cards Against Humanity began as a humble Kickstarter project fashioned by a core group of a dozen high school alumni, and funded by a hungry Internet.
But said Internet is never satisfied; it demands more. For this reason I present to you my own shameless rip-off, foolishly spilled out into the public domain for anonymous plagiarism: Athletes to Apples.
The rules are similar to Apples to Apples: one player, the “judge”, flips over a card with the name of a baseball player. The rest of the table looks through their own cards, which contain adjectives, quotations, and pejoratives, to select the one they believe the judge will select via free association. Whoever picks the best card gets a point. Continue playing until about fifteen minutes after you are completely sick of the game, or until the alcohol has rendered you unconscious.
(The exception to this operating procedure is when a judge flips over the “Boog Powell” card, wherein he or she immediately and silently rises, flips over the table, takes all the beer out of the host’s fridge, and leaves.)
You too can make your own cards on Cards Against Humanity’s website, thanks to the Creative Commons License. Do so, and share them! Improve society!
My list of 14 keepers in my AL-only Scoresheet league is due on Friday. We start with 13 keepers and 2 crossover privileges for players who are now in the NL. I traded for an extra keeper and an extra crossover privilege.
The players I’m sure I’m keeping:
As you read this, I am undoubtedly sleeping in after flying to Phoenix for Spring Training and the great FanGraphs Jamboree with my two beloved, wretched children, ages 6 years and 17 months respectively. I’m staying with my mother in Scottsdale, which is why the kids are along. I don’t have to pay any money for accommodations, but I will be paying in other, more subtle ways. Agreeing to bring her grandchildren with me across the country, through the air, in a tiny cylinder with small seats that are easily kicked at a time of day when both of them are typically asleep, is part of that cost.
Nevertheless, I’m excited to be here. I’d be more excited if I was credentialed for this week. I had dreams of standing shoulder to mid-thigh with guys like Jonathan Broxton and Brandon McCarthy, and peppering them with questions both insightful and inane. But alas, somewhere along the way, a ball got dropped and I won’t be cornering Vin Scully and demanding to know how he stops time and apparates like a Harry Potter villain to startle Don Blasingame.
Sure, this is a loss to me, and I feel terrible about it. But I don’t feel bad for me; I feel bad for you. Because while I will still be tremendously important and generally terrific even without my credentials, not needing the external validation they would provide, you will never learn the answers to the answers to the burning questions that I was all set to ask.
Unless…unless I posted them here and intrepid reporters across this great land banded together to locate the interview subjects I won’t be able to get to, and demand answers to these important questions! Yes! Yes, this is what we will do. Here, my friends, is what I was planning to ask at Dodgers camp on Thursday. Feel free to share anything you discover in the comments below. Now, go forth my minions, and seek answers to the following:
1) (To Andre Ethier) You French or sumthin’?
2) (To Zack Greinke) Who would win in a pillowfight, you or TJ Simers?
3) (To Juan Uribe) Why are you?
4) (To Clayton Kershaw) You’re a lefty, and everybody says all lefties are junkballers. Show me your junk.
5) (To Don Mattingly) How come you never shaved your sideburns?
6) (To Nick Punto) Really? You think tearing the clothes off of athletic young men isn’t even a little gay?
7) (To Ned Colletti) How much of your ability to convince others you know what you’re doing do you attribute to your mustache?
8) (To Alyssa Milano, who appears without warning next to me in the locker room) How the hell did you get in here?
9) (To Josh Beckett) TJ Simers and Dan Shaughnessy strip down to the waist and engage in a spirited boxing match according to the Queensbury Rules. Who would win, how many rounds would it take, how much joy would America derive from the proceedings provided it was streamed live to the Inter Nets, and how much beer could you consume in the interim between the first punch and one of them collapsing dead to the delight of millions?
10) (To Vin Scully) Will you adopt me?
Dear Haters,
This is why the World Baseball Classic exists. And it is bello.
Cordially,
Navin
P.S. This, and the Canada/Mexico brawl. That was bloody fantastic.
All praise be upon @MikeAxisa, The People’s Blogger, for the GIF.