Okay, over the next few weeks, we’re going to write a play together. I’ve given you the title. Throw into the comments some character ideas, scenes, plot elements, stories, lines of dialogue, whatever you can come up with. I’ll take from what’s there– not everything, but whatever I can– and start building. I’ll post a scene next week, then open it up to you to tell me what should happen next. And so forth. An experiment. We’ll see what happens. If it’s terrible, hey, then it’s terrible. If it’s not, then, uh, I don’t know– FanGraphs Masterpiece Theater Video Podcast?

The reader might have suspected for a moment — for a rather a long moment, in fact, full of terror on all sides — that Reno Aces right-hander Nelson Figueroa was intent on throwing a baseball directly into that same reader’s chops, such that those chops would be most grievously injured and bloodied and perhaps ultimately deformed.

What Nelson Figueroa goes on to make perfectly clear, however, is that violence is neither the answer or even just an answer — unless the question, that is, is something like, “What’s the main thing that Nelson Figueroa despises.”

A few days ago, Nationals prospect Anthony Rendon made news when he got called up to replace an ailing Ryan Zimmerman. More recently, the Tigers decided to recall reliever Bruce Rondon to the majors. This may lead to some confusion. Don’t be a boob at your next dinner party, you need to know the difference between these two prospects. Consider the following quiz a service to you, fair NotGraphs reader.

It’s time to play the game sensation that’s sweeping the nation.

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Yesterday, in these electronic pages, the author published a catalog and ranking of all the main cameras from each International League club’s MiLB.TV feed. What follows is a similar exercise, except for the Pacific Coast League. Posts for the remaining minor leagues will follow in subsequent days.

Note that each club’s main (usually center-field) camera has been evaluated according to three criteria, as follows:

Shot Angle
In which more central and lower is generally preferred.

Shot Size
In which closer up and not longer is generally preferred.

Video Quality
In which a higher resolution, nicer graphics, etc., are generally preferred.

The cameras are ranked as follows: the bottom three, the top three, and then the rest. Some brief notes follow the collection of screenshots.

Bottom Three
15. Las Vegas 51s (New York Mets)

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More than any sport, perhaps, baseball is a game of constant, brief exhilarations for its fans. The delivery of each pitch is preceded by a moment of anticipation and followed quickly upon by a flash of excitement or disappointment — the crack of a line drive, the thud of an infield pop-up, the swing of a bat followed by the snap of the catcher’s mitt around the ball followed by the pumping of the umpire’s hand/arm…

The “whiff” is the perfect example of baseball’s many tiny catharses, equally balanced with the pitcher’s mastery (of stuff or command or both) and the batter’s ineptitude. The fact that said balance could shift completely with the very next pitch might add to the exciting complexity of the game as a whole, but, in isolation, few occurrences in baseball match the whiff’s combination of the triumphant and the ephemeral. No single whiff — nor even a seasonal body of whiffs — indicates the effectiveness the associated hitter or pitcher, but it adds to our net enjoyment while watching a game, and to our understanding of they kind of player the hitter or pitcher is.

In honor of this minuscule yet orgasmic aspect of the game, please enjoy these so-called Leaderboards of Windiness.

The Windiest Hitters
Presently sorted by total number of Whiffs (qualified hitters only).

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Baseball Think Factory links to an article about Manny Ramirez hitting a third home run in extra innings to propel the Rhinos to victory over in Taiwan. Apparently he’s batting .322/.365/.525 and shattering attendance records. Or, you can just let Google translate the linked article from Chinese:

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New York Mets director of media relations Jay Horwitz is, by his own admission, “not real mechanical.”

In the message embedded here, though, he appears — wittingly or not — to have summarized Mets baseball in precisely 1/140th of the characters allowed by twitter.internet.com.

It’s been quite some time since the present author went looking for people looking for love in baseballing places in his groundbreaking first post for NotGraphs.

Now that the new season is upon us, however, we must again turn to the Missed Connections section of Craigslist dot org to find would-be lovers searching for a modicum of affection amongst the filthy masses known as baseball fans. Observe:

Our first entry does not inspire much hope. I can’t speak from experience, but I imagine drunk people with cameras are not too hard to come by at Tigers games. You should have said more then, sir, and you should have said more now. You will never find your one true love with such scant details. However, if you have her picture, a reverse Google image search might help.

First off, and I speak from experience, most girls do not like to be described as “thick.” Though, props to you for crossing the eye line of this lady while performing what had to truly be some manly “messing around going over a poll.” Nothing is a bigger panty-dropper than a dude acting like a dipshit.

Moving on…

Poor Sam. He met the woman of his dreams, and he can’t even remember her name. However, depending on his definition of “cornhole,” she will most likely have a very vivid recollection of him.

This post is totally Milwaukee — directions based on street corners, beer, Brewers, and do-it-yourself car repair. Godspeed, 37-year-old male.

If you think, fair reader, that I will name any of my future fantasy baseball teams anything but The Kennesaw Mountain Cuties, then you are the dumbest fucking person alive.

This has been Looking for Love in Baseballing Places.

With a view to acquiring as many hot and sexy sexual partners as is sexually possible, the reader has no doubt made a point of acquainting him- or herself with what scientists and TV’s Rashida Jones, probably, have both referred to as “the greatest aphrodisiac” — i.e. the Study and Analysis of Baseball Prospects.

One knows from reading pieces at FanGraphs, for example, that Jurickson Profar is major-league ready, that Dylan Bundy has a curveball that willn’t stop to the tick-tock, and that Chase Anderson’s changeup has the potential to inspire religious experience within onlookers. One has maybe even seen videos that support these claims. With regard to actually watching these players live, however, there are more questions to be asked. Or, at least one question to be asked — specifically, “What MiLB.TV feed is best for seeing this or that prospect?”

The present author — in an effort that is already receiving attention from the Nobel committee in at least two or four categories — has resolved to answer this exact question.

What follows is the first part of that answer: a catalog and ranking of all the main cameras from each International League club’s MiLB.TV feed. A similar effort for other minor leagues will follow in subsequent posts.

Note that each club’s main (usually center-field) camera has been evaluated according to three criteria, as follows:

Shot Angle
In which more central and lower is generally preferred.

Shot Size
In which closer up and not longer is generally preferred.

Video Quality
In which a higher resolution, nicer graphics, etc., are generally preferred.

The cameras are ranked as follows: the bottom three, the top three, and then the rest. Some brief notes follow the collection of screenshots.

Bottom Three
13. Charlotte Knights (Chicago White Sox)

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Though I certainly did not assemble it with this in mind, I cannot help but admire the collective comeliness and pilosity of this group of gentlemen.

C Carlos Santana, Mexican-American rock guitarist

1B Frederick Freeman, founder of Theta Chi fraternity, and first superintendent of the Pennsylvania Coal Company

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