I feel bad for Michael Cuddyer.

Rickey Henderson has epitomized many concepts in his lifetime — the concept of The Greatest Ever comes to mind, for instance. Stolen Base Artist might be another. Also: Effing Awesome; True Leadoff Hitter; Subtle Marxist; and especially, Enigma.

The following video clip allows us to add yet another such epitome to Rickey’s list: Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

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Those with their finger on America’s iron-rich, throbbing pulse can agree on at least one shared sentiment: the nation has fallen in love with the bat flip. If anything, we’re left to wonder how it took baseball 150 years to reach this point, when the bat flip is such an American act, a distilled essence of emotion, of joie de vivre. Clearly, these GIFs are mirrors to our own soul, showing how much we’ve changed. How can baseball be the same when Rickey Henderson, embodiment of the id, never flipped a bat, and yet Josh Donaldson has?

I have personally spent hours, while mechanically attending to the welfare of a fragile newborn child, reflecting on the bat flip. I have chiseled into the forgotten, calcified sections of my heart. I have lain in the dying July grass and stared into the colorless sky, and I have found the truth of the matter. It is not the truth I sought, nor the one I was hoping for.

I do not like the bat flip.

Before the rage blinds your vision, and before Cistulli fires me and erases my archives from the NotGraphs canon, allow me to explain. First, my opinion is a purely personal one with no political or moral grounds; I am not foolish enough to stand against the current of American spirit. Instead, think of it as simply the feelings of a single man, perhaps egotistical enough (as all writers are) to believe that his small words are enough to create some connection with his fellow reader, and nothing more.

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I’m late with this news, but (hat tip: Sportsgrid.com and Baseball Think Factory) last Wednesday, the Huntsville Stars hosted 2nd Amendment Night, with free admission for NRA cardholders and a raffle to win a gun. There are lots of posts someone could write in response to this, but I’m going to write this one.

UPCOMING AMENDMENT NIGHTS AT THE BALLPARK.

1st Amendment Night. Featuring a mid-game rally for better players, and a prize given to the fan who yells the most obscene insult at an opposing player.

3rd Amendment Night. Where the Color Guard will not be allowed to leave.

4th Amendment Night. Hope you didn’t bring any drugs into the stadium, because we’re going to find them.

5th Amendment Night. One team is going to lose the same game twice!

6th Amendment Night. [Rescheduled for next season.]

7th Amendment Night. No umpires.

8th Amendment Night. Ticket prices are doubled, and– guess what– we’re going to force you to watch the Astros!

13th Amendment Night. One fan will win a chance to clean the entire stadium, with no compensation.

18th Amendment Night. Enjoy your free Chocolate Milk.

19th Amendment Night. I think I already wrote about this one.

21st Amendment Night. The beer is back.

This concludes the only NotGraphs post that requires a working knowledge of the Constitution (or this link to Wikipedia) to even have a chance to make sense.

The author, whose name roughly translated means something like Paragon of Fun, passed the greater part of his Sunday lakeside about an hour northwest of Madison, Wisconsin, and then a lesser — but still entirely satisfying — part of his Sunday bothering his wife as she made a dinner consisting largely of salmon and wine and kale and wine.

What the author hadn’t planned on, but has been compelled to do, anyway, was capturing and then embedding an animated GIF of Yasiel Puig flipping his bat. But what’s happened is, is the author has captured and now embedded here an animated GIF of Yasiel Puig flipping his bat — in the ninth inning, it turns out, of the Dodgers’ 4-1 victory over the San Franciscans (box)

This is usually Carson Cistulli’s beat, but since he is certainly spending his weekend like he always does — in an opium-fueled haze — I am updating the fair NotGraphs readers with some bat-flip coverage from last night. Behold Josh Donaldson, on a popup.

This bat-flip might have been Donaldson’s saving grace, however, since its majesty certainly distracted the Royals infield enough to perform in the following way:

This has been Weekend Bat-Flip Coverage.

You’ll recall that recently in this space, Chuckles Cistulli took occasion to mock my yeoman’s toil by posting a crudely altered image of Babe Ruth. According to foul-smelling Cistulli, his outputs constituted the depth and breadth of Internet-based half-assedness. Since that moment, I’ve been oiling my guns for war.

And now I’m here to escalate this Indolence Donnybrook by posting a picture of a goblin shark that’s been altered in only one shiftless regard: I added — in the default font, no less — the career triple-slash of Garth Iorg …

After posting this, I ambled yawning to the ice box to retrieve some milk and wound up falling asleep in the crisper. I’m still in there. It’s cold but not cold enough to rouse me from my idiot’s doze.

I’d like to posit — and by way of doing so, also remind you of the amazing and in some ways tragic story of J.R. Richard (if you could ever forget) — that the above photo epitomizes the American spirit as much as any photo.

If America is about the individual, then here is individualism: two men donning the same uniform, their bodies overlapping in the photograph’s framing, yet so very separate from and unconcerned with each other, only, seemingly, with the presentation of themselves.

If America is about confidence — false or otherwise — both of these men are supremely confident. Richard, calm and almost smiling, yet immoveable; Nolan Ryan agressive, as if ready to violently subdue the very wind that has threatened his waning coiffure. The picture gives the sense that these men are (and in fact they will be) captains of industry — or at least they will make investments, own things, and run things.

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Inspired by this post by Dayn Perry at CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball — which features not only a partially colorized image of Boog Powell from 1961 but also minimal commentary and effort on Perry’s part — the author submits the present document, a post which features a hastily colorized image of Babe Ruth and perhaps even less commentary/effort on the present author’s part.

Matt Harvey wants to wish you a happy birthday, America. And he kicked off the festivities a little early with his own fireworks show — mainly, his fascism-fighting fastball.

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