Anthony Gose can’t hit. It stresses me out. But I’m trying to focus on the positives, you know? Life’s too short, and the Blue Jays are far too bloody awful.

So, today, while I rue Toronto’s lost season, I also celebrate one of the finer catches of the year. You should, too.

[Setting – a generic office space]
Steve: “Dude. Did you get that email I sent you?”
You: “I don’t know. Lemme check. Oh yeah. What is this?”
“Just click on it.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an awesome video. Just click on it.”
[You click]
(In a whispered yet scolding tone) “What the fuck, Steve?”
[You close the window quickly]
“Awesome, right?”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I could get FIRED for looking at shit like this.”
“What? Nobody’s looking.”
“You know they log everything we look at, right?”
“What?”
“Yeah. They keep logs of every page we visit.”
“Really? … I gotta go.”
“Don’t send me shit like this again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
[Steve exits scene]

(Original GIF from the Internet Elk’s Lodge that is Reddit.)

A brief episode observed by the author this afternoon, during the pre-game hours at Fenway Park.

Artwork by the actual Pedro Martinez himself, courtesy Nick Taveras.

Generationally talented and now retired right-hander Pedro Martinez, in town for a local fundraising event, is giving an interview to an elderly reporter in the loge boxes on Fenway Park’s first-base side.

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Intrigue! The August 27 contest between the Los Angeles Angels and the Tampa Bay Rays had Intrigue! Behold! Slow-motion medium-high fives!

Regular-motion C.J. Wilson turf eats!

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[scrippet]
ABBOTT
Who’d the Pirates just get?

COSTELLO
Byrd.

ABBOTT
Oh, stop being a wise guy. I know pirates have birds. Parrots, in fact. Pirates have parrots.

COSTELLO
No, Pirates have Byrd.

ABBOTT
A parrot’s a bird. That’s what I said.

COSTELLO
No, I mean Byrd. Marlon Byrd.

ABBOTT
A marlin’s a fish, not a bird.

COSTELLO
I know.

ABBOTT
Then why’d you say a marlin’s a bird?

COSTELLO
I didn’t. I said the Pirates got Byrd.

ABBOTT
Yes, a parrot. A parrot bird. I wasn’t asking about the Marlins.

COSTELLO
Exactly. I’m telling you about the Pirates. They got Byrd.

ABBOTT
A parrot.

COSTELLO
No! A Byrd!

ABBOTT
What kind of a bird?

COSTELLO
Marlon.

ABBOTT
He’s not a bird, he’s a fish!

COSTELLO
Forget it. They also got Buck.

ABBOTT
A new Buc, of course. Who?

COSTELLO
Buck.

ABBOTT
That’s just short for Pirate. Who’d they get?

COSTELLO
Buck.

ABBOTT
They’re all Bucs! Why won’t you tell me?

COSTELLO
Buck.

ABBOTT
Buc, buc, buc. You sound like a chicken.

COSTELLO
A chicken’s a bird. The Pirates got Byrd.

ABBOTT
What kind of bird? A marlin. A marlin’s a fish.

COSTELLO
We’re not talking about the Marlins!

ABBOTT
So who’d the Pirates give up?

COSTELLO
Dilson Herrera.

ABBOTT
Dilson Herrera? That’s a funny name! He’s a second baseman?

COSTELLO
What?

ABBOTT
No, I think he retired.
[/scrippet]

Who among us would dispute that there simply are not enough songs about baseball, this game we love and that rarely loves us back? We have made so many advances as a society. Muscle cars, cellular telephones, The Internet, peanut butter and jelly from the same jar! And yet, our baseball song technology remains mired in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ruled by Katie Casey and John Fogerty with their iron fists. And please, don’t speak to me of the upstart rebellion of The Baseball Project, that sad fantasy of refugees from the 1980s and 1990s that suckered me in by featuring a non-Stipe from R.E.M. and a couple people from The Dream Syndicate, which I had briefly confused with The Dream Academy. What the hell have they ever done for us?

Addressing this crucial shortage is The Leonard Lothlen Band, out of the San Francisco Bay Area, with “The Best Baseball Song Ever Written,” about how much the singer really, really loves baseball. It is presented below soundtracking adorable moppets flopping about the ballyard. Please to commence with dispensing your feedback and scouting acumen:

No. Not Matt Harvey.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck! Fuck, fuck!
Me next, please, John Buck.

This has been a profanity-laced NotGraphs Haiku.

Thanks, @Cut4, for the heartbreaking GIF.

To a Photograph of Dave Parker

1.

In love poems we talk about eye color.
Your eyes are the color of the virginity that Brooke Shields just lost
And the luxury Oldsmobile she’ll give birth to nine months hence.

In benedictions we ask the firmament for mercy and riches.
You are large and bearded like the godhead in sanctuary etchings.
Through oral tradition, you taught us how to anger presidents with a lean.

Yours is the Sunday hat of fat-armed Baptist aunts.
But on you its wide brim and flop languish for disapproval.
Its tincture, cocaine in a sunbeam.

The words on your shirt are not explanation. They are augury.
Noise is going to happen because this more-than-man is mining for runs.
Prick up your ears only if you want to be deafened.

2.

In sea chanteys we sing to forget what our roasted muscles know by rote.
But do take heart and know that the shore hovers ahead.
Or perhaps that is a discotheque. Or the nearest precinct.
This is why you hum chamber music at the plate.

Gotthold Lessing wrote that wine and love are the only two things
That keep a man from being a stone. In you, though, there is
An artery that has grown through your finger and into your cigarette,
Which it now garrisons with plush blood.
That is the elusive third thing
That keeps you from being just a man.

3.

Your tongue prowls out of what we thought was your mouth
But turned out to be the stoop of a brownstone in Red Hook —
Back when it was dangerous, obviously.

4.

In elegies we lament.
So I lament that the buildings of the boulevards
That housed the best nights ever had or never had
Are long shuttered,
Like coins over the eyes of a dead Roman.

Ugh, fine, Mrs. Blevins, Jerry Blevins will clean his stupid bedroom before he throws even one more pitch, even though he cleaned said stupid bedroom last stupid month.

(For real: is Jerry Blevins suppose to, like, clean his stupid bedroom every month of the year?)

OMG, if Jerry Blevins sees one more Instagram of homemade foodstuffs he’s going to have to seriously cull who he follows on certain social media platforms. Plebeian, for real, people. Your life is not mythology no matter how much sepia you wash it in.

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Derek Jeter’s appeal is universal.

While almost entirely devoid of baseball coverage, per se, French (and other francophone) news media appear to have discovered one means of driving traffic already popular in the United States — namely, by invoking the name of popular Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.

One finds, by way of illustration, that the shortstop’s surname appears in numerous French-language headlines whose attendant articles/posts concern neither baseball, nor the Yankees, nor the longtime shortstop himself.

Below are five recent examples of instances in which French news media have exploited Derek Jeter’s popularity to attract readers to otherwise entirely unrelated pieces.

Title: BlackBerry Prêt à Jeter l’Éponge (link).
Source: Le Vif.
Subject: A popular smartphone manufacturer.
Mentions of Derek Jeter: None.

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