Ryan Braun is in the news for all kinds of naughty things he did and put into himself in order to be a better, more productive, healthier baseball player. Ultimately, I’m glad that he’s being punished and I hope he learns a lesson from all of this.

That lesson, the one I hope he learns, is not one of the ones that the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers tried to instill in me and my son when we attended a game at Miller Park last year and provided us with self-improvement themed baseball cards, which I had totally forgotten about until my hetero-sexual life mate, Bill Parker, brought his kids to my house last weekend and found them. Perhaps Bill should have learned a valuable lesson about not snooping, but considering I’m getting an entire not-entirely-unamusing NotGraphs post out of it, I have decided to leave that lesson untaught. Instead, in retaliation, I plan to show Monday’s video to his children when they’re teenagers (note: someone remind me to do this in about 10 years).

Anyway, in the meantime, here is the first installment of Life Lessons with the 2012 Brewers, starring Ryan Braun:

“To those you meet, be sweet: Having good manners is important. Learn them now and use them forever.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Click to embiggen.

Contrary to the reader’s poorly formed beliefs and deeply-held values, the image here is not the product of an hour’s worth of belabored photo-editing, but rather a real screencap of a real website regarding men’s hairstyles found recently by the author on Her Majesty’s secret internet.

Barring any inconsistencies among his travel documents — an entirely real contingency, that — the author is relocating for about a year to Paris beginning in the middle of September. In preparation for said move — and in a gesture of supreme self-interest — he has resolved to publish in this space a brief, daily French exercise concerning base-and-ball.

What follows is such an exercise — featuring, in this case, a passage from French-language Canadian daily La Presse regarding Ichiro Suzuki’s 4000th hit. The author has included commentary regarding certain words or phrases of note either because (a) those words and phrases are particularly difficult, but the author has grasped their meaning or (b) they are particularly difficult and the author has abandoned all attempts to make sense of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

On August 21st, 2013, Ichiro Suzuki knocked his 4,000th professional hit. What happened after is best described by Grant Brisbee of SB Nation:

There is a mini-controversy about Ichiro’s 4,000th hit.

Clarification: There is a dumb mini-controversy about Ichiro’s 4,000th hit. On one side, there are the people who think it’s pretty neat that Ichiro has collected 4,000 hits between Japan and the majors.

On the other side, there are people who are upset that other people think it’s pretty neat. Because some of those hits weren’t in the majors, which nullifies the “neat” and makes the round number uninteresting, I guess? Look, I don’t know.

I feel like this sums it up pretty perfectly. Brisbee goes on to do some projections about what Ichiro might have done had he played his whole career in MLB, but I don’t want to even go that far.

To me, 4,000 is less of a landmark as it is a reminder. It’s a reminder that though this player may now be a bit of a shell of himself at 39, the whole of him, the complete Ichiro was and is a dynamic player that changed a lot about the game. I would link clips to some of his highlights, but that’s not needed right now. His great throws, his great catches, his tremendous base running plays are still in your heads. Even if you don’t remember the exact play, you can picture the type of play because you still know what type of player Ichiro was. There will be a slew of highlight reels when Ichiro finally retires. For now, I’ll just present this one:

I’m not that great at lip reading, but I’m pretty sure I picked out a few phrases:

• Oh my God
• He touched me
• Oh my God
• I have to call my mom
• He touched me
• Oh my God

Again, I’m not the best lip reader, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t say:

• If he ever reaches the 4,000 hit milestone, I’ll really have to contemplate how I value the hits he got in Japan due to various arguments around ballparks, skill of competition, and statistical translation between leagues. I look forward to these moments, and look forward to making my thoughts known when that time comes.

None of us deserve Ichiro, and he will soon be gone. To paraphrase a song: Dig him up and shake his hand. Appreciate the man.

Dayn Perry and the present author are recording a Question Time™ edition of FanGraphs Audio at 1:30pm ET tomorrow (Friday).

The reader is invited to submit a question for Perry — who is probably drunk and should definitely go home — in the comment section below.

In the absence of video evidence like that above, the reader might find some difficulty in articulating to another party the experience of young Oakland right-hander Sonny Gray’s excellent curveball, a pitch that appears to have been worth more than five runs above average so far per every hundred thrown.

What follows are seven similes that might at least begin to approximate the experience of same.

1. It’s like having an epiphany at Caldor’s.

2. It’s like a meadowlark that’s real aggressive in business.

3. It’s like Werner Herzog’s description of conquest, probably.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is America, for God’s sake. I should not have to pronounce confusing foreign names like “Nelson Cruz,” and neither should you. Therefore, I propose that we refer to each foreign ballplayer by the closest English translation of his name. As a modest service to my fellow patriots, I have taken the liberty of producing some — in this case, for a sampling of Spanish names of particular relevance. Some interpretive license was involved, and you are welcome to question my translations. Just don’t question my right to call a man whatever I damn well please, no matter how embarrassing.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am not a dishonest person, in general. I am a curious person. When I want to know how much interest a Kenneth Branagh signed Red Sox jersey would garner on Craigslist, I’m not dissuaded by simple facts like: I don’t have one, and: It doesn’t exist. I am far more curious than dishonest, especially if I might find a person who is both an avid Red Sox fan and admirer of Kenneth Branagh.  So I did a bad thing. I lied and said I possess something I don’t. I did it just to know.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, Brian Cashman. It is a shame that your ex-mistress’s lawyer is partners with Alex Rodriguez’s lawyer, and that there’s now a conflict of interest requiring him to reveal that you told your mistress that you knew of steroid use on the Yankees and didn’t care. And about how you misled federal investigators during the Roger Clemens investigation.

It’s just like the time that I, Hopeless Joe, found out that my mistress’s lawyer was sleeping with my mistress, but really she wasn’t my mistress, just a woman I liked but who would never have noticed me, and her lawyer was indeed a lawyer but not really her lawyer, but rather her boyfriend. Because of course she had a boyfriend. And that’s just another reason she would never have noticed me. And then she was single, and still she didn’t notice me. And I passed her ex-boyfriend on the street once and he accidentally spilled coffee on my pants but I was too timid to say anything, and also he looked like he probably took steroids, but really I’m sure he just went to the gym a lot, and everyone looks like they take steroids compared to me, and also I’ve heard of Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens and that’s why my situation is very similar.

Or maybe it’s not.

Back in March, WWE superstar Daniel Bryan laid down a challenge to Josh Reddick of the Oakland Athletics.

I hereby challenge @JoshReddick16 to a beard-off til years end. Fans vote, loser shaves it off. #BeardOff pic.twitter.com/SFUcFstgrN

— Daniel Bryan (@WWEDanielBryan) March 5, 2013

The beard-off was later accepted by Reddick, with the details as follows: grow your beard until the end of the calendar year and fans would vote on whose beard was better. The loser of the vote would then have to shave it off.

While Reddick trimmed his early in the year, the former “American Dragon” hasn’t tamed his at all.

Read the rest of this entry »