In this edition of Andrew Dice Clay Interprets Baseball Poetry, the Dice Man sets his sights on the famous piece by Franklin Pierce Adams, Baseball’s Sad Lexicon.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the wake of last night’s events, some of you may be looking for more quantitative ways of celebrating the Unlikely Hero; or, alternatively, looking for the quantitatively correct imprecations with which to curse the Baseball Gods. Here at NotGraphsGraphs© (Putting the Graphs back in NotGraphs since 2012^TM), we’ve got you covered: we’ve invented a metric called Unweighted Runs Beyond Expectancy (uRBE). It’s a name that doesn’t make sense for a number that doesn’t make sense, and if you knew how much they paid us here, you’d have a little more sympathy.

Read the rest of this entry »

TBS’s INNOVATIVE STAT boxes imply the statistic displayed within is fresh,  saucy, and state-of-the-flippin-art. OPS, however,  hasn’t been fresh or state-of-the-flippin-art since like 1984, though it retains bits of its original sauce. With that in mind, I made lists of other things that were once innovative but now lack some component of freshness, sauciness, or state-of-the-flippin-artness.  

INNOVATIVE MEDICINE

Bloodletting Techniques

Leeches

Scarification

Forearm/Neck Venesection

Drill a Hole in their Head

INNOVATIVE TERRITORIAL DIVIDES

Duchy (by Grand-ness)

Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

All the Duchies I bought playing Dominion

Read the rest of this entry »

MLB.com uncovers the close friendship between Hyun-Jin Ryu and Juan Uribe.

Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis doesn’t understand it.

Manager Don Mattingly is puzzled, too.

Members of Korean media who have followed pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu since he was a teenager are tickled, but they are not completely surprised the rookie’s best friend on the team is Juan Uribe, a player many think he wouldn’t have much in common with.

“It’s like the Odd Couple, him and Uribe get along so well,” Mattingly said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Like here, where Ryu slaps Uribe.

Or here, where they smack each other.

Or here, where they dance.

Isn’t it crazy that people of two different ethnicities can be friends?! It’s almost like we live in a multicultural world! Next thing you know, men and women will be allowed to shake each other’s hands.

These numbers appear on our website in different places, and the equation makes sense, if not math sense. Do you know what this means?

10.7 (24.7 + 23.4) = 4:19

Juan Uribe’s exploits, in GIF form, are best paired with the following Henry Miller quote:

“For every million born 999,999 are doomed to die and never be born again. But the one that makes a home run is assured of life eternal.”

Congratulations, Juan Uribe. You are forever.

Thanks for the GIF, @ChadMoriyama. You are appreciated.

Though regarded in our time as the Father of Western Thought, it was by embracing his own ignorance and asking almost exclusively questions of his interlocutors that Socrates sought out wisdom.

Nor has the Socratic tradition lost its relevance as a rhetorical device in the modern age. One finds, for example, in the footage embedded here, Oakland right-hander Grant Balfour utilizing an urgent line of inquiry to better understand Detroit designated hitter Victor Martinez’s impressions of the world.

Asks Balfour of Martinez: “Why the fuck you looking at me, man?” And also: “What’s your fucking problem, man?” One notes immediately the deep similarities between this brief exchange and much of Plato’s Phaedrus.

It was only a matter of time, I guess. I bit my tongue because he’s my boss and it seemed harmless and all. But now Carson Cistulli and his francophonic spouse and his francophonic article category have given Google the impression that not only do I speak French, but that I live in Europe and purchase mes voitures with yonder “Euros” currency:

NO. WRONG. I buy my cars not with “Euros,” but “Americas.”

Good. Old fashioned. You. Ess. Dee.

WHAT MORE TROUBLING: The NSA only needs 51% proof of foreignness in order to peruse my emails, download my browsing history, or lock me in the Federal Reserve for 71 months of grueling interrogation.

Moreover, you, the person reading this, have probably just crossed that 51% threshold yourself. More than likely, you’ve read some FranceGraphs, you’ve adopted a Curacaoan name, and you’ve watched Yu Darvish GIFs. Welcome to the 51%, my dear reader.

So: Well done, Carson. You’ve doomed us all.

“Sonny gets sunnier day by day by day…” –Paul Simon

Billy Beane’s not a player,
he just walks a lot—
well, mostly it’s pacing through the muck
through the bleach smell
the rare scintilla from the dugout.
In the corridors, here, they store stuff
Billy don’t know what.
Billy don’t know how
but it’s essential.

Other places you go, some of the places
Billy played
it’s like this stuff doesn’t exist—
the cleaners and the men who wield them
wield mops, strings, cords.
Stuff you could kill yourself with.
That’s all hidden other places.
Here, it’s been flushed out
by nature:
rain and shit backing up the bay
spreading out the brown.

Then you’re down one-nothing.

But then there’s something Sonny
does—doesn’t hump the yacker up there
(the yellow hammer that bests Verlander)
a Vogt of lightning at the end of the night game—

the slight rhymes come to Billy now.
They’re essential, too, he knows.
Like the cleaners, the natural rhymes of quiet thought
are reminders how it all fits:
shifts, platoon splits, shits, bleach
repeat.

Eventually, it’ll all be clean.

Friends, I’m so sorry. I was supposed to get this review to you last Friday, but stupid Gregg Doyle and his stupid take on stupid celebrations got in my way and prevented me to from recapping the latest episode of ABC’s new sitcom, Back In the Game, about a single mother who moves back in with her ex-ballplayer dad, and tries to coach her son’s Little League team. Thanks to Carson for taking a break from his usually autocratic, by the numbers leadership style, and letting me post this today

Now, times are tough for the little sitcom that could. Nielson says it earned a 2.2 rating for its series premiere, which was better than what ABC finished the year with in 2012-2013, but also their lowest sitcom debut since 2009. Last week, that number dropped by 14 percent, so it’s probably a matter of time before this is replaced by re-runs of Modern Family.

In the interim, let’s enjoy the time we have together.

Read the rest of this entry »