So far as rousing public addresses are concerned, David Ortiz’s Game Four one of those lacks the gravitas, probably, of Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day Speech. On the other hand, one finds that Henry V’s career WAR production was much less impressive.
On Friday, the Seattle Mariners granted Franklin Gutierrez his freedom, as defined by his freedom to not be paid seven million dollars by the Seattle Mariners. A scant four days later, November 5, marks his Feast Day in the latest of an unrightfully-neglected series. Raise a glass to our friend, the Job of baseball, and join us in prayer.
Life: In 2009, his first season with the Mariners, an age-26 Gutierrez posted a six-win season. In the four years since then, he has suffered ailments from his elbow, knee, shoulder, groin (three times), back (twice), oblique, leg, hamstring (three times), pectoral, heel, head (twice), neck, and lower intestine. He also had a bad case of the flu.
It is, one must admit, a novel way to avoid the dehumanization of synecdoche so common in baseball. The man is not just He also, in his brief window of playing time, posted a slugging percentage north of .500. Some team will therefore take a chance on him, and he will either prove to be a winning lottery ticket, or a losing lottery ticket, or not a lottery ticket at all but rather a crude-crayon-drawn map leading to the buried remains of the family gerbil.
Spiritual Exercise: Consider the Protestant work ethic that has made America so great, at least according to your outdated middle-school history textbook. If hard work and talent are what bring people success, how do you explain the misfortune of Franklin Gutierrez? Conjure some moral failing that designates his suffering as justice, and relieve yourself of the crushing burden of knowing that happiness is essentially a series of meaningless die rolls. Then drink an American lager, and think about all the things you’d like to own if you made more money.
A Prayer for Franklin Gutierrez
HINT: His dog’s name is Astro.
Okay, that is probably not a hint, since they would have to give up their entire team for him.
But still, John F. Kennedy’s dog’s name was Lincoln, and Lincoln’s dog’s name was Kennedy, so you never know.
Although I (still) have no say whatsoever in who takes up ol’ Jim-Tim McCarver’s seat at FoxSports’ Roundtable of Sports Insights & Sports Analysis (since the last time we checked in, word is that Harold Reynolds is the front-runner — a sage decision by Fox, for sure), I will nonetheless sincerely and quixotically continue in the process of considering candidates to replace him.
Chad Finn of the Boston Globe has implored Fox to “go bold” in hiring Jim-Tim’s replacement, suggesting Pedro Martinez or Dennis Eckersley. There is no way that is bold enough for me. That is Taco Bell bold. I am looking for Brett Favre bold. So:
Candidate Profile: from Kentucky; been to Canada; kind of charming beard (via its ginger patchiness); preternatural feel for absurdism; food opinions; top-notch Twitterer; should not be confused with John Boys, Dean of Canterbury from 1619 to 1625*.
A lot of what Jim-Tim McCarver said while broadcasting felt surreal to me. Someone once wrote that he was insightful, but to me, everything Jim-Tim said sounded like a language wherein most of the words are borrowed from English, but they often have different meanings than they do in English, and the syntax is completely different. In that way, I actually sort of came to enjoy ol’ Jim-Tim.
As mentioned in the above profile, Jon Bois exhibits a preternatural feel for absurdist humor — a sort of intentional and comedic surrealism. While steeped in the language and culture of professional sports in America, Bois lives in his own world where his thoughts are molded and presented with the sincerity of Mitch Hedberg. He makes fun of sports cliché and banter, but, somehow, not in a snarky way. Perhaps Bois avoids snarkiness by exhibiting a joy in what he writes in a way that makes him vulnerable.
Many of his tweets are immediately engaging (as they often ask followers a question) yet completely ridiculous. One such:
who is the next fantasy stud & dud; well; guess what it is you
— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) September 8, 2013
I’ve been wanting to do a parsing of why the above tweet (or, say, his “Favre Watch” piece) is so funny — because it seems like they shouldn’t be so funny, yet they make me laugh whenever they pop into my head, which is pretty much every day. In said tweet there are so many basic levels of comedy:
Conclusion: Jon Bois is a comedy savant who knows some things about sports. Therefore, I consider him a strong candidate to replace Jim-Tim McCarver. I can’t really think of anything that I would like more to see on national television than Jon Bois judging, from 1-10, what ballplayers had for lunch that day, or proffering/asking for opinions on random topics that have nothing to do with the game. We’re likely to get as much or more insight from that as from most announcers presently employed.
Hey, can we agree on one thing? It's time to permanently retire Reggie Jackson's nickname http://t.co/8PP8AuwYoT
— robneyer (@robneyer) November 4, 2013
When Rob Neyer says “jump,” the present author is compelled to inquire as to which altitude might most satisfy him. And when Rob Neyer suggests by way of social media that Reggie Jackson’s nickname ought to be retired, the author says, “Hear, hear” — and whatever is the equivalent of “hear, hear” in at least three or four of the Romance languages.
What else the author says is: “There are other nicknames that ought to be retired, as well.” Nicknames like the following, for example, which are entirely authentic and not just produced by pairing randomly generated player pages from Baseball Reference with choice phrases from Yelp reviews.
This is probably not what you think.
As you may know, Out of the Park 14 (OOTP 14) is perhaps the best baseball simulation game on the market (review). It is an addicting and delicately balanced game (cue Dubuque).
But my friends over at BlueSeatLyfe.com found a way to make the game even more interesting. Below the jump, you will find a singup to enter YOURSELF into the 2013 draft class. You can choose either a position player or a pitcher, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Over the next few posts, we will follow your player through the seasons.
Will you be a bust or a boom? Will you be the first Nigerian to win the Cy Young? Will you go undrafted and then cry yourself to sleep every night? Join us and find out!
The first 5 people will be guaranteed coverage. Any additional signups will be subject to the whims of my magnanimity.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Brad Ausmus, who managed the Israeli national team’s bid for the World Baseball Classic, was named the manager of the Detroit Tigers.
The Tigers announced the hiring of Ausmus, 44, on Sunday, making him the only Jewish manager in Major League Baseball. Ausmus was a catcher for four teams in his playing days.
And poor Bob Melvin wakes up today, with a cup of herring and his daily copy of the Jerusalem Post, and has to call his agent to find out if the A’s have fired him in the night. Because, according to Wikipedia, Bob Melvin is also Jewish. (More confirmation here.)
Which means that 2 out of 30 — almost 7% — of major league managers are Jewish, making us an overrepresented minority, and surely leading to a new line of MLB Bagel Bat Weight giveaways coming to a stadium near you.
Ausmus managed Israel’s World Baseball Classic team in 2012, and once wore tefillin.
Lynn Henning of the Detroit News writes:
[Ausmus is] Jewish, which will stoke a sense of kinship between Ausmus and the Tigers’ deep Jewish audience. In that context, there has been something of a void in the Tigers’ profile dating to the end of Hank Greenberg’s hallowed years in Detroit.
Because that’s why I root for a team: shared religion with team’s manager. Excuse me while I go check out the latest news about the 2010-11 Texas Legends of the NBA D-League.
Some people are pretty surprised that Wodehouse wrote a story once about baseball.
It has often been said of this world that all one needs to survive in it is an endless supply of brandy and the collected works of PG Wodehouse. In fact, this isn’t the case at all. One would die of malnutrition, almost certainly, if confined to that particular diet — and would likely lose a taste for literature, however uproarious, at some point en route to Blackest Death. That the man who said it often did so from within the confines of a hospital for incurable pauper lunatics indicates that it probably oughtn’t be filed under wisdom proper.
Because the waking life holds nothing for me, I took an afternoon nap recently. Within the gauzy bounds of that nap, I learned that Pedro Martinez, baseball merchant of the sublime, had recorded and released a country music album. I purchased and downloaded it but — in keeping with the general state of shit — I woke up before I could listen to it.
I was so struck by this dream that I hinted at it to the world …
Pedro Martinez Country Music Album.
— Dayn Perry (@daynperry) November 2, 2013
This was at once a statement of fact, the first entry on a list of demands and — like all forms of communication — a distress signal. As badly as I wanted Pedro Martinez Country Music Album to exist, I might as well wish for an electric sandwich.
Things as they are, I am left with nothing but remnants in the foul-smelling penumbrae of my imagination …
In Donald Barthelme’s “How I Write My Songs,” whomp-whomp is a refrain, and so the title of one track on Pedro Martinez Country Music Album will be “Whomp-Whomp,” which could be a thinly veiled song about coitus — suggestive yet necessary, like a bra. “Got Damn, Woman” will be another track, honky-tonkish in execution. “Funeral for a Mockingbird” is yet another, acoustic until Pedro himself drifts in with the pedal steel in the second verse. “Angina in Carolina” is his hymn to long-haul truckers. During production, Pedro used accomplished Nashville session players, I feel sure.
I know little else about Pedro Martinez Country Music Album. It visited me in a dream, is all.
Last week, I mocked Dick and The Cannon for treating Terry like she had the emotions of a twelve year old. I was wrong. In all of their terribleness, I missed something in these characters that this week’s episode of Back in the Game makes entirely clear. Not only are their own concerns about Terry’s emotional state, entirely valid, but it accurately reflects them as well. Everyone on this show, including Terry’s son, acts like an idiot child. Only one of them has a valid excuse for that.
In this week’s episode, Terry plans to go trick or treating with Danny, over Danny’s objections, dressing her almost-pubescent son as Raggedy Andy to her Raggedy Anne in a selfish quest to preserve her family tradition that will get her son beat up. But, when a former high school rival rekindles their competition, Terry can’t wait to ditch her son so she can go to Dick the misogynist league president’s costume party in a hotter costume. It’s not entirely clear why people like Dick, given that he’s a massive douche, but there seems to be an endless supply of attractive people at his party, where he makes them compete in stupid games to stroke his ego.
The Cannon, meanwhile, is standing watch in the cemetery ostensibly to keep kids from knocking over his wife’s tombstone, but also to renew his feud with another septuagenarian, as they keep adding details to their wives’ tombstones in a game of one-upsmanship. They wind up bonding over their love of their wives’ asses.
