I was in the mood to do a fairly big portrait of a baseball player’s face, where I would split the face into nine parts and do each part separately and assemble them at the end, like a very easy jigsaw puzzle.

So I opened a Web site that had all the MLB teams listed on it, closed my eyes and moved my cursor around.

I opened my eyes and, well, it wasn’t resting on top of a team name, but the closest team name was the Houston Astros.

I opened their roster page and did the same. I opened my eyes again and the cursor was resting just to the left of José Altuve’s name.

I umm-ed and aah-ed about whether to do him, just because it’s a bit lame to do a big portrait of a small-ish player. Dumb boring joke stuff.

But, I had to stick with my choice, so here it is. And by “here,” I mean “above these words.”

Click = más grande.

5/6: Has MRI on elbow.
5/7: Scheduled to see Dr. Andrews.
5/8: Scheduled to see Julie Andrews.
5/9: Cast in upcoming Sound of Music Live 2: The All-Stars of Sport Climb Every Mountain
5/10: Rehearsals for Sound of Music Live 2 begin.
5/11: Wieters suffers slight case of laryngitis.
5/12: Wieters scheduled to see throat doctor. Doctor prescribes rest and hot liquids.
5/13: Wieters drinks tea, burns tongue. Sound of Music Live 2 places him on 3-day DL.
5/14: While recovering from tongue burn, Wieters reaches for television remote control, strains shoulder.
5/15: Strained shoulder is resolved.
5/16: Tongue burn is resolved.
5/17: Laryngitis is resolved.
5/18: Wieters resumes rehearsals for Sound of Music Live 2.
5/19: Wieters stumbles over new words to My Favorite Things, reprinted here:

Manny Machado and Nicky Markakis
Signing Ubaldo looks like a mistake. Is
Jonathan Schoop better than he appears
Nelson Cruz trying to earn the fans’ cheers

Zach Britton’s finding a home in the bullpen
With O’Day and Hunter it’s kind of a full pen
Jones, Hardy, Davis have all started slow
Off to see Andrews, Matt Wieters did go

5/20: Wieters trips over a girl who is sixteen, going on seventeen. Hurts his elbow.
5/21: Sent for MRI.
5/22: Repeat visit to Dr. Andrews, who reminds him he never followed up after the first visit.
5/23: Wieters has Tommy John Surgery.
Next April: Wieters rejoins cast of Sound of Music Live 2.

It has come to my attention, dear NotGraphs readers, that some policies have been put in place over at Major League Baseball. Specifically, it seems as if MLB has strong-armed Apple, Inc. into removing certain baseball-team-centric podcasts from the iTunes store. I have provided a link in the previous sentence to prove that this is not a farce. It is a real thing, and it frankly upsets me. It seems silly to list all of the reasons, since the intrepid reader can almost certainly list most of them. Suffice it to say that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from any angle I’m privy to, but perhaps some further explanation from the Lords of Media will provide insight.

In the meantime, I’m here today not as a middling baseball writer but as an IT Professional. I’m here to help you continue listening to your favorite podcasts that were removed from the iTunes store.

1. Manually Add Them in iTunes

Just because iTunes removed some shows from the store, they are not gone forever. Any podcasts publishes updates via RSS. This is the address that iTunes and others look at to see if a new podcast has been posted. Every podcast has one. The RSS Feed for Stealing Home (which is still in the iTunes store as of this writing) is http://www.hardballtimes.com/stealing-home/feed/. Others may be listed through services like Feed Burner or Libsyn. In any case, you can use that address to manually add the show back into your iTunes library. The directions for doing so are laid out nicely here.

2. Use a Podcatching App

If you are in the enviable position of not needing to use iTunes, now would be a good time to switch to a different application to grab all your podcasts. These applications, called Podcatchers by the most pretentious, basically do the same thing that iTunes does but without the handcuff of the iTunes ecosystem.

If you use iTunes to sync podcasts to your iPhone, I suggest switching to Downcast. They have apps for both iOS and Mac OS, and they come at a very reasonable price. Downcast is very customizable regarding things like episode retention and auto-downloading, and can be synced across devices using iCloud. You can use Downcast to beam episodes to a Google Chromecast as well, if you have bangin’ speakers attached to your AV setup. You can add podcasts via manual feed input or a very robust search function.

Android users can look at Doggcatcher for all of their podcasting needs. Doggcatcher comes with many of the same features of Downcast — easy search, customizable feeds, Chromecast support — and is also very reasonably priced. It was the first app I downloaded when I got a new Android phone.

This MLB/iTunes crackdown is a little scary and a little disheartening, but with a little extra effort, you can still get your favorite podcasts into your ear holes at your convenience. The real problem for podcast creators is getting new listeners through channels besides iTunes, but that is an even more alienating post that I will have to save for later.

To All:

It’s been a while since we’ve all relaxed a little and cut loose, so now that the quarterly reports are done, it’s time for a little office party. So mark your calendars for Friday, May 9, from 11:30 to 12:45, in the conference room. We have to get everything out of there by 1:00, however, because Cameron’s got a meeting in there.

We wanted this party to be a little different, so this year we have a theme: TOPPS!

We’re going to rip open new packs, share all our favorite old cards, and make fun of Oh-Pee-Chee. Sounds like an alcohol-free blast!

But wait! Every party needs three things: Chips, DIPS, and decorations. So let’s see what we’ve got in the NotGraphs supply closet:

Check

Check

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Pow.

That was Wily Mo Pena’s second homer of the game, and it was a doozy. The stadium, at its deepest, is 400 feet. That homerball Apollo’d about 490 feet — or it would have if it didn’t first connect with what appears to be a sufficiently high light fixture (see 1:59).

What also makes me happy about this video: Not just seeing Wily Mo Pena alive and doing things, but seeing the twirly finger home run sign transcending all language barriers. You and I, English-speaking persons, can watch a Dominican (Spanish-speaking) hitter communicate with a Japanese-speaking umpire and all three parties (us, he, and them) can understand that scene. There’s something sparkling about it all.

Also, there’s something, I dunno, Thriller album cover about this:

Thanks to Yakyu Baka and Daily Sports on this.

Largely famous for his very celeritous fastball, Kansas City right-hander Yordano Ventura recorded six of his 10 strikeouts on Monday night against San Diego via his very sufficient curveball (box).

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House of Cosbys has and will always entertain me — but it also taught me a valuable lesson: The more you repeat something, the, um, less special it is. It is with this warning that I present to you “Tyler Chatwood in the Woods, Surrounded by Chats”.

“I went to the woods because I wished to chat deliberately…” –Henry David Thoreau

For better or for worse, this has been a NotGraphs post tagged as Men Surrounded by Things.

This has been Inserting Aaron Harang into Classic Silent Films. May it never be again.

[Photo is of the e-trade baby, not my actual baby.]

“Hi. I’m seven months old. And even though I can’t talk yet, I can still have thoughts. Fortunately, my daddy can read my mind, so when I was thinking that I would like to write this post, he agreed to transcribe it for me. Even though I don’t really know what baseball is yet, I do know something about fantasy baseball, because sometimes when my daddy thinks he has my head facing away from his computer screen, I’m actually looking out of the corner of my eye. I don’t really know why he and mommy are so obsessed with me not looking at their computer screen. They would rather I stare at the wall? Adults are so silly. It’s not even like they’re doing anything with crazy blinking graphics or other things that are going to screw up my attention span or give me nightmares. They’re reading the New York Times. Big deal. Scrolling text. Wow. Really dangerous. Ugh, adults. They don’t even let me check my e-mail, EVEN THOUGH MY DADDY GOT ME A GMAIL ACCOUNT THE WEEK I WAS BORN. Why be so crazy as to sign up for the e-mail account when you’re not even going to let me check it?

“Where was I? Sorry, it’s hard to stay focused when you’re seven months old. Very easily distracted. Anyway, what was I talking about? Socks, right? They’re so annoying, and yet I don’t quite have the hand-eye coordination yet to pull them off. Ugh. What’s wrong with exposed feet? I like to be able to see my toes to make sure they’re still attached.

“No, wait, I wasn’t talking about socks. I was talking about fantasy baseball, right? I know my daddy is kind of obsessed with fantasy baseball, because when he feeds me at 3AM, the first thing he does is check the ESPN app on his phone to look at box scores. (Why do I still insist on waking up at 3AM to be fed? Because I am evil.) He doesn’t even really try to burp me anymore. He just gives me a couple of perfunctory slaps on the back and then moves me so my eyes can’t see the screen and starts checking all the late games. That is crazy behavior from someone who claims to want to get right back to sleep. Even once I’ve fallen asleep, sometimes he still checks the last couple of games before he puts me down. Sometimes, just to trick him, I pretend I’m asleep, wait for him to get ready to put me down, and then I open my eyes and start kicking my legs so he has to start over again with the bouncing and the ssssshhhhhing. Why can I only fall asleep when someone is bouncing and ssssshhhhing me? I don’t know, I’m just a baby, why should I know?

“What else do I know about fantasy baseball? My daddy is very mad at someone named Carlos Santana, and he should have made that trade someone offered him yesterday but he was too scared to give up on the season so early in the year. Guess what? This isn’t his year. Chris Sale is out for another month, Josh Hamilton is not going to be the same once he comes back, and that hail mary Johan Santana pick at the end of the draft? Even a seven-month-old knows that is not going to be a difference-maker.

“I do need someone to explain WHIP to me, though. What does it stand for, and who made it up? Some things in this world are just super-confusing.”

These coeds also can’t believe the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces in 1862.

The capital-R Record states that Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on May 5th and originally established in the Mexican state of Puebla so that young dipsomaniacal Americans might have a sanctioned pretense — between St. Patrick’s Day (in mid-March) and Memorial Day (in late-May) — upon which to make terrible life decisions.

The intent of the current post is to establish is that, upon examination of the aforementioned Record, that Cinco de Jonathan Mayo — presumably in honor of MLB.com prospect analyst Jonathan Mayo — does not appear to be a real holiday. This is not, of course, to discount the importance of Mayo’s work, but rather just to establish that said work has not (yet) been officially recognized by means of a widely celebrated holiday.