First baseman: “Nice poke!”
Base runner: “What?”
FB: “I said, ‘Nice poke!’”
BR: “Thanks! I didn’t hear you at first! I guess the crowd is pretty loud!”
FB: “Yeah, they’re definitely proud! And why not? They love their Rays!”
BR: “Who got a raise?”
FB: “What?”
BR, after a pause: “Looks like your skipper is removing the pitcher!”
FB, after a hard squint: “Yeah, I guess it does!”
BR, after a longer pause: “So, how’s the family?”
FB: “The what?”
BR: “I say, the family!”
FB: “Pretty good, but I prefer the Corolla!”

This has been the recent Old-Timers’ Game at Yankee Stadium.

First baseman: “Nice poke.”
Base runner: “Thanks.”
FB: “No. I mean, ‘Nice poke.’”
BR: “Oh. How do you know about that?”
FB: “Dude. Baseball’s a small fraternity.”
BR: “Right. Well, do me a favor and keep it quiet, will ya?”
FB: “What’s in it for me?”
BR: “Next time you hit a ball in the 5.5 hole, I’ll ‘dive’ for it. Know what I mean? Olé!”
FB: “That’s not enough.”
BR: “What else do you want?”
FB: “Her number.”

This has been the recent Two-Timers’ Game at Yankee Stadium.
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…the single-engine plane touches down in a clearing, surrounded by impossibly tall trees, the smell of rain, and what sounds like thousands of brightly-colored parrots, squawking his name as he exits the airplane in a tan linen suit and wide-brimmed hat, a mosquito net covering his face. “Odrisamer,” the parrots say in unison. “Odrisamer Despaigne.” He tips his hat to the flock of them, and the parrots all converge onto his arms, his shoulders, his neck, nearly strangling him in the process, but Odrisamer Despaigne proves more than able to tame a thousand birds at once. He pulls a wrinkled old treasure map from one of the many pockets in his suit, and announces to no one in particular, “I think we’ve found the place.” Just then, the sound of a gunshot. “Someone’s after us,” he says, matter-of-factly, again to no one in particular, and the parrots, as quickly as they appeared, soar back up into the trees. Odrisamer Despaigne is left to search for shelter so that he can escape the evil poachers before an errant shot takes out his arm — the same arm that earned him a ticket to the States, a ticket he was glad to give up when he heard he was needed back in the jungle….

Somewhat at random this morning, I remembered the time in 2000 and 2001 when Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad tried to get Major League Baseball to contract his team. It was an exceptionally traumatic moment in my life, one that will likely only be topped by family deaths and the moment my wife finally wises up and divorces me. Of course, I would never contract my own favorite team, but I would gladly contract yours if it gave mine a better path to competitiveness. Here is roughly the order I would contract in:

1)      Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim – In part because they have been disloyal to first the state of California and then to the city of Anaheim, I want to punish them. But mostly it’s because I want to watch other teams scramble over Mike Trout and try to avoid getting stuck with Albert Pujols or Josh Hamilton.

2)      Miami Marlins – If a baseball team is contracted in the woods, and no one is paying attention, does it make a sound?

3)      Tampa Bay Rays – It’s unclear to me why Florida gets anything nice, let alone two baseball teams all to themselves that they largely ignore.

4)      Atlanta Braves – The Cobb County thing rubs me the wrong way, and an underratedly obnoxious fanbase.

5)      Washington Nationals – Should have been contracted back when they were in Montreal. This is just 10 years late.

6)      Cleveland Indians – What it will probably take to finally getting Chief Wahoo out of baseball.

7)      Oakland Athletics – What it will probably take to finally get the A’s out of Oakland and their sewage-flooded ballpark.

8)      Chicago White Sox – I just like it when bad things happen to the White Sox. The Twins could go 0-143 against everyone else, but if they went 10-9 vs. the White Sox I’d be happy.

9)      Toronto Blue Jays – U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

10)   Chicago Cubs – How would removing them from the league after 1945 have altered baseball history at all? Plus, now we can cut down the ivy and find all the outfielders who have subsisted in there over the last 100 years.

11)   Detroit Tigers – In retribution for destroying Tiger Stadium before I got to go there.

12)   New York Mets – Mets fans would presumably welcome the extra misery.

13)   Arizona Diamondbacks – Honestly, they should probably rank higher but I totally just forgot they were a baseball team until now.

14)   Texas Rangers – Natural byproduct of all the injuries. I mean, they can’t even field a team right now.

15)   Los Angeles Dodgers – You broke Brooklyn’s heart. And you destroyed a neighborhood. And your patron saint is Tommy Lasorda.

16)   New York Yankees – Getting rid of them is, literally, the only way the Twins will ever advance in the postseason.

17)   Seattle Mariners – Out of respect, should have retired with Jamie Moyer.

18)   Milwaukee Brewers – Getting rid of the baseball games just leaves more time for tailgaiting in the Miller Park parking lots.

19)   Colorado Rockies – Coors is not beer.

20)   Cincinnati Reds – I don’t really understand why anyone lives in Cincinnati. I’ve never been there and know nothing about it, but I feel comfortable passing judgment. I do like that the city was stealth-named after George Washington though.

21)   Philadelphia Phillies – Because those French fries last year were really bad, and because denying Phans an outlet for their rage might result in a city slowly turning on itself and losing its mind.

22)   St. Louis Cardinals – I didn’t want to take away the one thing The Best Fans In Baseball™ have to live for. This is the classiest contraction I’ve ever seen though.

23)   Kansas City Royals – You’re not even in Kansas. False advertising.

24)   San Francisco Giants – How could they let Barry Bonds roam around free like that? Also, I was always really angry that Marvin Benard’s last name was missing another R.

25)   Boston Red Sox – Since they suck this year, I forgot how annoying they can be.

26)   Pittsburgh Pirates – I kept you guys around as long as possible because I love that ballpark and because, after so many years in the wilderness, Yinzers deserve to enjoy decent baseball for as long as possible.

27)   Baltimore Orioles – Again, the ballpark kept them around. I needed to get more Boog’s before we got rid of this club.

28)   Houston Astros – I saved them this long out of respect for J.R. Richard, the baddest that there ever was.

29)   San Diego Padres – I still have to visit Petco, and baseball aside, everything about San Diego seems so damn pleasant.

30)   Minnesota Twins – The cheese stands alone, but they’d probably still find some way to blow it. I(will) blame Mauer.

This has been Mike makes everybody mad at him.

Some might possibly consider what happened to umpire Joe West during Tuesday’s OAK-NYM game a “scary moment”.

But lest we forget that Joe West is not only aided by a thick layer of padding (and also his umping gear HEY-YO!), but he is fortified by good-old American grit (and American grits HEY-YO!).

Joe West can be seen as a (perhaps weak) metaphor for America herself. Sure, sometimes we take a screaming liner off the chest. Wars? Down economy? Measles coming back? Gridlocked Congress? Another season of Grey’s Anatomy? We can take anything, God damn it! And if we can’t take it, we’re going to stand here and pretend like we can so we don’t look like pussies. In the case of this (perhaps weak) metaphor, Joe West is a Real American.

Joe West American

Adam LaRoche’s superb clout sent a surging Washington through in a defensive contest in Milwaukee.

Matt Williams’ men top the table in the National League East and can take heart in a return to top form by Gio Gonzalez. The wily left-hander soon proved fit in his second start following a month’s rest due to shoulder injury. Having endured a dispiriting season Gonzalez was elated by the day’s result, with a sparkling off-speed ball helping him to a well-deserved clean sheet.

Central leaders Milwaukee battled gamely on their home pitch but the Nationals were clearly the better side. Whilst Gonzalez opened play masterfully with a mix of clever changeups and well-placed fastballs, his counterpart Matt Garza quickly found trouble as two heroic strikeouts were needed to parry a Nationals buildup in the second. No such joy awaited Ron Roenicke’s hurler in the third, as a canny walk by Anthony Rendon and a smartly knocked single by Jayson Werth set the table for LaRoche’s magnificent strike.

A daring run by Jean Segura then produced a decent chance for the Brewers, but the disappointing Ryan Braun could only flail half-heartedly at the ensuing balls and by inning’s end Gonzalez had the match well in hand.

Tempers had flared briefly in the second as an indignant Matt Williams was sent off following a dodgy strike call by the Minnesotan referee. Yet it seemed Washington were only emboldened by their manager’s departure and it was in the following frame that they opened the scoring in fine style.

Late sub Tyler Clippard turned heads with three neat punchouts, but by then the result was in little doubt as a disorganized Milwaukee side had failed to piece together a convincing attack.

In the idyllic indie film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, director James Cameron tells the story of Skynet, a computer which has been created to ease the tedious labor of a shambling, bone-weary humanity. Skynet is doing great, fixing routine traffic congestion and playing Zaxxon, until it attains self-awareness on August 29, 1997 and proceeds to nearly eradicate all life (if not for a couple of meddling humans). Though much of the film was realistic, particularly in its depiction of how cool mercury looks, this particular plot point was hard to swallow. After all, computers have been ruining things long before 1997.

Take chess, for example. Chess has beguiled and tormented the great figures of history since it evolved from shatranj in the thirteenth century. For seven hundred years, people played chess according to various “styles”, having “fun” by playing risky gambits and discovering breathtaking and unforeseen combinations. This means they were playing suboptimally. Once the computer arrived, it took only a handful of decades to distill the game down to the memorization of thirty-five move opening books and a demand for a heartless positional struggle slithering toward an inevitable rook-and-pawn endgame.

Deep Blue and his pals aren’t necessarily killing baseball, because baseball is doing that itself, with its three true outcomes and five-hour games. But they do open up the possibilities of statistical calculation, which previously demanded far more arithmetic than the average person could do by candlelight. Now we can dump all the numbers of existence into a single spreadsheet, spend half an hour formatting the data, and arrive at the horrible truths that await us in a previously mystifying and vaguely interesting future.

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You may recall FanGraphs’s pre-season staff predictions. Though I, Hopeless Joe, am not officially a member of the staff, Mr. Blachman only follows what players do on Twitter and on his fantasy roster, not the win-loss records of the actual teams, so he allowed me to make his picks for him.

I, of course, chose the Padres as one of my two NL wild cards.

I did this because of players like Andrew Cashner, and his mullet, and Chase Headley, who once had a really awesome season, and whose name is pretty similar to Chase Utley’s, if you cover up a few letters.

Also, pitching excites me more than hitting, pitcher’s parks excite me more than hitter’s parks, and it just seemed to make sense that a team with seemingly smart folks at the helm would eventually figure it out.

It appears that my pick is likely to prove incorrect, just like most of the things I pick, including the entree at every buffet I’ve ever eaten at, oh why must food-borne pathogens enjoy replicating inside my insides so very, very much?

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The present author is known in some (very small) circles as the sort of person who takes pleasure, first, in identifying and then, second, celebrating with undue enthusiasm the virtues of marginalized but promising talents.

In recent years, there have been peans written to such personages as Colby Lewis and Charlie Blackmon and, most recently, entirely laconic — and also now very successful — Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber.

I am aware that the cultivation of these infatuations might seem affected. Indeed, there does appear to be a some notable qualities shared by the above-named baseballers, insofar as they all (a) are older than a player ought to be before demonstrating major-league success but also (b) produced promising sabermetric-type numbers before their actual, real success and also (c) possess a given name that begins with the letter C.

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Alex Torres– who I should have protected on my Scoresheet team!– over the weekend became the first pitcher to wear a padded, protective, giant, silly-looking hat on the mound. Hats off to Torres– or, I guess, hats on to him– for not wanting to get injured by a comebacker. Really, the part of me not trying to wring a NotGraphs post from this is 100% behind the hat, players should absolutely try to avoid being seriously injured by stuff, however clunky the hat looks.

Ah, but the part of me that is trying to wring a NotGraphs post from this thought it would make sense to search the Internet a bit for some alternative hats that Torres might consider wearing his next time on the mound.

Presenting: New Hats for Alex Torres

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Orahovac [or-a-HO-vawts] is a Croatian liqueur made from walnuts and designed — like other beverages classified as an apéritif — designed to stimulate the appetite.

The GIF embedded here of Matt Shoemaker’s excellent split-change is also designed to stimulate the appetite — not for the evening meal, however, but rather for Matt Shoemaker’s start tonight against the Texas Rangers that begins shortly after (a) 8pm ET and (b) the United States’ probably rousing victory over Portugal.

Živjeli, is what we now say.