Jumbo McGinnis — noun \d͡ʒəm-boʊ mɪk-gɪn-ɪs\

1. early baseball pitcher and catcher
2. a steamy, hearty Jumbo McGinnis, such as one might have after an evening of Indian fare

Jumbo McGinnis — verb \d͡ʒəm-boʊ mɪk-gɪn-ɪs\ [Jumbo McGinnis’ing, Jumbo McGinnis’d, Jumbo McGinnis’s]

1. to Jumbo McGinnis all up in a particular joint
2. to squat over a rectangle of well-manicured clay, with the breeze gently curling the fairground flags in the distance, the factories at rest for the day — progress must take a pause at times too — and pretend to Jumbo McGinnis, such as for a photograph, internet meme, or baseball card meme
3. to deposit a Jumbo McGinnis in a location of protest

example: “Ted’s proposal could not have gone any worse even if he had stamped onto the boardroom table, marched to Stevenson’s tablet, and Jumbo McGinnis’d a fat, mushy Jumbo McGinnis right on that shimmering touchscreen.”

Does a GIF ever warrant a border 150 pixels in width?

I think you know the answer.

Oh! It’s such a hat tip that I give to Brian Reinhart.

This is a man — Mr. F. Rodney — capable of setting the ERA record for relievers and tossing 34 shutdowns with only 2 meltdowns in 2012:

This is the naked version of that selfsame man:

Guess which version blew the save in Sunday night’s key Caribbean Series game?

I’m not supposed to post on Saturdays. And I get Groundhog’s Day off too, as NotGraphs adheres to all bank holidays, Christian holidays, Muslim and Jewish Holidays, Hindu Holidays, the good Canadian Holidays, and mammal-based holidays, such as the present one.

But news, unlike us, does not take a vacation and sip the nectar of goodwill from a shuttered post office.

Hark:

[Brooks] Conrad wore batting gloves during batting practice today because he developed blisters on his hands on Friday.

That selfsame Brooks Conrad rubbed his calloused hambones in the clay of many batter’s boxi across these well-lit United States (and one boxi in Canada); he squeezed tight his 52-ounce bat using only God’s creation, his muscly, determined fingers; commentators swooned as he fisted singles and doubles across North America’s green fields — but something was lost in translation, some majesty of a dusty plant foot and rotating hips, some charm in a jaw jutting with chaw; some magic must have altered its ingredients; the flavor isn’t the same; the spices have the same names but it doesn’t taste like home runs; a blister appears and suddenly it feels like I am wearing another man’s wardrobe.

I recently encountered a new means of writing poetry. The method is simple: Collect several disparate magazines; cut out some phrases. Don’t have a plan. Just cut.

Get different kinds of magazines too. The Economist, Sports Illustrated, Womanly Digest of Femmerica. Don’t try to remember what you’ve cut out and don’t try to look for certain words. Put the pieces together, scramble them, add a few words, add some S’s, and make a poem.

Well, I did a proxy of this method. A facsimile, perhaps. I used only the adds here on NotGraphs, FanGraphs, and RotoGraphs. Most of these ads tried to tell me I needed to buy something to finally great that Great New Plateau in life. So I went ahead and built a contrary poem. Hopefully it will convey what is true; that you, dear human reader, are beautiful, if you’ll accept that:

Villanelle week. By now you should know. Villanelle week.

Others have tried:

• Regarding Who Isn’t the Boss of Me
• Villabelle
• Fantasy Choices I Have Made
• Nick Punto, One Time, Tried to Break His Bat
• Who Should Be in the Hall of Fame?
• Tale of VandenHurk

Only one can succeed. This is poetry. Only one can succeed, and that one is me:

The offseason is the video game season — because unless we have the patience to find streaming footage of Australian or Latin American baseball, this is all the diamond action we get. And though we have not reached the apex of the video game season — thereabouts of Spring Training when new versions of The Show and OOTP and whatnot start pouring into our grateful gullets — we do have a game to review in the form of the MLB’s new Facebook game entitled MLB Ballpark Empire.

Vitals:

Game: MLB Ballpark Empire
Platform: Facebook (incompatible with Facebook mobile app)
Developer: MLB
Modes: n/a
Cool Features: …it’s free? This is normally where we list a series of facets unique to the game, but the strongest and most unique component of this here title may be simply its price.

Categories:

Realism: 4/10.
Graphics: 9/10.
Difficulty: 9/10.
Details: 4/10.
Playability: 8/10.
Intangibles: 40/50.

Total Score: 74/100 (C)
Read the rest of this entry »

I’M NOT SURE THE SOURCE OF THIS DOUBLE-SPICY GIF, BUT IT’S JUS’ ABOUTTA BURN THESE SERVERS DOWN!!!

Update: The author is not actively seeking credit for this GIF. In the meantime, follow @james_in_to. I won’t tell you why.

You cannot make it into yonder Hall of Fame without some silky shoulder movements. Let Wade Dancing Boggs take your hand, show you the way.

All sorts of credit.

Kenesaw Mountain Liondis

He also has a disembodied hand, what for a’hootin’ at gamblers and riff raff.