HIGHLIGHTS:

• “tor-nah-do”
• “Postage paid!!!” *rapturous laughter*
• Outfield shifting!
• Invisible batsmen!
• Jeanette and Alex, their love preserved for all ages, heralded throughout the universe with a resounding ITA!
• BRRRMP. Double!

According to this totally reputable source, Tornado Baseball (1976) was the third baseball video game released to the public. That makes it a key component to–

VIDEO GAME HISTORY!

This happens tomorrow.

It's official! Local HERO CAT will be throwing out a first pitch on Tuesday, May 20th! @TheHeroCat

— Bakersfield Blaze (@BakoBlaze) May 15, 2014

You, you’re here with me, on the internet. So doubtless you’ve seen this:

I know, right?

But you may not realize this brings about the final age of baseball. Writers know the best stories have inevitable endings — those stories that can end only one way — Juliet, Romeo, they must die — Yossarian must never leave the island but by desertion — and Finnegan’s Wake must, um, riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs… James Joyce is a helluva drug.

I diverged. This brings baseball to its final, most golden age. The Cat-Baseball Era.
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The Victorino	The Emotional Substance

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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.

Ohhh, it’s so easy to boo from the safety of your seat. But place yourself beside a one Mr. Robinson Cano, realize for yourself that he stands not tall enough to pinch his head while holding a beer, but in fact tall enough (six-foot) and big enough (muscley) to make for a more than formidable fistacuffs partner.

So boo while he can’t reach you with the bat; boo while he’s still a small man at a distance — because you’ll be telling your grandkids about the day you got to meet him and how down-to-earth he was and how you got to shake his strong hands. You’ll beat your boo-words into starstruck platitudes, and you’ll love it.

The Flying Venable

Ready the sails
and fasten the cannons.
Stay the swabbing water.
A rasping of metal,
a yawning of lumber,
a rushing of sweet, warm winds —
the heavens don’t have enough space
for the mighty flying Venable.

H.M.S. Werth and her volleys be damned,
the suggestions of gravity and her laws be damned,
the thermodynamics and basic mathematics —
all of it be damned.
Send this vessel skyward,
make this Venable flying,
and they’ll remember that name.

Vitals:

Game: Out of the Park Baseball 15 (OOTP Baseball 15)
Platform: PC
Developer: OOTP Developments
Modes: Franchise, Online Franchise
Cool Features: Incredible contracts system, massive player and coaches database (now including accurate INTERNATIONAL rosters!), complete customizability, plenty of add-ons, and a robust online community

Categories:

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

Total Score: 98/100 (A+)
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#Rockies call up Josh Rutledge. He literally just walked in. Corresponding love coming…

— Nick Groke (@nickgroke) April 9, 2014

For those having a difficult time conceptualizing this particular major league transaction, here is a visual aid courtesy of the NotGraphs InfoGraphs Department:

Super many thanks to Paul Agnello for keeping up the love vigil and handing this bit of news to us.

Kindly place your eyeballs directly on the monitor to fully enjoy this duel of filth between Alex Cobb and Yu Darvish. These two gentleman twirlers went seven scoreless on Sunday.

Pro Tip: If you watch these two loops, one GIF per eye, for thirty rotations, you will indeed be teleported to medieval England, where you can convince the locals you are a powerful warlock once they see your walkman, velcro shoes, and beeper.

Our friends at MyKBO.net pass along this footage from a recent game in the Korean Baseball Organization:

Let’s not gather together here as the lesser Internetters are wont to do and mock someone beyond our circle of relations. Instead, let’s look at this horrendous turn of events for the Korean center fielder Na Sung-beom and recognize it for what it likely is: A once-in-a-career moment.

No player would find himself among the professional ranks if he or she frequently visited Three Error Town. This center fielder here, he’s in no way as bad as this, his worst fielding moment. So let’s enjoy this rare destruction of pride and professionalism. Let’s laugh alongside Na Sung-beom — though he may not yet be laughing — and admit, “Hey, that’s us out there in center field, booting the ball, then dropping the ball, then wildly slinging the ball at no one in particular. That’s all of us. Today, we’re all Na Sung-beom.”

True story, the softball team I founded and manage lost 32-0 and then 32-0, again, in our first two games. We’re a team of Na Sung-beom’s worst moments. And, hey, we kinda love it.

UPDATE:
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