Like Frodo Baggins and Prince Adam of Eternia before him, Craig Counsell discovered throughout his career (whether by his own virtue or by association) that great things come from unexpected sources.
You yourself, reader, might be one such unexpected source of greatness. By the Power of Counskull, I encourage you: go out and do something amazing today.
Today installment of Some Common Phrases, GIF-ustrated, features a man that has long embodied the very essence of “grittiness.”
Midwesterners are a hearty, kindly folk. They are polite and well-mannered.
They are hard-working, and though they find pleasure in but a few, simple things — a Josh Willingham homerun, for instance — they enjoy those things uninhibitedly. They sincerely hope that you are able to partake of similar wholesomeness in this earthly life before you roast in hell in the hereafter.
If you need directions, or the recipe for a high-carb, high-protein hot dish, just ask. If you need to be reaffirmed, please refer to the above GIF.
Hi there.
Did you know that you are pleasureable to Mike Schmidt? You are. He really finds you very silly, in all the best ways. The very sight of you brings him joy.
Oooo-hooo-hooo-hoo-hoo! 😉
To Mike Schmidt, you are a rainbow capybara with dolphin friends, singing kind songs in a summer rain. When you talk to Mike Schmidt, he feels your voice pour over him like a refreshing waterfall in a world without war or violent crime — a world that smells like clean laundry, where you smell like organic cilantro, where that cilantro is tickling the corners of his nose, too, forever.
Yes, Mike Schmidt just likes to look at you, to see you smile; he loves to see you flourish. He hopes that you are doing well, and that you will continue to amuse him for as long as you both shall live, which Mike Schmidt wishes would be forever and ever, because he just cannot get enough of you.
Mike Schmidt thanks you for being you.
Over the off-season, the Milwaukee Brewers asked fans to submit uniform designs. The contest winner would have her/his design made into actual uniforms, which the Brewers would then wear in a couple of spring exhibition games. NotGraphs demigod Dayn Perry covered the winning selection in an article at CBS’s Eye On Baseball; sadly, Dayn’s own “unique” entry was not selected as the winner.
The winning entry, by Ben of Richfield, MN
The Barrel Man head on the cap is awesome, even if the rest of the uniform is pretty bland. I do like the single stripe on the sleeve — a simple but classy touch. And, after slogging through all of the entries, I feel confident in saying that the winning entry was easily one of the best complete designs.
Most of the other entries were slight variations on Brewers uniforms past and present, and aren’t worth parsing here. But as I scrolled through the entries, I noticed some interesting themes emerge.
For instance, a number of erstwhile designers really wanted to incorporate depictions of beer into their uniforms:
Tri-dong: not appealing.
By now, Jurickson Profar is a household name for serious baseball fans and prospect obsessives.
Due to an unshakeable feeling that “Jurickson Profar” is not really a name for a human being, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team is investigating (for the purposes of reporting on) just what the term actually refers to. Preliminary investigative reports from the Team have yielded the following as possibilities:
We’ll keep you posted.
This post comes to you with great assistance from the fine mind of the CushBomb.
While everyone else here NotGraphs is hopping on the Bold Prediction Bandwagon, I’m going to push the envelope by proffering to readers Ten Old Predictions, which is bold in its own right, I think.
Also, in case you didn’t notice, old rhymes with bold, ya see.
A very special gift from my buddy, Dylan.
Some time ago, probably about a year ago, I proposed to my fellow NotGraphs contributors that we do a NotGraphs Franchise Player Draft. It’s something in which there was at least mild interest, and I’d still like to see it done, despite my laziness in following up on my original inquiry.
And though I haven’t followed up on that inquiry, I’d say that the idea of a NotGraphs Franchise Player is something that I ponder almost daily — either directly or by way of considering (1) what makes NotGraphs NotGraphs, or (2) why, precisely, I am drawn to certain baseball players more than others.
Addressing those questions would be central to the NotGraphs Franchise Player Draft. Each participant in the draft would select one baseball player — living or dead, considering that death is such a strong theme in these immortal electronic pages — that he believes most embodies l’Esprit NotGraphs. Among the things that will be considered, I’m sure, are a player’s personal aesthetic (e.g. hair and facial hair); his extracurricular habits; his on-field antics; possibly his NERD Score; whether/in what ways he is photogenic; myths surrounding him; his sabremetric standing and/or statistical oddities.
So, what sort of player makes for NotGraphs Franchise Player™ material?
So, okay: Joey Votto hit a baseball out of the entire stadium the other day. That happens sometimes.
But then Joey Votto felt uncomfortable about all the cheering and stuff the crowd was doing because of how far and hard he just hit a baseball. Maybe he was concerned that Yu Darvish would feel bad if the crowd hooted and hollered too much. Maybe he became embarrassed the way a man does when he plays amongst boys.
Whatever it was, Joey Votto felt the need to signal the crowd to be silent.
And the crowd obeyed.
Our next installment of SCPG involves Desmond Jennings taking care of a “Can of Corn.”
As our GIF shows, Bronson Arroyo also knows his way around a can of corn.