As the off-season approaches, we’re sure to resume casting for our nascent baseballing epic, MLB: The Movie. For now, a couple of images of New York Tankees have me pondering who should direct this myth.
If you like the composition of this recent image of Raul Ibañez, you might like Paul Thomas Anderson to direct.
Raul said that’s that, mattress man.
Consider these images from Anderson’s 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love:
Baseball allows for more expression of individual style than many team sports. A player can wear high socks or baggy pants that cover his shoes; he can have all manner of hair hanging out of his helmets/hat; he can (if he doesn’t play for the Yankees) rock some pretty awesome facial hair. There’s lots of time to be silly in the dugout, bullpen, and clubhouse and build a reputation for being a “character.”
Ichiro Suzuki has a unique style, that’s for sure. But as far as I can tell, Ichiro is the only player to wear a non-standard fielder’s cap. Consider this image, which is from Game 1 of the ALCS:
You see how it’s spherical, right? Form-fitting? Let’s compare Ichiro’s cap to some of his former Mariners teammates. Read the rest of this entry »
We all know, thanks to his NotGraphs bio, that Carson Cistulli “says terrible things at The New Enthusiast.” In fact, thanks to a revelatory anecdote recently posted by Mr. Dayn Perry, we know that Carson Cistulli says ridiculous and terrible things just about any time he pleases.
What you might not know is that, via The New Enthusiast, Carson Cistulli is also infecting your computer with terrible things. AND/OR Carson Cistulli is a big old con-man, a builder of pyramid schemes, a purveyor of identity theft, a cuckolder of man-avatars and lady-avatars alike. Behold:
It could give your Internets Inter-AIDS and steal your baby’s breath.
I think I speak for several Internets when I say, Boo, Mr. Cistulli. Verily: Boo.
Hat-tippery to my colleague Karl Saffran, who would rather I not acknowledge him — which is precisely why I am doing so.
Those of us who don’t have cable TV — or even MLB.tv — often resort to MLB GameDay for pitch-by-pitch updates. (The way we sit with baited breath waiting for that next red or green or blue dot to appear is pathetic, really.)
GameDay uses a stock avatar for all batters — the avatar varies only based on the batter’s handedness. This can lead to confusion as to who is batting, especially if GameDay updates some info more quickly that it updates other bits, which it often does.
Enbiggenable.
Billy, holy wow.
Holy crap, Billy, did you see that?
The elfin sprite that
stole my hat,
I see now how he floated
away from me
so fast:
he was possessed of an afro puff,
Billy,
and was he Crispy!
Billy.
Someone photoshopped that helmet in
someone scribbled your name
someone who once liked your good face
now gags
when they see it.
That’s how it goes.
How did it go last night?
I thought to myself, of my last poem
to you,
that there could have been more magic
that I could have insisted
more: my A’s hat was magically
given to me by a man named Billy
on the street with a wink
and a ruddy cheek
and glasses
and a still okay head
of hair — but I didn’t —
I am so unaware of the process of poems
of magic, of bees, leaves.
Thought to myself that this time, I’ve gotta
do the magic right, so here:
Tonight, there’ll be an elfin sprite
(the same Joe West has seen)
trying to steal the Tigers’ tails
whipping them all around.
He’ll be wearing my hat, the sprite,
which he stole from me
on the same street that you gave it,
Billy.
But I did not chase him, Billy,
I let him walk away. If the A’s win
tonight, he can keep it; if they lose
he can keep it, too.
Billy! — I say it with my Rosie Perez voice
like you are Woody Harrelson, but
you are not Woody Harrelson, let’s face it —
you are too much a lover
of soccer —
Billy, who should laud you
when your shit doesn’t work — for real
it’s like your shit is a time release fertilizer
that ends in October —
when you’re shit.
You’re not shit. I love you.
I hate you.
I love you.
I love that it is boring to you,
this game of bases and balls, this
menagerie of melancholy and silly
torture, this spectacle from which you hide
cinematically
on your exercise bicycle or
secretly behind your PB smoothie
(that’s right, I know you love them) —
I love your growing preference for piebald
balls.
Tom Tango posted his request for fans’ scouting reports of player fielding back on September 11th. I looked at the results today for the first time, given that there was a reminder to FanGraphs readers to do ratings today.
It’s sorta involved: “For any player that you’ve seen play in at least 10 games in 2012, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.” (Emphasis mine.) This favors the fan who attends over ten live games a year, as Tango also advises,
“If you don’t have an opinion on a particular characteristic of that player, then go on to the next characteristic for that player. This applies especially for you TV watchers, and [sic] you can’t tell how well Peter Bourjos can read the ball off the bat.”
In other words, you need to be a serious fan to qualify, though it’s really just an honor system. That said, it takes a serious enough fan to read FanGraphs, or to visit Tango’s site, and especially to sit down and do this, however incompletely. (I’m not going to participate even though I went to at least a dozen Brewers games this season — I’m a very observant fan, but I tend to watch the pitcher and catcher very closely to the exclusion of noticing defensive alignments, first steps by the fielders, etc.)
I am, however, interested in the results — not the how the fans rate the players, necessarily, though I will look at those results, too, after the project ends. No, right now I’m far more interested in which teams have been most thoroughly addressed by the fans.
I’ve been visiting my best friend Matt, who now lives in in Spokane, Washington, for the last few days. Yesterday, we drove through the Cascades and into Seattle. We ate at a cheap and delicious noodle place for lunch, then wandered around downtown, eventually making our way down First Avenue to the “famous” Triangle Pub. Before we got to the pub, we ran into my fellow NotGraphs-er Patrick Dubuque, and then, in the pub, the young and dapper Kyle Davis, whom some of you might know as one of FanGraphs most supportive readers, and whom you should know as baseball blogger if you do not already, was waiting for us in the sun-drenched triangle part of the Triangle, which we monopolized for the next two hours, drinking, alternately, local IPAs and cheap happy-hour Rainiers.
We talked about Seattle, how the city has changed since Patrick was a kid, neighborhoods to avoid (based on density of douchebags — not based on crime or anything like that), the shittiness of The Killing (one of the few television shows set in Seattle).
You know this player: it’s Chipper Jones, the shoe-in Hall-of-Famer who’s about to play the final regular season series of his career.
It was a different time, you understand — 1992, or ’93.
You also know this couch: it was in your parents’ basement when you were growing up. It stinks of something sticky, of Doritos, of sex. Or, in spite of the sticky puffed, the Doritos crumbled, the sex had upon it, it still smells of something older, from long before you.