Here I go again, doting on some things from the weekend:

1. GIF-Morph: Travis Blackley & Wei-Yin Chen
2. Ryan Braun Gives Up
3. Ángel Pagán Makes Great Catch on Ball Thrown Back by Fan?

GIF-Morph: Travis Blackley & Wei-Yin Chen

Yesterday, the Orioles’ Wei-Yin Chen and the Athletics’ Travis Blackley — both southpaws — squared off in Baltimore. PitchFx suggests (see links above) that they are very different pitchers in terms of repertoire, pitch movement, and even release point. The GIF below, however, provides an at least anecdotal kinship.

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Watching Cash Cab last night, I learned that in Australia they call tater tots “potato gems.” Which caused me to visit this site, featuring an alphabetized list of Aussie slang terms. There, I learned that “budgie smugglers” means “men’s bathing costume” (“budgie” is slang for “bird”, so, you know), among other things.

Because all roads (in my life, anyway) lead to NotGraphs, the only logical use of this information that I could think of was to compile (read: totally fabricate) the following short list of Aussie baseball slang. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

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If there is one thing Toronto Blue Jays sluggers Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion hate, it’s ingrown hairs.

Reader Ben Rackow alerted the NotGraphs Just the Tip Line (via an email featuring a subject line the same as the title of this post, it should be noted) of these promotional videos — housed at Blue Jay Hunter’s tumblr — for IMD Laser Clinic in Toronto. In case you are at work and can’t watch the linked videos, the ads reveal the following:

• Joey Bats is “always on the run,” “always busy,” and doesn’t “have time to shave”, which is why he came to IMD Laser Clinic

• Bautista, voted “#1 All-Star in the world,” is the Blue Jays’ DH, despite playing only 17 games as DH from 2008-2012 (meanwhile, he played 108 games at 3B, 353 in RF, and even 42 games in LF in that same span)

• discomfort from laser hair-removal from one’s neck is minimal after the first day

• all the people at IMD Laser Clinic were very nice to Edwin Encarnación

• IMD Laser will not turn off the muzak while shooting low quality promo videos with Blue Jays sluggers, even when said muzak obscures what said sluggers are saying to the point of imparsibility

• the process of laser hair removal is totally grody

The grossness of laser hair removal approximated.

Matt Moore likes Mondays. Boy oh boy, he likes Mondays. Monday is the only day that starts with “M” and that’s the same letter that his names start with. He feels like he owns Monday, like every Monday is his birthday. On Mondays, he jumps out of bed bright and early and just wants to yell and shout and tell everyone that it is his favorite day of the week, Monday.

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I wanted to follow up on Kevin Youkilis’s return to Boston, so I was looking at pictures from the Red Sox-White Sox series. Yesterday, the [White] Sox got pummeled by the [Red] Sox, 10-1. I happened upon this picture, which, at first glance was exactly the sort of thing I had hoped to find.

There Youk sits, fully aware of the camera, disgusted with the eminent outcome of the game, with the outcome of the series so far (Chicago outscored 20-8, and down two games to one), perhaps longing for the comforts of an eggy frappe, perhaps bubbling with a hatred that even he doesn’t understand, perhaps ready to kill. His neck itches; his groin is a little sweaty.

But Youk is just one figure in this picture, which might very well represent the full gamut of human emotion and experience.

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You might have already looked upon Carson’s fulfillment of reader Dave’s wish to watch Eric Young, Jr. slip-slidin’ around the bases into GIF-tacular eternity. That was fun wasn’t it?

Because Carson’s days consist of prettily sitting on his NotGraphs throne, waiting for his loyal subjects’ GIF-based pleadings at which to wave his magical GIF-making scepter, and because I work a real job, he got to Dave’s request before I did. (Actually, my real job was mostly cancelled yesterday due to a massive fire in the neighborhood that caused 4,400 buildings to be without power for 4-5 hours, during which span I went with a co-worker to see The Amazing Spiderman, which, turns out, is a totally unnecessary piece of cinema.)

But [I hope] it’s worth revisiting this EYJr incident. Here are some things to consider, presented in the style of my above-teased liege, Count Cistulli, whom I adore.
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Kevin Youkilis, who ain’t too good at grammars, will return to Boston for the first time since being traded to the Chicago White Sox just over three weeks ago.

Well, it’s not exactly the first time. About a week after being traded he flew back to Boston to retrieve some personal items. “Yeah, I forgot to pack underwear, and my best toothbrush was still all in my Boston condo. I had to all feed the fish and stuff.” During this trip, he did not see any of his old teammates, he said, but he did stop for a nice Boston-style frappe at Toscanini’s. “Ain’t nothing like it,” he said, staring wistfully off to the east.

On the day trip in question, Youk enjoyed a double scoop of lemon
pistachio ice cream in a sugar cone in addition to his frappe.

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When last we checked in with Dale Thayer, he was just about to knock on your door and ask to use your bathroom real quick.

“Dude, you in there? Gotta pee!”

Since then, Dale lost his job as the Padres’ closer and was bumped down to the team’s seventh inning guy, where he’s doing ok, he guesses, but he really wanted to maybe make the All-Star team, get his BBQ groove on in KC.

Alas, Dale ended up having the full four days off, and decided to take a tour of the ballparks that he’s visited as a player, but never seen from a fan’s perspective. First on the list was Milwaukee’s Miller Park.
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Dear Thought Catalog,

Woke up this morning, made a couple of egg sandwiches, took a pic of my cat. Sat down with my egg sammies and my laptop, started a Third Eye Blind playlist in iTunes, opened Twitter. Saw a Buster Olney tweet about second-half story lines.

Went to the NotGraphs WordPress dashboard, checked to see if any NotGraphers had “second half story line” posts scheduled for today or tomorrow; they didn’t; started this post.

Started by typing the title and “nonstory lines” just popped in there. Googled “nonstory”, saw this

and thought, “Hey, this is a journalism term. I’m supposed to be doing ‘journalism.’ I can write a nonstory. I can write a bunch of nonstories!”

Thought about how exclamation marks should be used sparingly to never in journalism. Thought, “Balls.” Set to work on the following nonstory lines for MLB’s second half:
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For over a decade now, the MLB All-Star break has been filled with more than just the All-Star game itself. In addition to accompanying FanFests, we have the Homerun Derby (started in 1985), the Futures Game (1999), and the Taco Bell All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game (2001; now with new Doritos-based bases!).

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has discovered, via measures that may or may not jive with the various etiquettes of journalism, that Bud Selig, ever the trailblazer, is planning to expand the festively festive festivities starting in 2013 with the All-Star extravaganza at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets.

The Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has compiled the following list of events that Selig and his closest cronies have proposed to MLB owners and officials. It appears here, exclusively at NotGraphs, for the spoiled and glistening NotGraphs readership:
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