Despite being the sixth most valuable position player in the National League (per WAR) this year, the third most outfielder, and, easily, the most valuable left-fielder, Ryan Braun is only starting the All-Star game tomorrow night because of Matt Kemp’s injury.

Also, even with Mr. Kemp being injured, Ryan Braun was not invited to participate in the Spanks & Taters Contest tonight, despite being the NL leader in Spanks/Taters with 24 (Carlos Beltran is second with 20).

Brauny was not included in any All-Star Game promo or other official MLB promo this year, and I guess it’s pretty obvious why. But the fact of the matter is, whatever “happened” in 2011 and before, Braun is almost certainly not using PEDs now (he’d have to be an idiot to do so), and even in the face of incessant taunting of opposing fans and a cold shoulder from MLB, Braun is putting up another MVP-caliber season.

Despite all this, Ryan Braun is still a star. In Milwaukee, amidst a disappointing season that will probably not see a 2011 division title defended, Braun is much more than a star — he’s a constellation.

Thus I present, Orion Braun:

“And his bright junk shall guide us…”-Homer

America loves baseball. America loves its troops. It’s common to see these two loves integrated, especially around the 4th of July.

The four-game series between the Marlins and Brewers at Miller park this past week (of which I attended two games) was military heavy: service men and women threw out the first pitches at all the games, sung the national anthem and “God Bless America” at all of the contests, and were in attendance in higher-than-usual numbers. On both occasions that I was present, a serviceman won the “Fan of the Game” prize — which is awarded based on cheers from the crowd — and it wasn’t even close. (Normally, the prize is won by whoever looks most like Santa Claus.)

In general, I think this is a nice thing to do: the troops don’t get to come out to the ballpark whenever they want, so it’s cool to recognize them when they do. And while I’m sure that many of them appreciate it, sometimes I wonder if they wouldn’t rather just enjoy the game and its various delights like a normal citizen instead of being cheered whenever they order a bag of peanuts. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder how much our honoring them is about feeling good about ourselves.

Case in point, this image, which is actually from the Ballpark in Arlington on June 28:

“Nobody’s looking, right?”

We’re already attending a baseball game, imbibing, stuffing our faces with dollar hotdogs, tailgating, celebrating our collective freedom and the opportunities it (supposedly) affords us, etc. Do we really need to have a full-grown man, one that we pretend to respect, driving around a stadium in a miniature airplane for our amusement?

Come on, America! Come on, baseball!

NotGraphs reader and Pittsburgh Pirates fan RamboDiaz brought the following Twitter interaction between Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writer Dejan Kovacevic and Twitterer Robert Sosko to the attention of Hot NotGraphs Hotline:

@Dejan_Kovacevic I only worry about his dating life. twitter.com/PittsburghIdio…

— Robert Sosko (@PittsburghIdiot) June 30, 2012

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Last night, Red Sox OF Darnell McDonald made a great catch on a fly ball hit by Blue Jays 2B Kelly Johnson.

It was so good, that it made seven of ten Red Sox fans very happy — if this photo is to be extrapolated from, that is:

Or, there, now it’s ten of ten:

I’ve never seen such a happy fan base. Good job, Darnell.

The well-seasoned NotGraphs aesthete is no doubt aware of Craig Robinson’s site flipflopflyball.com. Mr. Robinson is known (and should be even more well-known) for his insightful and beautiful infographics about our beloved game, amongst other things.

Some time ago, I was looking at the “First and Last” section of the site, which visually represents several players’ initial and final plate appearance in the Major Leagues; I was taken with how perfectly some of them seemed to encapsulate the careers of the players involved. Below are a few of my favorites, with brief commentary:
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Ok, so after a full year of working in my basement office at Woodland Pattern Book Center, I finally noticed this decal on a (possibly nonfunctional) heating unit:

Download, print as stickers, and apply where appropriate.

Of course, I immediately interpreted the phrase with my baseball brain: “The Heater You Can Live With” is a heater (a fastball, and, in my mind, a four-seam fastball, specifically) that is passable, that gets the job but is not overwhelming; a heater that chips in but upon which a pitcher is not overly reliant; a heater that, looks like the average of all heaters in the game, so as not garner attention, but like I said, is still capable of getting an out, or setting up other pitches, or even causing the occasional whiff.
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Yesterday, with two out in the top of the ninth inning, in a tie game between the Brewers and White Sox at US Cellular Field, Nyjer Morgan was caught attempting to steal third — what he was thinking, however, every Brewers fan (and probably every other member of the Brewers organization) would like to know. (Sorry: for some reason MLB video didn’t offer the option to embed this clip.)

To make this NotGraphs-eligible, I’ve creatively recreated this play in my office at work:

The wind-up circus bear here represents the spirit that possessed Morgan on the play. The circus bear is an unpredictable soul, aware that it is display for the amusement of the masses, sometimes prepared to awe, sometimes lashing out against his own best interest. Such has been the dramatic career of Nyjer Morgan.

“Slow news day.”

Along with my Starting Lineup figurines, I also salvaged these mini helmets from my mother’s latest rummage pile.

Taking advantage of my GF’s clean desk.

I used to get these for a quarter a piece from vending machines at grocery stores.

Once I had enough of them, I would play out entire seasons, the schedules scratched out in notebooks, each game decided by a coin flip. (I was never able to get all of the teams, so I just used duplicates to stand in for the missing teams, putting a tiny scrap of masking tape over the logo on the duplicate and initialing the tape to represent the missing team.) For the playoffs, I would do a coin flip per inning and keep track of the “score.” I sorta wish I still had those notebooks now. It was a life’s work, really.

In an effort to meld the past and the present, I decided to assign each of the helmets to an object/being in my current house. I made some effort to align some aspect of the team with the object/being it got placed with — but don’t read too much into that. Or do. There are some duplicates.
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According to his wikipedia page, Antone Williamson “played first base, and occasionally pinch-hit.”

More specifically, he was the Brewers’ first round pick in 1994, taken fourth overall as a 20-year-old out of Arizona State. The Brewers took Williamson ahead of the likes of Nomar Garciaparra, Paul Konerko, and Jason Varitek. Despite the fact that he never really mastered a level in the minors, the Brewers promoted Williamson aggressively, and he reached the big leagues in 1997, when he posted a .517 OPS in 60 PAs.

He returned to the minors the next year, played another couple seasons in the Brewers system, then played one year in an independent league before retiring as a player. After that, your guess is as good as mine. I couldn’t find any recent articles that hint at where he is today, or what he might be doing, in baseball or otherwise.

I’ve joked about Williamson — as recently as this spring — with friends who are Brewers fans. The fact that he was one of the biggest busts in Brewers draft history (perhaps MLB draft history) means that he will never be completely forgotten by the dedicated fans of my generation, but to see his jersey last night at Miller Park was sort of a surprise.

Irony, thrift, unfulfilled optimism, or wild pathos? You decide.

The way I see it, there is a limited number of explanations that could explain why this man is wearing this jersey — which, by the way, hales from the era of the most hideous uniforms in Brewers history — and how it came to be in his possession:
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Last night, Aramis Ramirez hit a homerun vs. the Blue Jays that was initially called foul ball by third base umpire Paul Nauert. Brewers manager Ron Roenicke contested, the umpire crew agreed review the play, and the new ruling was that it was a homerun. It was a solo shot that gave the Brewers a 7-6 lead in the bottom of the seventh. They would hold on to win by the same score. (Sorry, Navin.)

Given that the Brewers had just blown a five-run lead, capped by a three-run monster mash by Joey Bats, and that this was the first reviewed call at Miller Park this season, it’s understandable the Brewers play-by-play man Brian Anderson was a bit excited. His partner, former Brewers catcher and longtime color man Bill Schroeder, initially said the original ruling probably wouldn’t be overturned with the video provided. Then, Anderson provided this “thing to note”:

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