I got a late start on everything, I think. I didn’t kiss a girl till I was 20; by the time I actually listened to an entire Pavement album, they’d broken up; I’d never heard of Bill James until I read Moneyball in the autumn of 2003; and I’d managed to make it through an entire Bachelor’s program in English (concentration in poetry) without even hearing of poets like Charles Olson or Alice Notley. I was introduced to these poets and myriad others only after taking a job at Woodland Pattern Book Center, probably the greatest poetry bookstore in the United States. It was at WPBC that I finally found Tom Clark’s Baseball — over 30 years after it was published.

I’ll cut to the quick: Baseball is a – perhaps the – must-read book for those who appreciate the NotGraphs approach to fanaticism.

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Ok, so this exists:

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Puffery, via ESPN, The Life:

The Life: We’re told you’re a pretty serious Atlanta Braves fan. Can you prove it? Do you know Chipper Jones‘ real name?

Harris: Larry. I thought I was being tested. This is a test?

The Life: You passed. You really are a baseball fan.

Apparel for a real fan of a real baseball fan.

Knowing Chipper Jones’s real first name makes one a real baseball fan.

For those of you who did not know that, you are not real fans, and you are really banished from FanGraphs.com and all its subsidiaries, henceforth. Because FanGraphs is for real baseball fans only.

If you were not on this fishing trip with Chipper, consider yourself not a real baseball fan.

But, so banished, if you happen to be a real fan of graphs, you can type the name of the man who invented graphs in the comment section, whereupon you will be dubbed a SuperNerd and not only be welcomed back to the FanGraphs community with open arms, but also have Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and Peanut M&Ms dangled into your mouth while being fanned with palm fronds by the HotNotGrapher of your choice. (The choice, of course, is a formality; anyone would pick a Gym-Shorted Carson Cistulli.)

As seen below, Fred McGriff is about to embark on a long career of smiling.

“Look, mom: I’m rated.”

Here, the smile that would warm so many hearts, find it’s way to so many cities and onto so many teams, into so many livingrooms, the livingrooms of our dreams, our strangest, sweatiest dreams, is yet but a smirk on a young McGriff’s superstar lips. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a different time, you understand — 1987, or ’88. A time when men like Billy Jo Robidoux and Mark Funderburk were the flying buttresses in the architecture of baseball — beautiful appendages that distract from the innermost works of the structure. Or something.

It was also a time when baseball cards like this were possible:

They gaze on, each to no great end.

The random pairing of players, the dissimilar orientation of the photos, the misspelling of Billy Jo’s name, the prospect emblem in Johnny Rocket’s font — all of these were only possible in the 1980s, when anything went up one’s nose.
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Is the world ready for Bud Krampus?

Thanks to everyone for your nominations for the MLB Krampus. There were a lot of them — too many to include in a single poll, in fact. So, I pared away some potential nominees that I didn’t see fitting into the Krampus way of life. Sorry to disappoint anyone.

There were some nominees that I expected (Selig, Cobb), some that were frightening surprises (Joe West), and some dark horses that I was hoping someone would nominate (Marge Schott).

I hope you’ll all vote, and vote carefully. Remember, the crowning of the Krampus is a serious matter: he determines how your children taste when they are eaten by other children.

I’ve included photos of all of the nominees, for your viewing pleasure horror.

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The Briefest of Krampus Primers

If you’re not a Christian from an Alpine country, you might not be familiar with the Krampus, a satyr-like (in some manifestations, “satyr-like” is a very euphemistic way of putting it) creature that, over time, became a counterpart to Jolly Olde Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus.

Hi, it’s me, the Krampus. Do you like my rumply boot-socks?

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Most of us will never make it into the scrapbook stuff of a Tedd with two d’s in his name, nor dine with a woman named Smokey. Vince Naimoli did both in one fell swoop.

In an age where things are built to come and go, Vince Naimoli has come and gone — like so much jowly ephemera. Despite relinquishing ownership of the Rays less than a decade ago, and despite being one of the most inept, curmudgeonly owners of the modern era, I’m betting that many of even the most informed baseball fans (of whom the FanGraphs readership is comprised) had forgotten him until Jonah Keri’s book The Extra 2% dedicated a hundred pages (or so) to him. Or maybe not.

But would you recognize him? Could you identify him above, where he’s pictured with his Eating Club? (The horrible syntax of the primary caption might be of no help.) Read the rest of this entry »

Let me lay it on the line . . .

Via Brad Neely’s awesome George Washington cartoon.

“Yeah. I think I’m done with baseball.”

So here is Danny Ainge.

Every time I come across a reference to Ainge’s baseball career, I remember that I forgot about it. But the great 3-point shooter logged an Ichiro-an season’s worth of plate appearances (721) over a three-year MLB career — most of it played while he was still in college at Brigham Young. He holds the Blue Jays club record for youngest player to hit a homerun. He was the subject of a legal battle between the Jays and the Boston Celtics, wherein a “four-man, two-woman panel” ruled that the Celtics would have to buy his contract from the Jays, lest they be guilty of contract interference.

In basketball, he went on to become a fan favorite. In baseball, he was . . . forgettable.

We witness him in the above photo possibly trying to forget himself, or at least trying to forget that part of his life he spent playing baseball. The photo, perhaps snapped just at the end of a sigh, wistfully suggests Ainge’s brief MLB career. He would hit just one additional homerun, and post a batting average below that infamous Mendoza Line in his final season with the Blue Jays.

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