Prescriptions for Paxil soared in response to Matt Harvey’s injury.

It’s no secret that major leaguers, like other high-profile athletes, supplement their sporting incomes by means of endorsement deals for various commercial products. Some such arrangements are well known, of course: Robinson Cano for Nike, for example, and Joe Mauer for Head & Shoulders.

Not all such endorsements are so visible, however. Below are fives examples of lesser-known deals that presently exist.

Alex Rodriguez for Monsanto
“What we really wanted,” says Dave Harding, a spokesman for the influential agricultural/biotech company, “is a spokesman who embodied the principles upon which our business is built: being super rich and without any discernible moral compass.”

Read the rest of this entry »

As the largely irresponsible leaderboard published by the author today at FanGraphs indicates, Washington right-hander Taylor Jordan has been the best pitcher of spring training by an obscure, if methodologically sound, metric devised by that same author that was just mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »

Annotated racking information c/o the USPS and Carson Cistulli’s boundless imagination.

Sometimes it’s the case in this world that, if you ask, you also shall receive. This post is an example of a different thing, however — namely, of not asking, but receiving anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tracking number has been obscured, in case murderers read this.

A lot of people email me or contact me by way of social media because they’re interested in how a successful and handsome and talented and handsome Real Author conducts his affairs.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a truth as old as time, if not somehow older: the most immediate way to apprise the world of one’s virtues as a human person is not by means of wealth or education or spiritual excellence, but rather by the purchase and then subsequent vesting of an excellent ballcap.

In the service of doing that exact thing, the author has recently inspected popular online retailer eBay with a view towards identifying those ballcaps which might most ably cultivate a sense of what Andre Breton referred to as “the marvelous” and what Kanye West referred to more recently, probably, as “a celebration.”

Anderson Lawmen New Era Hat (Link)
Style: Fitted (7 3/8)
Time Left: 19 days, 8 hours
Cost: US $29.99 (Buy It Now)

The Lawmen, according to Baseball Reference, were an Indiana-based independent-league team which belonged, first, to the Mid-America League and then, after that, the Heartland League. I have it on decent, if not good, authority that anyone who wears this hat is automatically deputized in whichever municipality he currently resides.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ty Cobb, or T-Nutts, is remembered by family as a warm and gentle man.

ATLANTA – Descendants of former Tigers outfield great Ty Cobb were furious on Wednesday after a picture of current Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter kissing an alligator went viral this week, revealing in the process that Hunter’s Instagram user name is tnutts48 — a name Cobb’s living family members say is the rightful property of their beloved relative.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the author began a five-part series recounting notable home runs he’s conceded during his life as a nearly decent baseball pitcher at various levels.

Previous Installments: One / Two / Three.

Date: April, 1998
Level: High School
Place: Nash Field at Milton Academy in Milton, MA (Link)

One advantage of having relocated my dumb body to Paris, France, this past fall is that it’s allowed me to become acquainted with a comestible known as mille-feuille (proncounced meal-FIE, roughly). While there are probably variations on the theme of same, mille-feuille is generally speaking a dessert composed of multiple, alternating layers of a leaf-thin puff pastry and then custard-type cream which, when consumed all together by an adult man, gives him a desire in his heart to impregnate the whole world at once.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is often said in English that one “can’t get blood from a stone.” Why such a thing must be specifically established remains a mystery — and lends almost nothing in the way of credibility to the human race.

The point of this post, however, is to say that something quite different than attempting to extract blood from a stone is attempting to locate internet footage of N.C. State left-hander Carlos Rodon striking out an opposing batter by way of his breaking ball. Indeed, no more than five minutes of research this afternoon has yielded the animated GIF embedded above — of Rodon on February 21st striking out what appears to be Appalachian State’s Alex Leach by way of his (i.e. Rodon’s) breaking ball.

DOWNTOWN — A local man was hospitalized early this morning after experiencing acute paralysis of his interior self, a condition which doctors believe is the direct result of a protracted and ultimately fruitless search for the exact right new ballcap ahead of the upcoming season.

Patrick O’Connell, the 26-year-old grad student who suffered the episode, is in critical but stable condition.

“We’re only now piecing together the details,” said Rakesh Mehta, a spokesman for the hospital. “It appears, however, as though the patient was intent on finding a hat that simultaneously demonstrated some manner of historical and regional significance, exhibited pleasing aesthetic qualities, and finally was also distinct enough so as to telegraph to others (mostly men) his sophistication as a consumer. A complicated endeavor, all told.”

Read the rest of this entry »

An example of the Instagram feed from Saturday.

NEW YORK, NY — In an effort to attract a largely untapped but also generally affluent demographic, the New York Mets, in conjunction with local carrier WPIX, presented an Instagram broadcast this weekend — available only to viewers in the New York borough of Brooklyn — of their spring-training game against the Miami Marlins.

Read the rest of this entry »