The wife and I have accidentally — as part of an East Coast tour — we’ve accidentally found our way to the borough of Brooklyn, New York, United States.

Today, as part of same tour, we walked to the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan — a store which, in the event that you’re unaware, features “18 Miles of Books.”

Below are some of the notable baseball titles I found. (Note: The following images are, I’m led to believe, merely thumbnails. I’m led to believe, additionally, that you can click any thumbnail to view a larger image. Furthermore, for each title, I’ve provided a link to the relevant Google Books page.)

The Suitors of Spring by Pat Jordan*:

*This is mentioned in Kevin Kerrane’s Dollar Sign on the Muscle.

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Some days, after you wake up, you get dressed, eat breakfast, and then go take your place as a productive member of society. Other days — instead of all that stuff — you spend the first two or so hours of your life wandering without direction through YouTube’s maze of videos.

This post is a product of the latter.

What you have here, bespectacled readership, is an interview that Mike and Mike (of the eponymous radio program) did with Rickey Henderson, in which they ask Henderson to either confirm or deny legends about the Hall of Famer.

So far as videos go, it’s probably not what you’d call a Perfect 10. Mike and Mike, whatever their other virtues, are what a person smarter than me might call “garrulous.” Henderson, though, is hard not to enjoy — as per usual.

Notable moments:

0:42 Rickey Henderson pronounces the names James Brown and Luther Vandross, an angel gets its wings.

1:06 Henderson confirms that he was once given a million-dollar bonus check that, instead of cashing, he just framed and hung up on his wall.

2:28 Henderson gives a borderline logical — and nearly touching — explanation for the check incident.

Not all, but certainly many, NotGraph posts begin within the tangled gnarl that is this author’s Google Reader account. It’s from the links and posts I find here that I’m able to shamelessly re-package and/or lightly mock the hard work of others.

Whether owing to my own personal shortcomings in constructing the Ideal Feed — either that, or merely to the nature of Really Simple Syndication* — there’s typically a lot of noise relative to signal: duplicate posts, hysterical name-calling, and about a half-dozen reports of pitbull maulings from Chicago’s 670 The Score

*Really Simple Syndication is neither really simple, nor syndication: discuss.

“Typically,” I say. For whatever reason, however, this morning has revealed what I feel comfortable calling a “panoply” of accomplished writing — upon which panoply I’ve commented in the list below.

Please note, my bespectacled reader, that this is more than a mere compilation of links. This is a vessel to the future of the genre.

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Below these words — and craftily procured from an unnamed library database — is the announcement of the first Hall of Fame ballot, courtesy of the December 24, 1935 edition of the New York Times.

As the reader can see, this was a bit of an exciting notion at the time — and free of the armchair philologizing that comes with many contemporary discussions of the Hall and candidacy for same (i.e. “It’s the hall of fame, therefore it makes sense to pick the most famous players”).

Below are the five players ultimately selected. One weird thing is how much talk there is of an “immortal ten” when, in fact, only five players were selected.

Name		Votes	% of Ballots
Ty Cobb		222	98.2
Babe Ruth	215	95.1
Honus Wagner	215	95.1
Chri. Mathewson	205	90.7
Walter Johnson	189	87.6

Now here’s the article:

Having lived in Wisconsin now for about five months I can attest to the fact that, while the regional fare isn’t exactly what you’d call “heart healthy” or “good for you in any way,” it provides quite a lot in the way of “taste sensations.”

Now you, bespectacled reader, can participate in the joyous culinary tradition of this Midwestern Wonderland!

Regard:

Provided the image just above these words — and the webpage from which said image has been shamelessly stolen — provided those things aren’t lying, the Milwaukee Brewers are offering the opportunity to submit a new concession item ahead of the 2011 season.

Another, slightly different webpage has these details:

There’s a limit of one entry per person, and the club is looking for equal parts creativity and practicality. The items should be suitable for preparation and serving in the ballpark environment. Representatives from Miller Park’s concessionaire, Sportservice, will initially review all received entries and narrow the list to 10 selections for a panel to consider.

That group that includes Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, executive vice president of business operations Rick Schlesinger, former outfielder Gorman Thomas, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel food writers Nancy Stohs and Jan Uebelherr, executives and chefs from Sportservice and representatives from Milwaukee restaurants Carnevor and Dream Dance.

The panel will select four finalists on Jan. 26, and then it’s up to the fans. Voting will continue through Feb. 3, and samples from the four finalists will be available for sampling at the Jan. 30 “Brewers On Deck” event at the Frontier Airlines Center.

Though NotGraphs is unable to substantiate the rumors, there’s talk that one of the prizes is a long, soulful conversation about xFIP with new Brewer Zack Greinke.

News from the internets this morning reveals that shortstop and Dodger kinda-prospect Chin-lung Hu has been traded to the New York Mets in exchange for left-handed starter Michael Antonini.

While the trade itself isn’t a particularly big one, it’s notable for at least one reason — specifically, that the Met-ward bound player has a name that’s basically the punsmith’s equivalent of pornography.

Below are some samples, courtesy of the fabled information superhighway.

From Amazin’ Avenue:

From Mets Today (of the SweetSpot Network):

From LA Dodger Talk:

From The Real Dirty Mets:

From Bleacher Report:

Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

The Text in Question
Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Kevin Kerrane

A General Statement About the Quality of This Book
It’s super high, the quality of the book. Reading it, I’m thinking to myself, “This is the best book I’ve ever read.” That I’ve only ever read three or so books, though, will definitely influence my opinion on this matter.

The Four Eras of Scouting
Kerrane provides what must be the first real historical analysis of scouting. He divides it into four main eras, as follows.

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The Associated Press reported yesternight that, as a token of his appreciation to the team for which he played his first nine seasons, Boston-bound outfielder Carl Crawford treated 150 Tampa Bay Rays employees to a barbecue lunch on Wednesday.

Of course, Crawford’s gesture is not without precedent. In the years since free agency began in 1976, it’s become customary for departing players to recognize the relationships they’ve established during their team-controlled years. Here are five other, super-un-fictional examples of similar situations.

1981: Upon receiving his contract for 1980 a day after the deadline, and thus becoming a free agent, Boston catcher Carlton Fisk mails back to miserly GM Haywood Sullivan a disembodied middle finger with very specific instructions on what Sullivan “can go ahead and do” with said finger.

1983: On eve of departure for San Diego, Steve Garvey spends one eventful night making every woman in Los Angeles his “special lady.”

2000: Lefty Denny Neagle gives former clubs the New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds the gift of laughter after informing them the Colorado GM Dan O’Dowd had just signed him to a five-year, $51 million contract.

2006: A single night after making one of the legitimately great catches in Major League history, Gary Matthews Jr. lavishes all manner of gifts and praise upon the relevant employees of David M. Schwarz Architectural Services, designers of the Ballpark in Arlington. In the attendant thank you note, Matthews explains that “owing to the firm’s choices in park dimensions,” that they had unwittingly compelled a number of teams to incorrectly assess Matthews’ sub-par defensive skills. “I owe almost all of the millions of dollars I’ll be overpaid to you,” continued Matthews.

2009: Mark Teixeira, about to play for his fourth team (the Yankees) in two years, almost remembers name of Angels’ clubhouse attendant.

The best part about writing for a blog that’s only been alive for, like, two months is how there’s an entire past’s worth of things to which one can link and upon which one can idly comment.

In this case, it’s a video of Boston-born comedian Mike Birbiglia talking about his less-than-ideal experience at baseball’s MVP Award ceremony thing.

It includes, among other things, Dennis Eckersley cursing a blind man — which, that’s probably not very shocking coming from the same man who once said of Brad Penny when the latter was having trouble with his fastball, “He’s a little gay with his cheese.”

Leading Greco-American and PITCH f/x expert Harry Pavlidis — in response to Frank DeFord’s suggestion that “sports sucked in 2010” — is fielding nominations for the things that sucked hardest about baseball specifically in the last calendar year.

Because we here at NotGraphs want nothing more than to be the warm yellow light that pours all over everyone, allow me to take the very opposite tact and pose this: Which moments or events or other baseball-related things were most excellent in 2010?

At the risk of biasing the readership, here are a couple-few suggestions from inside my soul:

• That one time when Andres Torres metamorphosed into a giant insect… in order to more ably catch a tailing fliner.

• That one time when Colby Lewis was granted sainthood and knighthood.

• That other time when Colby Lewis was awarded all the Nobel Prizes for all the categories.

People, though: I can’t do this alone. Help a Cistulli out.