Earlier today, in these electronic pages, rising NotGraphs star Dayn Perry commemorated America’s most important holiday — Repeal Day — by naming the All-Time All-Drinkers Team.

Curious about some of the names on the list, I took to the internet and, after the most grueling 83 seconds of research you could imagine, have this video footage of the 1926 World Series — featuring the Yankees and Cardinals — to show for it.

This particular series features two all-time drinkers: Grover Cleveland (or “Pete”) Alexander and Babe Ruth, both of whom feature prominently in the video. Below are some notable moments.

0:25. That’s the very famous commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis there — who, if you believe noted historian Jonathan Coulton, “was seventeen feet tall [and] had a hundred and fifty wives.” The attentive viewer will note that Landis has an actual iron fist. Impressive!

0:49. Not baseball related, but interesting. Note that the narrator uses the word natch — as in, short for naturally. EtymOnline suggests that the truncated version was first recorded in 1945.

1:20. Slow-motion video captures Ruth hitting “the longest home run ever hit in St. Louis” on what appears — to this viewer, at least — like an opposite-field check swing.

1:34. Footage of Alexander pitching. Question: if the Inverted W is a way to describe one kind of arm action, how might we describe the one utilized by Alexander? The Askance K? The Truculent Y?

2:26. Well, that’s one definition of “money muscles.”

Yesterday, at his blog, Friend of NotGraphs and All-Around Ubermensch Rob Neyer — responding to this list of the 50 best baseball movies — both provided his own dozen favorite baseball movies and bemoaned the general lack of quality within the genre.

Be that as it may, some investigation within the film industry reveals quite a few potentially interesting baseball-related films that haven’t, for one reason or another, made it to theaters. Below are five notable and super-factual examples of such cases.

Working Title: The Fresh Kills Nine
Synopsis: A typically whimsical Wes Anderson project in which Owen, Luke, and the seven other Wilson brothers play a 19th century barnstorming club from Staten Island. The screenplay was very well-received within the industry and included what would have likely been a memorable cameo by Bill Murray as a New York City machine politician. Unfortunately, the project stalled when it became clear that more tweed was required for it than had ever been made in the entire history of the world.

Working Title: Rod Carew: A Serious Man
Synopsis: This Coen Brothers’ script was an early version of a film the pair actually made — i.e. 2009’s A Serious Man. Like that film, this iteration also takes place in the Coens’ native Minnesota and also explores the Coens’ Jewish faith. The difference is, of course, that the story revolves around not Michael Stuhlbarg’s physics professor, but Minnesota Twin hiting-machine Rod Carew. The baseball narrative was ultimately dropped when musician and Minnesota-native Prince refused to play the part of Carew.

Working Title: Papi
Synopsis: Papi was written and developed in late-2004 by Disney’s Pixar Studios in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Sox DH David Ortiz in the wake of Boston’s thrilling playoff run. The project was sure to create much in the way of cross-promotional and merchandising opportunities; however, copyright issues became unavoidable when animators were unable to render a version of Ortiz that didn’t resemble almost exactly DreamWorks’ property Shrek.

Working Title: Casey Jones at the Bat
Synopsis: A project originally conceived at the height of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles‘ popularity, Casey Jones at the Bat never really progressed past the earliest planning stages, but promised to include a lot of made-up, and vaguely African-sounding words..

Working Title: The Bear Jew
Synopsis: Not, as you might expect, a fleshing out of Eli Roth’s character from Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 war film Inglourious Basterds, The Bear Jew is actually just a biopic of Boston corner infielder and on-base machine Kevin Youkilis. Filming is going on now, and it is happening everywhere.

This is a day late and, depending on your spelling preferences, maybe a letter short, but let’s do it anyway: Happy Hanukkah, Baseball!

I’d originally planned to present each of our Jewish readers with enough oil to light their lamps for just one night, but then somehow make it last for eight nights. Unfortunately, that appears to require some sort of “divine miracle,” so instead I give you this — i.e. three pictures of Jewish baseballer Kevin Youkilis wiping sweat from his sweat-soaked brow.

A frustrating thing about being a curious person who’s never played baseball at the highest levels is that it’s impossible to know with any sort of precision what the most pressing concerns are of the typical Major Leaguer.

Moreover, perhaps because they’ve spent most of their lives trying to be excellent at the sport, most baseballers aren’t particularly adept at articulating these concerns.

These two facts conspire occasionally — and, perhaps, more than occasionally — to create a disconnect between those who analyze the sport and those who could, potentially, benefit from such analysis.

Of course, there are exceptions. Like Morgan Ensberg, for one. And Doug Glanville and Brent Mayne, for two others. If you haven’t investigated their blogs, you’re invited to do so.

And, while you’re at it, please consider Matt Antonelli’s blog, as well. Unlike Ensberg or Glanville or Mayne, Antonelli lacks a substantial Major League resume, having compiled only 65 plate appearances while navigating a couple season’s worth of injuries.

That said, the Padres farmhand possesses a couple traits necessary for good writing — including self-awareness, for example, and, it seems, a sympathy for the difficulties of being a reader. He also is pretty adept at articulating experiences that are totally unique to his status as Professional Baseballer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Because you, reader, are the attentive sort of person this country needs more of, you’ll undoubtedly recall how, two days ago in these electronic pages, I, Carson Cistulli, invoked the name of Chicago White Stocking Ross Barnes — i.e. progenitor of the home run in organized baseball.

Because you, reader, are also the curious sort of person this country needs more of, you probably thought to yourself something like, “I wonder what it might’ve been like to actually have witnessed that historic event.”

Luckily, this is an area in which I’m able to offer some assistance. For, after a combination of database-searching and barely ept cut-and-pasting, I’ve managed to include in this post some excerpts from the Chicago Tribune’s report of the historic game (from the May 3, 1876 edition of that paper).

The image that introduces this post is the headline for the Tribune’s sporting coverage for that day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cease your typically ceaseless toil, America, and/or put all those crying babies down: Andy Smith of Bugs and Cranks has excavated from the fossil-rich soil of the internet this YouTube Viewing Event.

What you’re watching when you watch this video is a seven-minute segment from Inside Pirates Baseball, circa 1990 — documenting the invention of the team’s official theme song, “You Gotta Believe” and a music video for the song itself.

Among the many splendors, you can expect to find:

• Men with comically Italian surnames (see: Pontieri, Ernie; Falotico, Frank and Ray).
• Men with comical other things, too (see: hair, facial and otherwise).
• A version of the world in which the Pirates are not terrible.

Furthermore, if you’re the sort of person who’s shaken and/or stirred by coincidences, then this one might appeal to you: just minutes before notice of the video came across my gold-embroidered RSS feed, I read these exact words from Bill James’ Baseball Book 1992:

The Pirates over the next decade can be seen as engaged in a war between the field level management, which is superb, and the ownership, which is out to lunch. The shortcomings of the Pirate ownership group are certain to manifest themselves in the performance of the front office, and will ultimately undermine the ballclub. So it’s kind of an interesting study, to see how long good talent management can stave off the effects of incompetent financial management.

In fact, it wasn’t that long, at all. Looking at the Pirates’ Baseball Reference page, one will notice that 1992 was, in fact, the team’s last season above .500.

H/T: WHYGAVS

The gentlemen you see here are, as you can probably tell by the intelligent-looking expressions on their faces, citizens of the city of Chicago. Or, if not citizens of Chicago, they were at least in Chicago on the night of July 12, 1979 — a.k.a. Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey.

My friend Daniel has alerted me* — apropos of nothing — to some pretty excellent photos of the event by Diane Alexander White.

*It’s been brought to my attention that the photos were linked to by South Side Sox. So, merci to those guys.

For anyone unfamiliar with the significance of Disco Demolition Night, it was a promotion devised by Mike Veeck (son of then-White Sox owner Bill Veeck) and members of Chicago rock radio station WLUP. Fans could gain admission to the July 12th doubleheader for just 98 cents — provided, that is, that they brought a disco record. Between the two games, local DJ Steve Dahl would blow up a crate of the collected records.

Apparently, things didn’t go exactly as Veeck planned.

Read the rest of this entry »

Though he’s generally remembered as a social reformer, Spiritual Giant Ralph Waldo Emerson wasn’t one of these foppish, pasty-faced liberals you’re always seeing everywhere. In fact, he was kinda the opposite of that.

Regard this literary karate chop, from “Self-Reliance”:

[D]o not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Despite this aversion to “miscellaneous popular charities” and “the thousandfold Relief Societies,” I can guarantee you, America — beyond all the shadows of all the doubts — that one cause to which Emerson would’ve given probably his entire fortune is the “Thank You to Carl Crawford” one currently being undertaken by DRaysBay.

Basically, what project leader Steve Slowinski proposes to do is publish a full-page message to free-agent Carl Crawford in the Tampa Bay Times. The content of the message? Well, you can read it at the site, but basically it says “We heart you, Carl. XOXOXO. Have a rad summer!” and stuff like that.

If nothing else, the project represents an instance of fan-player interaction unlike one this particular author has seen. Of course, this particular author is also a bit of a moron — so, that’s something to consider, as well.

It’s borderline old news now, but, in the event that you’re interested, you might consider reading Christoper Rhoads’ WSJ profile of Cuban-baseball enthusiast/apologist Peter Bjarkman.

Bjarkman, a retired Purdue University linguistics professor, is at the center of what you might call — were you so inclined — a controversy. For while he’s become basically the leading English-speaking authority on Cuban baseball, authoring the definitive A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006, he’s simultaneously decried in some circles as a Cuban propagandist.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the event that you haven’t heard, forgive me for bearing this bad news: Canadian-born funnyman Leslie Nielsen, known for his roles in Airplane! and The Naked Gun, passed away Sunday at age 84.

As a nod to Nielsen and his legacy, today’s edition’s of True Facts is inspired by the baseball-blooper scene from the aforementioned Naked Gun. In that scene, viewers are treated to some lesser-known baseball bloopers from history. Below are five other, totally real mishaps which, for one reason or another, have failed to take hold of the public imagination.

1876: Chicago White Stocking Ross Barnes accidentally “discovers” the home run on May 2, becoming the first player to hit one in a big-league baseball game. For his feat, Barnes is known forever after as “The Alexander Fleming of Baseball” — a strange truth made stranger when you consider that Fleming was only five years old at the time.

1897: In the midst of a particularly long inning during a 22-1 rout of St. Louis, Baltimore’s Willie Keeler pees his pants. It’s for this reason — and not his diminutive stature — that he became known as “Wee” Willie. True fact!

1981: Frustrated by the unnecessarily formal machinations of the intentional walk, famously ornery Baltimore manager Earl Weaver orders reliever Dave Ford to throw four baseballs all at once, sending crowd into hysterical laughter.

2000: Within a five-day period in December, Colorado GM Dan O’Dowd commits 13 years and $172 million to lefty starters Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle. Hah! Jokes!

2014: After retiring from baseball, middle infielder and scrapaholic David Eckstein goes on to successful career as newest character in American comedian Jeff Dunham’s ventriloquist act.