Recently, in these pages, the author reproduced for the reader’s consideration a small collection of excerpts from a game recap that appeared originally in the July 1, 1897, edition of the New York Evening World — which recap, one will have noted, features sentences that are both alien and also “like magic” to the modern ear.

This post features three more examples of that engaging prose — in this case, from the July 15, 1897, edition of the Evening World and all concerning a game from the previous day between the New York Giants and Louisville Colonels which took place at the latter club’s Base Ball Grounds.

Regarding the aforementioned contest, one learns that, in the first inning, “Cunny couldn’t find the coal hole cover” — a sentence which almost certainly appeared in more than Victorian-era erotic novel, as well.

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After having recently consumed American film The Wolf of Wall Street — and with a view towards avoiding as long as possible anything resembling self-reflection, with all of its dire consequences — the author and his wife endeavored, even more recently, to revisit select titles from the Martin Scorsese corpus.

Of the films themselves, the author has little to say here. A relief for everyone, that. On a particular point of interest, however, there’s some cause to dwell momentarily, it would appear.

Crucial to this brief meditation is a passing familiarity with the contents of the video embedded below (which contents is full of explicit language, it should be noted).

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Dayn Perry and the present author are recording a Question Time™ edition of FanGraphs Audio at 12:30pm ET tomorrow (Wednesday).

The reader is invited to submit a question for Perry — whose likeness is the emoticon for self-disgust, probably — in the comment section below.

The author, a person in his mid-30s, has recently (i.e. today) allocated what might reasonably be called a “shameful” number of his waking hours to a sports-related video game. What video game — or even what sport, precisely — is beside the point. The point is that the author has also hastily fashioned, by way of free graphics-editing software, the graph pictured here, which depicts certain findings the author has found.

Dirty, dirty science, is what we have on all our hands now.

Class. In a glass.

It’s very possible that certain readers of the present site are entirely comfortable with the intensity of their baseball fandom. It’s also possible, however, that other sorts of readers harbor the notion that the resources which they’ve customarily allocated to the pursuit of base-and-ball expertise might actually have been better utilized in the foundation of better and more renewable energy resources or, alternatively, cleaning the bathroom just once ever.

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Mostly for the reason that it’s nearly part of his job description, is why the present author has spent much of the past two hours idly surveying game recaps from century-old newspapers.

Below are three excerpts from that search — all courtesy the July 1, 1897, edition of the New York Evening World and all concerning a game from the previous day between the Boston Beaneaters and New York Giants which took place at the Polo Grounds.

Each selection features examples of written English that, when uttered aloud, force the reader to affect the voice and manner of the late George Plimpton. One finds, for example, that, in the first inning, Ducky Holmes was compelled to get “solid with his burghers on the clutch” whilst tracking down a fly ball hit by Boston’s Chick Stahl.

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Please click, please embiggen.

The Louisville Colonels won in exhilarating, come-from-behind fashion against St. Louis, one learns from the July 31st edition of the Louisville Times embedded here. More fortunate, it would appear, those Colonels than Augusta Maitland — which Omaha-area laundress, readers of the Times also learn, seems to have been shot thricely by jealous lover Peter Volgreen.

Horrible News Beside Historical Box Scores, is what this has been.

ACT I
(ARTHUR VANCE and ASSORTED OTHERS loiter in a baseball dugout in Nebraska, ca. 1909. ARTHUR VANCE clears his throat.)

ARTHUR VANCE
Hey, everyone. I have an announcement to make. From now on, I’d like to be called Dazzy. Not Arthur, anymore. Just Dazzy. Dazzy Vance.

ASSORTED OTHERS
How about we call you Gay-Face Jones, instead? Because only someone with a gay face would ask a group of other male athletes in rural Nebraska — at the beginning of the 20th century, no less — to be called Dazzy.

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In these difficult times, there are many decisions to make: what to wear for work, where to eat for dinner, how hard to cry about all of the day’s myriad failures. At NotGraphs, we understand this. That’s why, with a view to aiding our small but constantly beloved readership, we’d like to make you aware of a decision you don’t have to make.

Sometimes, when signing up for a credit card, a client of this or that bank has the opportunity to select a card featuring a graphic of his favorite baseball team’s logo. Like the Red Sox, for example, which are a baseball team. Or the Cardinals, which are a different baseball team.

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According to research conducted by the author this morning in his pajama pants — and reproduced below entirely in the form of two tweets by Tribune-Review beat writer Rob Biertempfel — the Pittsburgh Pirates appear to be the major-league baseball club which most wholly embraces the tenets of absurdism and also, probably, the only club which embraces even one tenet of absurdism.