Today, the author and his wife completed the first leg of a two-day journey in a U-Haul truck from the north of Michigan to an undisclosed location in New Hampshire that will serve as our new home.

Generating weblog content whilst driving a 17-foot truck presents some challenges. For all their virtues, wives are decidedly intolerant of husbands who attempt to perform internet work from within the confines of a driver’s seat. Fortunately, certain ballclubs have done everyone the total solid of constructing ballparks close enough to Interstate 90 so that absurd men with limited ambitions — like the present author, for example — can parlay that into writing of no consequence.

With that in mind, I present the following — which is to say, probably all the ballparks you can see from the stretch of I-90 between Toledo and Buffalo.

All Pro Freight Stadium
All Pro Freight Stadium is located in Avon, Ohio, and serves as home to the Lake Erie Crushers of the independent Frontier League. Here’s a terrible photo of it from the interstate:

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The purpose of this weblog post is to inform that considerable portion of the readership who’d previously requested information regarding same, that tickets for the Italian Baseball Series of 2014 between Unipol Bologna and ASD Rimini, starting August 15th, are now available. The cost is €15 per game or €25 for the first and second games combined. Fans who are either 65-plus or a member of the military — which is to say, the Italian military — may purchase a reduced-price ticket for €12 (€20 combined for the first and second games).

Credit to David Laurila for his assistance.

The author, in the midst of conversation with viscount of the internet Rob Neyer last week, inquired of that latter party which — of all the horrifying and notable deaths died by 19th century ballplayers — which of them he (i.e. Neyer) regarded as particularly emblematic of that time. Neyer’s answer: a drunken Ed Delahanty, having just alighted from a train by order of its conductor, falling into Niagara Falls. A strong entry, one is forced to agree.

By means of social media, American wordsmith Josh Wilker submits another worthy candidate — namely, the case of Boston catcher Marty Bergen. Widely praised for his defensive prowess, Bergen was also a victim of mental illness. In January of 1900, at age 28, he murdered his wife and two children by means of an axe, before using a straight razor to slice his own throat — an endeavor he pursued with such enthusiasm, a Wikipedia contributor relates, that he “nearly beheaded himself.”

*Image from January 20, 1900, edition of New York Times.

A not infrequent topic within undergraduate literature classrooms — and within the books themselves, for whose existence those classrooms were constructed in the first place — concerns the dichotomy between free will and determinism. Speaking generally, advocates of the former claim that humans possess agency and are capable of altering the course of events; proponents of the latter, that events conspire in such a way as to produce certain, unalterable outcomes.

The present post — and the circumstances which have led to its composition — serves as evidence of that second position. Today, while organizing her parents’ attic, the author’s wife happened upon the April 1994 edition of Smithsonian magazine, which issue contains within it a droll and brief account of baseball in France. In a series of events that might be best described as “entirely predictable,” she passed said magazine along to the present author, who is a baseball weblogger concerned with trifling trifles. And because he is helpless against the tide of inevitability, what he has done is compose this post and published it.

About three years ago now, the author utilized what little he possesses in the way of photo-editing skills to produce the image — of portly and irascible major-league umpire Joe West ejecting NotGraphs — which thereafter became the official logo for the present site.

As of this AM, that logo has been replaced by a new and morbid variation on the theme, care of avant-garde male model Patrick Dubuque. In the case of this image, one finds not only Joe West but also, in West’s right hand, a scythe — with which dated agricultural instrument he intends, presumably, to murder the present site to death.

Over 6.1 innings tonight, Corey Kluber conceded zero baserunners — a notable feat, that, insofar as, were he to have recorded eight more outs, the reaction of the public would have been considerable. As the above footage reveals, however, Omar Infante rendered all notions of perfection moot in the seventh inning, lining a single to center field off the aforementioned Cleveland right-hander.

What Infante’s single represents, of course, isn’t the end of Kluber’s bid for a perfect game, but rather an entirely necessary reminder — such as one that appears with the Discourses of Epictetus or Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius — that perfection doesn’t exist. Nor is this absence of perfection something over which one ought to grieve. Rather, it’s a fact. Like the capital of Ohio is a fact. Or that Ohio exists at all.

Among the details regarding his life which might most immediately lend themselves to an illustrative portrait of Edwin “Alabama” Pitts are both how he (a) somehow entered the Navy at age 15 and also (b) distinguished himself among Sing Sing’s inmates as that correctional facility’s most talented of athletes.

After finishing his prison sentence, Pitts played both baseball and football professionally. After that, he made the decision to visit a combination filling station, tavern, and swimming pool (as one does). After that, he was stabbed during a saloon fight and died.

Image from June 8th, 1941, edition of St. Petersburg Times.

Very talented modern fictionist George Saunders says in an interview I’m unable to locate for a publication I can’t recall — he says that he didn’t begin to write proficiently until he returned to a voice that most resembled the sort utilized by people in Chicago, his hometown.

For me, I’ve always been skeptical of that tired directive, recited often in creative-writing workshops, that one should “write what [he or she] knows.” I prefer, both as a reader and writer, to be caught up in an experience that is expressly not available to me in my actual, real life. Still, there’s probably some merit to revealing certain elements of one’s own life to the reader.

Pursuant to that point, I present the above image — of my actual birth mother’s actual arm — which arm bears a tattoo of the Boston Red Sox’ cap insignia and which tattoo I know for a true fact she received whilst visiting me in 2007 or -08 (one of those) in Portland, Oregon. As regards the state of her sobriety at the time, I’m unable to comment. That this is a photo of her arm from tonight, however, is a point beyond contention.

Inventor of the essay and non-stop Frenchman Michel de Montaigne argues within his ample works that a necessary condition for experiencing real pleasure is the certain knowledge that one must eventually die. Without acknowledging the end of a thing, one is necessarily haunted by the inevitability of that end. But by recognizing death as fact, the reality of the present moment can be enjoyed without reservation.

Nor is this summary of Montaigne’s work merely an attempt by the present author to exhibit for everyone his Wide Reading. Rather, it serves as some context for the the following announcement — namely that, approximately three months from now, all contributors to NotGraphs.com will cease contributing to same and that the site will remain frozen in its then-current state until the end of time.

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