In the absence of video evidence like that above, the reader might find some difficulty in articulating to another party the experience of young Oakland right-hander Sonny Gray’s excellent curveball, a pitch that appears to have been worth more than five runs above average so far per every hundred thrown.

What follows are seven similes that might at least begin to approximate the experience of same.

1. It’s like having an epiphany at Caldor’s.

2. It’s like a meadowlark that’s real aggressive in business.

3. It’s like Werner Herzog’s description of conquest, probably.

Read the rest of this entry »

Barring any inconsistencies among his travel documents — an entirely real contingency, that — the author is relocating for about a year to Paris beginning in the middle of September. In preparation for said move — and in a gesture of supreme self-interest — he has resolved to publish in this space a brief, daily French exercise concerning base-and-ball.

What follows is such an exercise — featuring, in this case, a passage from actual French sporting paper L’Équipe regarding the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory over the Detroit Tigers last October. The author has included commentary regarding certain words or phrases of note either because (a) those words and phrases are particularly difficult, but the author has grasped their meaning or (b) they are particularly difficult and the author has abandoned all attempts to make sense of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

It has recently come to the author’s attention that he’ll be relocating soon — for a not insubstantial portion of the next year, it appears — to Paris, Goddamn France. While the city is noted for excellent cuisine, impressive architecture, and perpetual nudity, its residents (in the manner native to that irascible people) have systematically replaced, in both speech and the extant literature, all of the English words that already exist with a series of (sometimes similar-looking) words which contain random collections of silent vowels and are only pronounced with great difficulty.

With a view both to acquainting himself with this entirely new lexicon and also fulfilling his obligations to the present and absurd weblog, the author has resolved to publish in this space a brief, daily French exercise concerning base-and-ball — a maneuver which critics are already calling “a monument to self-interest” and “nearly useful” and also “unlikely to actually last three days.” The exercises will likely be directed at people who are familiar with language acquisition, generally, but who are not masters of French, specifically. (Because the author himself is and is not those things, respectively.)

Read the rest of this entry »

From Puig’s three-pitch, fifth-inning strikeout against Fernandez.

It has recently come to the present author’s attention that, literally every single day in this country, either hundreds or maybe even slightly more hundreds than that of office workers leave their respective places of business without having been mildly amused by the internet. With a view towards addressing this state of affairs sans delay, the author has elected to revisit here a series begun earlier in the year in which mildly amusing* constellations are constructed from certain of Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton’s single-game swing charts.

*But no more than that.

One finds, in this case, an entry from Hamilton’s August 14th game against the Yankees (box). In said contest, Hamilton appears to have offered at six pitches during the course of the game, precisely none of which was in the strike zone. The constellation which results bears more than a passing resemblance to a mangled finger or mangled other-sort-of-thing. In either case, reason dictates that the injured party should consult a physician, stat.

Credit to Texas Leaguers for the strikezone plot.

Among the (certainly) many traits which the animated GIF embedded here — of NC Dinos’ designated hitter Ho-Joon Lee first releasing his bat with a great flourish and then, as extended coverage reveals, flying out to right field — among the many traits it shares with a West Coast party, certainly one of those is that neither appears likely to stop at any point in the near future.

For further similarities, please consult the author’s scholarly paper on the matter in the forthcoming edition of Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte.

Credit to concerned internet citizen Josh Augustine for bringing this to the editoriat’s attention.

Tonight (Friday), FanGraphs hosts a gathering at The Mead Hall in Cambridge, MA. With a view to helping readers identify the FanGraphs personnel in attendance, the present author has provided succinct descriptions of each below.

David Appelman, Founder
Wears necklace of human heads, each of which (i.e. each of which head) is wearing another, smaller necklace of human heads. Is generally not without a glistening lamb shank in one hand and still-beating human heart (perhaps yours?) in other. Has third hand, too — although best not to inquire about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

At least one reader to click on the button embedded here and take the following quiz — at least one such reader will probably die within the next calendar year. Unfortunate, that.

On a positive note: almost no mental strain whatsoever will be required of that same reader when he’s tasked with identifying the least important moments of his life in recent memory.

Popular Irish legend maintains that one can find — at the end of a rainbow — one can find a pot of gold guarded by a leprechaun.

Bulgarian legend, meanwhile, proposes that anyone walking under a rainbow will experience a change in gender. Common sense, really.

Meanwhile, during the second inning of Tuesday night’s FSN broadcast of the Mets-Dodgers game (box), potentially real, but probably mythical, broadcaster Vin Scully cited FanGraphs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Managing editor Dave Cameron’s forthcoming appearance on FanGraphs Audio this week features — as many of Dave Cameron’s recent appearances have featured — features an enthusiastic guest appearance by that same managing editor’s very young dog.

It’s not unreasonable — is perhaps the most reasonable thing in the world — to suggest that, in the weeks since the canine’s arrival chez Cameron, the devoted (if few) listeners of FanGraphs Audio have become like uncles and aunts (although mostly uncles, probably) to the newest member of the Cameron family. The author has it on good authority, in fact, that listeners of that podcast like nothing better than when the baseballing content of this or that episode is forestalled by five or ten minutes by some idle chatter concerning the puppy’s sleeping habits or culinary preferences.

But what aunts and uncles require of their nephews and nieces isn’t a mere weekly audio dispatch, but rather real-live photographic proof — and moving images, if at all possible. It’s with that in mind that the author has acquired the poor-quality video embedded above of Cameron’s dog Liberty first jumping around a small plastic pool, and then falling over kinda, and then performing some other sorts of enthusiastic maneuvers, and then running in no particular direction, and then lying down without anything like warning.