Cardinals outfield prospect Mike O’Neill has appeared within the author’s Fringe Five column of late neither because of his tremendous raw power nor even his nearly average power. Indeed, as of yesterday, O’Neill had accumulated only one professional home run since being drafted out of USC in 2010.

What he did Friday night, however — in the second game of Double-A Springfield’s double-header against Tulsa — was to hit a home run. And what the present author did after that was to render footage of the home run into animated GIF form such that it might be viewed and enjoyed by no fewer than one other person, and up to as many as seven or eight other people.

Regard, here’s the first half of the home-run sequence, which the author has split into two parts with a view to Maximum Loading Ease.

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No, you aren’t having fun yet.

Anyone whose family, or who he himself, purchased an Apple-brand computer anytime before, say, 1995 will likely have more than a passing knowledge of the genre commonly known as edutainment, a very specific sort of software program that, in striving to provide users with content that is both educational and entertaining, typically provides neither.

That fact having being established, allow the author to announce that, in every relevant way — both in that it is neither very educational nor very entertaining — the present post is a goddamn exemplar of the edutainment genre.

What follows is a collection of five baseball players (most past, one present) whose names most resemble popular Danish ejaculations — at least so far Wiktionary has led the author to believe.

Readers can use this post to both not learn Danish and also learn very little about baseball!

Player: Willie Horton (Profile)
Who He Was: Mostly Tigers outfielder, 1963-1980
Relevant Danish Ejaculation: Hørt! (Real Dictionary Entry)
Meaning: Hear, hear!

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Managing editor Dave Cameron wrote this morning about the formerly quite impressive and more recently less impressive Scott Kazmir’s very impressive start on Thursday against Oakland — during which start Kazmir not only posted a 10:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but also (and perhaps more importantly to the left-hander’s immediate future) featured a fastball that was sitting at 95 mph by the end of the game (box).

What follows, for sake of reference, are Kazmir’s last three pitches — which pitches (a) represent three of the four hardest fastballs Kazmir threw all game and (b) were thrown consecutively, all for strikes, to Luke Montz.

Here, recorded at 95.78 mph, is Kazmir’s first pitch to Montz — which Montz fouls off:

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As made more or less clear by the present author’s recent conversation with him, Voice of the Cardinals Mike Shannon is both (a) a man among men among still more men and (b) not likely to concern himself unduly with those matters which fall outside of Mike Shannon’s purview.

Such a matter appears to be a promotion currently being conducted by Mobil — which promotion invites listeners to advocate (via text message) on behalf of an already extant Mobile jingle, that it might become the walk-up music for a Cardinals player this season.

The motivations for the consumer to participate in said promotion aren’t immediately clear — neither in a general sense (to a person with reason, for example) nor, specifically, to Mike Shannon himself, who remains adamantly perplexed by it (i.e. the promotion) even while explaining it to listeners of Cardinals radio.

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Cincinnati Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips has established himself, among baseball players, as one of that sport’s most active users of social media — and his Twitter handle (@DatDudeBP) is one of the league’s most recognizable.

What the author has uncovered today, however, while reading French — that is, a language very similar to English, were English spoken exclusively by pornographers with sinus infections — is that the Twitter handle @DatDudeBP actually belonged originally to noted, if tragically underappreciated, Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret (1899-1959).

Recognized by progenitor of the movement Andre Breton as the most faithful to Surrealism’s core values, Peret was an enthusiastic user of Twitter, even some 80 years before it (i.e. Twitter itself) was invented — a startling fact on the face of things, but less so when one considers that the Surrealist mission concerned itself primarily with the construction of new realities.

Below, in fact, we find evidence not only of Peret using Twitter, but also how it might have served him in the composition of his work.

Here’s the first of three tweets by Peret from February of 1926. Translated loosely it reads: “For seven centuries he commanded his fourteen lobsters.”

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Dayn Perry and I are recording a Question Time™ edition of the podcast at 11am ET tomorrow (Wednesday).

Feel free to submit questions for Perry — who has fewer than zero reasons to live — in the comment section below.

The purpose of this post is to remind the lusty and bespectacled readership that NC State sophomore Carlos Rodon’s slider — an example of which one see here being thrown to, and also knocking over, DH Cam McRae of Presbyterian College this past Sunday (box) — that Rodon’s slider remains superlative.

Nothing has changed since February, for example, when his slider was superlative — nor April, a different month in which his slider was also superlative.

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The Leaders of Tomorrow work hard and play harder and smile hardest.

Because both (a) life is a cavalcade of miseries and (b) alcohol famously offers consequence-free relief from said miseries, it follows that (c) no further incentives need exist for its (i.e. alcohol’s) consumption.

And yet, it is not uncommon to find — in particular, among the Leaders of Tomorrow — to find games designed to facilitate and make more amusing the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Below are eight examples of real baseball-related drinking games discovered by the present site’s Investigative Reporting Investigation Team and not actually just invented right now by the author, sitting at his dumb writing table.

1. Take a small sip of chablis for every infield fly hit by Joey Votto. (Note: for light drinkers.)

2. Drink a beer for every mention of FanGraphs on a Cubs television broadcast.

3. During a Dodgers home broadcast, take a sip every time you secretly wish Vin Scully would hold you and whisper that everything is okay before commencing a meaningful anecdote about Sandy Koufax.

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Sometimes, people who are wise in your life will tell you that “Practice makes perfect.” Sometimes, a cat with a good sense of humor and who also happens to speak English with some measure of fluency will tell you that “Practice makes purr-fect.”

In either case, what we learn is that, for anyone who has an interest in acquiring some measure of expertise in this or that skill, what’s necessary is to develop that skill over a long period of time and by virtue of considerable repetition.

As the footage here demonstrates, at least one person in the Dodgers organization understands that. Outfield prospect Yasiel Puig has exhibited considerable promise in the art and science of bat-flipping. Those fledgling efforts haven’t compelled him to miss the forest for the trees, however — in which metaphor the forest is the potential for future bats to be flipped ever more beautifully and the trees are probably individual bats that were flipped well, but not enough to make a whole forest, probably.

Credit to Kiley McDaniel for video and Nick Piecoro for drawing author’s attention to same.

Promising Dodgers outfield prospect Yasiel Puig made an impression on the Teeming Masses this spring with his bat-flipping exploits — a practice he appears to have begun (as the previous hyperlink reveals) as a member of the Cuban National Team, if not earlier.

Puig brought his enthusiasm for the craft with him to Double-A Chattanooga, for whom he homered during that club’s second game of the season — and, in the wake of which home run, he proceeded to toss his bat much closer to third base than is generally the custom. NotGraphs, as a journalistic organ with its finger on the throbbing pulse of Beauty, provided due coverage of this episode, as well.

With May having arrived, the reader might find him-/herself asking — especially if he/she has precisely the same lexicon and speaking cadence and general life concerns as the author — “With regard to Yasiel Puig, I wonder if he’s been flipping his bat at all of late?”

The answer to which question is available here in the form of words: “Yes, he has.”

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