Like the dark and mysterious stranger in a film about a young French woman’s sexual awakening, the reader has by now made love to the video footage provided earlier today by Eno Sarris of myriad Japanese hitters practicing the sacred art of the bat flip.

Now, like the reader of a blog post in which a metaphor is mixed almost immediately after being introduced, the reader finds himself reliving — via his mind’s eye — the ecstasies of that earlier encounter.

Why the mind is a cyclops, we’ll never know. Despite its lack of depth perception, however, it remains one of the best ways to relive ecstasies.

Still, in certain cases, an animated GIF is required. Like this animated GIF of, first, a hitter flipping his bat, and then, second, of a pitcher slamming his glove with Maximum Anger:

The author, because he is on nodding terms with danger, has recently re-read T.S. Eliot’s four-part uberpoem — or four-poem book, if you’d prefer — Four Quartets.

Now the author, because he is combination litterateur and issue of Seventeen magazine from 1996, presents the following quiz, in which he invites the reader to discern the difference between the section titles from Eliot’s poem and long-dead base-ballists.

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Today, January 23rd, we celebrate the life of Mark Wohlers as part of our on-again, but mostly off-again, feast-day series.

Life: Drafted by Atlanta in 1988 out of Holyoke (MA) High School, Wohlers developed into an excellent high-leverage pitcher, averaging just under 12 strikeouts per nine innings at the height of his career, from 1994 to -97, and posting the highest WAR among major-league relievers during that same span. In 1998, however, Wohlers developed a condition that greatly affected his command, prompting him to walk 13 of 25 batters faced during late July and early August, after which he was placed on the disabled list for “inability to pitch.” Wohlers was traded to Cincinnati the following season, disabled immediately, and treated for anxiety (while also undergoing Tommy John surgery at a later date). He finished his career throwing 139 roughly league-average innings in 2001-02, the latter just his age-32 season, although was never as dominant as in his peak.

Entirely and defeated are two words you might consider using.

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Baseball’s greatest virtue isn’t, as certain men of letters have suggested, its languid pace, nor its exploration of the dialectic between urban and rural space, nor the wealth of data (both quantitative and qualitative) it produces — although all these qualities are notable and capable of being noted.

No, baseball’s greatest virtue is that it came of age at a time in our history when men responded to death’s chilling knell not with mild platitudes, but by means of strongman’s prose, much of it likely translated from the Latin in unheated boarding-house rooms.

By way of example, let’s consider the case of Bub McAtee — who was both born and died in a city of some Classical extraction itself — and Bub McAtee’s obituary.

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Last August, the author invited the readership to celebrate what one might call the “untamed beauty” of Kansas City reliever Kelvin Herrera’s changeup. In the intervening months, he (i.e. the author) has turned his attention to other matters — many of them involving variations on the theme of bed rest.

Herrera’s inclusion on the Dominican Republic’s WBC roster, however, reminds us once again both that (a) he (i.e. Kelvin Herrera) exists and that (b) like a nude woman descending a staircase, so is Kelvin Herrera’s changeup likely to become the subject of an important Cubist painting.

Here are three changeups thrown by Herrera since that last post — all three to Jarrod Saltalamacchia and all thrown, in fact, consecutively on August 25th.

For strike one:

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Even with almost a whole week having passed since filling the Balboni-shaped holes inside us all on his Feast Day, there might still remain for the reader what is known in the medical field as an Appetite for Balboni — a condition similar to an Appetite for Destruction, except less about causing property damage and more about mustache care and eating ham directly off the bone.

With a view to mollifying the effects of said condition, the author has found and then embedded the above video — a profile of then-minor-leaguer Steve Balboni from 1980, hosted by a poorly disguised Ernest Borgnine.

It is not irony, but rather some version of meaningful coincidence, that Rob Deer — who distinguished himself as a ballplayer for his commitment to the three true outcomes — that Deer’s options for offseason employment (at least ca. 1987) would so obviously have just one possible outcome.

The author has reason to believe (which is to say, he probably read it in the New Yorker once) that it’s a not uncommon practice among certain Buddhist monks for them (i.e. these same monks) to spend hours meditating upon the reality of their own future deaths — with a view, one supposes, towards demystifying same.

A much less common, but entirely similar, practice is to meditate on the death of young Brooklyn outfielder Al Thake, who drowned less than a month before his 23rd birthday while fishing in New York Harbor in 1872.

His obituaries, presented below, appear to be the oldest extant ones among professional base-ballists.

For example, from the Brooklyn Eagle (September 2nd, 1872):

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In a manner of speaking, one of these kids isn’t like the others. That said, owing to a serious lack of fundamental play, Tom Emanski would be furious with all of them.

Credit to my real-live mentor David Dunbar for reminding me that this was a thing.

In the not very distant past (i.e. 45 minutes ago) my colleague David Temple challenged the readership to answer certain questions about Delwyn and Delmon Young — and to establish the differences lying therein.

While Temple was mainly concerned (like Isaiah Berlin’s proverbial hedgehog) with depth — that is, many qualities between just two Youngs, Delmon and Delwyn — here we concern ourselves (like the fox) with width, and the breadth (or, four, which is two more) of Youngdom that Western Civilization has produced.

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