Presented without comment, except for the present comment.

A little over a week ago, talking with a friend who now lives in Washington, DC, that same friend dedicated no small portion of our conversation to celebrating his proximity (by virtue of living in the aforementioned American city) to minor-league baseball — in this case, to the Bowie Baysox of the Double-A Eastern League, the Frederick Keys and Potomac Nationals of the High-A Carolina League, the Hagerstown Suns of the Low-A Sally League, and even the Aberdeen IronBirds of the short-season New York-Penn League.

Mentioning that same conversation to FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron a couple days afterward, he (i.e. Cameron) replied by suggesting that his present hometown of Winston-Salem — which features no fewer than eight minor-league teams within a 90-minute drive (depending on traffic, of course) — is perhaps the best place to live in the country were one’s sole ambition in life to attend minor-league baseball games.

Because it’s among my ambitions in life to fact check Cameron’s most dubious-sounding claims — and also because I was curious — I spent too much of the weekend attempting to assess which towns and cities offered access to the greatest number of minor leagues.

As a sort of informal way of measuring this, I assigned to those same towns and cities three points for every ballpark within a 30-minute drive (according to Google Maps), two points for every ballpark within 60 minutes, and a single point for a ballpark within 90 minutes — while awarding points for only one team (the closest) per minor league.*

*Note: the scores aren’t recorded here, but the reader can reproduce them easily enough using MiLB.com and Google Maps.

So, for example, to Winston-Salem I assigned three points for the Winston-Salem Dash of the High-A Carolina League, two points for the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the Low-A Sally League (37 minutes away), one point for the Burlington Royals of the rookie-level Appalachian League (64 minutes), and another point for the Triple-A Durham Bulls (89 minutes!) — but not points for the Kannapolis Intimidators, for example, as, like Greensboro, they belong to the Sally League. Is it possible that the presence of an extra Sally League team in the general vicinity improves the experience of a baseball nerd living in Winston-Salem? Perhaps. But the marginal gains are small, I’d submit — and, more to the point, the prospect of measuring such a thing tested the will of the author.

In terms of criteria that were not considered in the creation of this list, “basically everything else” is the answer to that. So, for example, real estate prices: that’s not a criterion. Or unemployment rate: that’s not a criterion. Or weather. Or restaurants. Or schools.

With that said, here are the top-five metro areas for prospect nerds, as best I can tell. Note that all maps (which one can click for the purposes of embiggening) are from MiLB.com and presented on same scale, to avoid confusion. Drive times are courtesy Google Maps.

5. Southeast Suburbs, Cleveland

What an exercise like this one reveals is both that (a) it’s uncommon to find teams from two different minor leagues within an hour of each other and also that (b) it’s decidedly rare to find clubs from three different minor leagues all within the same general metro area. That’s why, even with just three teams, residents of the southeast Cleveland suburbs have considerably above-average access to minor-league baseball, with the Lake County Captains of the Class A Midwest League and Akron Aeros of the Double-A Eastern League both about a half hour’s away and the Mahoning Valley Scrappers of the short-season New York-Penn League about an hour’s drive.

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Alexei Ramirez and Chris Sale are (a) teammates on the Chicago White Sox and (b) almost impossibly slight. Here are their respective Body Mass Indices, according to the Mayo Clinic’s BMI Calculator.

Alexei Ramirez

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The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

The following image is not erotic in the sense that it depicts human people performing what is known in certain French nightclubs as the Beast with However Many Backs You Can Manage — or even a blonde and large-bosomed woman with eyes that say “Come hither” and also “Come hitherer.”

Rather, this photo — of a Scotch ale and smoked brisket sandwich purchased by the author at Madison’s Warner Park on Friday night — is erotic in the sense that Scotch ales and brisket sandwiches make life a thing worth living. These are things we want to share with others — others like the children we sire after a night of consuming Scotch ales and brisket sandwiches.

No one has ever asked me how to become an internet baseball writer. In the event that somebody does do that someday, though, I’ve prepared the following document with a view to minimizing the potential horrors of interacting with a stranger.

1. Find Writers You Care About
This doesn’t necessarily mean other internet baseball writers. In fact, that’s probably precisely what it doesn’t mean. If you have ever said or thought “Reading is boring,” it’s probably because most books are boring and also that the act of reading itself is entirely tedious. When I was younger, I would read just so girls would notice me and then let me do things to them — like, in a sexual way, I mean. Then, as a junior in high school, I discovered the poems of James Tate, Charles Simic, and Kenneth Koch in rather rapid succession. They did things with words that I found very surprising and enjoyable — almost as enjoyable as the things I’d wanted to do to all those ladies.

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A photo of the author, his loins barely covered.

The Beginning Part, In Which the Author Loses His Hat
The first leg of the author’s present Journey Eastward necessitated that that same author, along with his wife, make a trip via bus from Madison, WI, to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. This is no problem in itself: provided one has enough in the way of internet podcasts downloaded to his informationPhone, the ride is mostly-to-entirely bearable.

This particular trip skewed decidedly harrowing, however, owing to how the author, in his haste to account for the most essential elements of the Journey — baggage, tickets, wife — while alighting from the aforementioned omnibus, accidentally left behind his well-worn Milwaukee Brewers cap.

A Note on the Cap in Question
You can ask anyone: the Brewers cap in question was the very picture of Excellence in Men’s Headwear. It first called to the author from a vendor’s shelf at Miller Park, not unlike how the sex-nymph Calypso called to Odysseus from the sex-island of Ogygia — except that, instead of detaining him for several years from wife and child by dint of unabated lovemaking, the author’s hat merely sat atop his head and didn’t bother anyone.

In most ways that matter the hat in question was not unlike American wordsmith Walt Whitman, in that it both (a) represented the very best of what is possible in this life and (b) wasn’t allowed in nice restaurants, owing to some combination of its appearance and smell.

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The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

In his very exciting debut, Matt Harvey threw only six changeups — and, per Texas Leaguers’ PITCHf/x data, received zero swings and misses on same.

Through one inning in San Francisco tonight, Matt Harvey had recorded at least two whiffs on his change — against a hitter, in San Francisco’s Melky Cabrera, who has posted just a 5.5% swinging-strike rate and the sixth-most linear-weight runs above average against changeups.

Regard, with an 0-1 count:

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“Take your glasses off to truly see,” Carl Jung never said or wrote or even thought.

The present author has made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm regarding Mets right-hander Matt Harvey’s excellent debut this past Thursday (box).

A brief inspection of the internet reveals the present author isn’t the only one to have noted the profundity of Harvey’s start, though. What follows, for example, is a first-hand account of influential Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s own personal experience of Harvey’s 11-strikeout performance.

It was as if I were in an ecstasy. I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe — in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness. “This is eternal bliss,” I thought. “This cannot be described; it is far too wonderful!”