Reader Well-Beered Englishman, who has likely sired many children on even more continents, has a request that, against all odds, falls within the purview of the present author. A request for GIFs, is what kind of request. For multiple GIFs, in fact, of Oakland A’s right-hander A.J. Griffin — and, specifically, for GIFs of A.J. Griffin’s curveball.

Provided the PITCHf/x data at Brooks Baseball is accurate — and who would suspect otherwise, besides some overly suspicious jerk? — Griffin threw 13 curves during his Friday start at Texas, of which a total of five were taken for strikes and four for balls. According to Harry Pavlidis, about twice as many curves are taken for balls as strikes in the majors, suggesting that, in addition to being as shapely and refulgent as a young Brigitte Bardot, Griffin’s curve is also rather effective.

Below are the requested GIFs, my fellow Americans.

GIFs like this one, of Elvis Andrus taking strike three in the first inning:

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Having recently read an uncorrected proof of my colleague Dayn Perry’s forthcoming book, Business and Fucking: Secrets to Dominating the Competition in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, I am now filled with (a) a profound sense of shame, which no amount of therapy or SSRI or deep knee bends could ever truly purge and (b) wisdom concerning business.

My first step after reading Perry’s book? To cry in the shower, naturally.

My second step, though? To design and purchase business cards, with a view to announcing to the world that I’m a gentleman who knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

Here is the front of said card (which is actually the MiniCard sold by MOO):

And, in full technicolor, the reverse side:

Like all great correspondences — the famous one between John and Abigail Adams, for example, and the other famous one between noted 20th century pop sensations Milli and Vanilli — my own correspondence with my friend Ross will someday become the object of much literary interest in this country and abroad.

While the frenzied masses will have to wait for its publication (i.e. the aforementioned correspondence’s) until just after my own death, an excerpt from one of Ross’s recent electronic letters is suitable for blockquoting in these pages.

Ross writes (or wrote, seven days ago, I should say):

On another note, hunt down recent highlights of Edwin Encarnacion stroking a dongpiece (he did so in today’s matinee game at Milwaukee, so you can see fresh evidence on mlb.com). Notice that every time he’s shown rounding 1st, he is carrying his right arm in what might be described as a palsied t-rex pose. He seems to do this invariably.

Like any gentleman of taste, I need only hear the phrase “palsied t-rex pose” once to have my curiosity piqued duly.

Abiding by said curiosity, I not only sought out some representative clips of Edwin Encarnacion, but then proceeded to render those clips into GIF form for the enjoyment of at least 10 or 12 people, as follows.

From June 20th, at Milwaukee:

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When FanGraphs founder and CEO and muscled champion David Appelman announced yesterday the launch of FanGraphs Q&A, it’s very possible that the reader — the reader of Important Internet Weblog™ NotGraphs — did not suppose that it (i.e. the launch of FanGraphs Q&A) would shake the very foundations of our society. Indeed, even the present author suspected nothing of the sort.

However, yesterday, in the course of my daily practice, I was visited by a light — not unlike that which visited Paul on the Damascene Road — a light accompanied by a voice which said, “Carson! Carson! Ask Appelman to add a category — namely, Ephemera — to that new FanGraphs Q&A page. Forsooth, it will amuse at least three or four people. Ask him politely, of course, lest he remove your testicles from your person and send them to opposite ends of the world.”

Upon the completion of said vision, I hurriedly composed an email requesting the addition of Ephemera as a category. And Appelman, sometime not too long after that, added Ephemera as a category. And now it can be said — without much in the way of hyperbole — that the very foundations of our society are decidedly atremble.

Even now, less than 24 hours later, one can find all manner of thought-provoking question.

Spelling questions, like:

Appelman or Appleman?

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“Maybe the world is blind / Or just a little unkind”: these lines — posited originally by Gary Portnoy, composer of the theme song for TV’s Punky Brewster — seem perhaps like the aimless lamentations of the peculiarly sensitive. Upon further inspection, however, Portnoy’s (ahem) complaint appears to be as relevant today as when Punky Brewster’s mother abandoned her at a Chicago, Illinois, shopping center in 1984.

Indeed, if Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal is to be believed, recently acquired utility man Brent Lillibridge is trapped in Kevin Youkilis’s old locker and nobody cares.

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Longtime readers of NotGraphs — and also anyone who’s visited NotGraphs even just once in their entire life — will know that, if the present site were to have something in the way of a patron saint, then the leading candidates for that role would be Dick Allen and Bob Uecker, the former because he’s a leisured gentleman; the latter, because he’s an equally leisured gentleman.

Indeed, it should surprise zero of us to learn not only that Allen and Uecker were teammates (for the 1966 and 1967 Phillies), but that they were also (a) close friends, (b) the authors, together, of no little merriment, and (c) the recipients, together, of multiple fines.

The pair reunited on air Sunday, with Allen in Chicago as part of a celebration of the 1972 White Sox (with which team and in which season he won the AL MVP award) and Uecker in Chicago in his capacity as the Brewers’ radio voice.

To say that Allen and Uecker burst into song during the former’s 5th inning appearance on WTMJ Radio would both (a) sound like a flight of whimsy on the part of the author and (b) be an accurate description of what actually happened.

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Readers of a certain age will remember the righteous indignation they felt when so-called “sensei” John Kreese of the Cobra Kai dojo ordered star pupil Johnny Lawrence to “sweep the leg” of already injured protagonist Daniel LaRusso in the denoument of 1984’s Karate Kid. Those same readers will remember the overwhelming sense of justice they experienced just moments later when LaRusso performed the crane-kick maneuver captured in GIF-form above to win first place in the All Valley Karate Tournament.

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There are some things that need doing in this life, and some of those things can only be done by someone with the given name Vincent or its derivatives.

Below are all the players in the FanGraphs database — so, mostly (if not every) major leaguer ever, and minor leaguers since some time in the later aughts — with a name either resembling, or actually being, Vincent. Said list of players is accompanied by photos of groups of men all of whom are probably also named Vince, if you were to ask them.

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As the reader will likely know by now, Tampa Bay right-hander Joel Peralta was ejected from Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Nationals before even throwing a single pitch. Indeed, Nationals manager Davey Johnson — who was a member of the front office in Washington when Peralta played there in 2010 — asked home plate umpire Tim Tschida to inspect Peralta’s glove as the latter warmed up. Following a brief delay, both Peralta and his glove were removed from the game, due to a “foreign substance on or in” the latter — pine tar being the substance in question.

To say that pine tar and its application to a baseball are “illegal” — this is fine and good. To suggest that pine tar constitutes a foreign substance, however, is a bit misleading: in fact, a popular brand of pine tar is sold by Mueller Sports Medicine, Inc., located in beautiful Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin — a town (Prairie de Sac, that is) famously known its potent domesticity.

Below is a list of five substances that are decidedly more foreign than pine tar. While we can only speculate upon what sort of competitive advantage any of them provide to the American baseballist, one is forced to assume that their use is rampant in Major League Baseball.

Betel Nut (Link)

What It Is: Generally, some combination of the areca nut, betel leaves, and (powdered) lime designed to be chewed or gnawed upon. Also called paan, it seems. Red in color. Habit-forming.
Where Found: India. Kinda alot.

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Arkansas sophomore right-hander and likely top 2013 draftee Ryne Stanek pitched against, and beat, two-time reigning champions South Carolina on Monday night in a winners’ bracket game of the College Word Series (box).

As Stanek’s 3:3 K:BB for the game suggests, he wasn’t dominant in the strictest sense; however, as the following steaming-hot GIFs make clear, Stanek’s slider isn’t the thing holding him back from total domination of both/either opposing hitters and/or the whole world.

The reader is invited to use the following GIFs as a potent aphrodisiac with a view to the end of sweet, sweet lovemaking.

Third Inning vs. Catcher Dante Rosenberg

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