Former Yankee first baseman and current Dodger manager Don Mattingly will appear as a cross-dressing Spanish prostitute in an upcoming Pedro Almodovar film, NotGraphs has learned — or, if not learned, per se, then at least jumped to the only possible conclusion given the above-embedded GIF.
Over the weekend, Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports provided some details on Albert Pujols’ contract with the Angels, noting that the first baseman will receive $3 million for his 3,000th career hit and $7 million for his 763rd career home run.
With all due respect to Mr. Brown’s reportage, he appears to have omitted some of the more peculiar elements of the 10-year pact. Fortunately for all of society, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has performed the diligence due such a sizable deal.
Here are some of the unreported — but totally, definitely true — particulars of the Pujols contract:
• To confirm the verity of Pujols’s reported age, the Angels requested he provide not only a long-form birth certificate, but also a startling minute-by-minute account of the birth by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was present in Santo Domingo at the time. Early reports suggest that Pujols’ mother was not, in fact, a human woman, but the very butterfly after whom the Effect of the same name was coined.
On October 28th of this year, longtime Cardinal right-hander Bob Forsch threw out the ceremonial first pitch for that team’s World Series-clinching Game Seven victory. Less than a week later, Forsch was dead, having suffered an aneurysm at his Tampa-area home. He was 61.
Though his corporeal form has passed, Forsch assuredly lives on in the memory part of the brain of the few Cardinal fans who’ve come equipped with that organ.
He also lives on for those of us who derive some pleasure from the growth and maintenance of superlative mustaches. The image which accompanies these words (courtesy Andy Gray of the SI Vault Twitter feed and clickable for ample embiggening) accounts for about a thousand of the words I would have composed on the matter.
The remaining words are these: Bob Forsch had a mustache… or did he?
To answer that question, follow these instructions:
1. Become a father.
2. Wait until such a time as your child, upon seeing fog for the first time, asks if the clouds have come down to earth.
3. Take note of your answer. It will reveal your feelings about The Forschadow.
Or, phrased differently:
Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein writes — or wrote, ca. 1921 — in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (proposition 6.22) that “the logic of the world which the propositions of logic show in tautologies, mathematics shows in equations.”
In response to — and, perhaps, in spirited negation of — Wittgenstein’s declaration, American baseballing prospect Casey Kelly submits this via his Twitter computer:
To which sentiment Kelly adds in his next Tweet: “Vienna Circle? More like Vienna Apeirogon if you ask me!”
Thank you to Ben Carsley, whose chain the hottest girls in the game are undoubtedly wearing.
UPDATE: It appears as though Mr. Cole has been the victim of internetting roguery! Per Tim Williams of Pirate Prospects, Cole has exactly zero Twitter accounts. Sadly, it seems as though our attempt to take pleasure in the frailty of another has been thwarted.
_ _ _ _ _
If you’re not familiar with it, Twitter is an online social networking website that allows users to share status updates — known as “tweets” — with friends and other “followers.”
Tweets can be about anything: about a restaurant you’re at, a sitcom you’re watching, or, for example, how you might quit baseball to dedicate yourself more wholly to America’s favorite psychotropic:
It should be noted immediately that the above could very well be the result of (first-overall draft pick) Gerrit Cole’s Twitter account having been hacked. If that’s the case, a word of advice to Mr. Cole: passwords with letters, numbers, symbols are most secure.
Note: it should also-also be noted that this, in fact, might be Gerrit Cole’s real Twitter account.
H/T: Reader Mike, code name “Mike”
Earlier today, Bradley Woodrum treated America not only to his prose stylings, but also to that peculiar joy that only a snowman-shaped mouse cursor can cultivate in a man’s (or, ideally, a woman’s) bosom.
Which, that gave the present author an idea — an idea to which the reader can become privy by meeting me on the other side of the jump.
While the majority of baseballers use their respective offseasons to the end of playing golf and/or impregnating females, this tweet (courtesy MLB Trade Rumors) reveals that Texas Ranger second baseman Ian Kinsler dedicates at least some of his leisure time to decidedly more scholarly pursuits — namely, lively discourses with Ranger GM Jon Daniels et al. on the subject of FDR’s revolutionary economic programs of the early 1930s.
While we’re unable to confirm the information at this time, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has reason to believe that Kinsler’s next conversation with the Rangers will concern, specifically, the Wagner Act of 1935.
Sometimes a man, comprehending simultaneously both the pointlessness and abject misery of this thing we call life, is compelled by angst to unleash upon the uncaring world a cathartic, primeval scream.
Other times a man, trapped inside the satchel of the wife of a baseball writer — a wife who absolutely promised the baseball writer that said man would be unharmed during transport but who then broke the man anyway and didn’t even really seem that sorry about — sometimes that man is compelled to unleash a cathartic, primeval scream, as well.
Danny Knobler of CBS Sports is reporting that the Detroit Tigers are close to signing veteran right-handed reliever Octavio Dotel. If and when the deal is made official, the Tigers will become Dotel’s 13th team in 14 seasons.
That’s not technically everywhere, but it’s a-bunch-of-where.
To wit:
Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota,
Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota,
Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma,
Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma,
Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo,
Tocapillo, Baranquilla, and Perdilla.Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana,
Washington, Houston, Kingston, Texarkana,
Monterey, Faraday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa,
Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa,
Tennessee to Tennesse Chicopee, Spirit Lake,
Grand Lake, Devils Lake, Crater Lake.Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Ombabika,
Schefferville, Jacksonville, Waterville, Costa Rica,
Pittsfield, Springfield, Bakersfield, Shreveport,
Hackensack, Cadillac, Fond du Lac, Davenport,
Idaho, Jellico, Argentina, Diamantina,
Pasadena, Catalina.Pittsburgh, Parkersburg, Gravelbourg, Colorado,
Ellensburg, Rexburg, Vicksburg, Eldorado,
Larimore, Admore, Haverstraw, Chatanika,
Chaska, Nebraska, Alaska, Opelika,
Baraboo, Waterloo, Kalamazoo, Kansas City,
Sioux City, Cedar City, Dodge City.
Credit to Baseball Reference for minor-league information.
Here’s how life works, basically:
1. Get born.
2. Meet a woman.
3. Have kids.
4. Google “yakov smirnoff” baseball.
5. Die.
