Generally speaking, the tastes of the vulgar crowd are precisely the sort that ought to be ignored. In the case of George Springer, however — which Houston Astros prospect is distinctly compelling — the tastes of the vulgar crowd and also the tastes of those with more sophisticated interests appear to be entirely aligned.
There’s a certain sort of pain a ballplayer is compelled to endure as a result of striking out in a major-league game. There’s another sort of pain — a more immediate one, surely — which a ballplayer clearly is forced to tolerate on such an occasion as he’s hit by a pitched ball.
The top indication that major-league right-hander Josh Johnson is a classical scholar used to be the paper he wrote on the theme of sal (or “wit”) in the work of the Neoteric poets and which appeared in the Autumn, 2007, edition of the American Journal of Philology.
Now, however, the top indication that Josh Johnson is a classical scholar is the fantasy update from today that’s pictured above — which fantasy update reports that, not unlike the Socrates of Plato’s Apologia, Johnson is committed to perpetual examination of the self.
Credit to reader David Internet Jacobs for spying the source material here with his (one presumes) regularly sized eye.
You crazy for this one, Kenny.
San Diego minor-leaguer Cody Decker and his teammates on Padres’ Triple-A affiliate El Paso have received (deserved) attention of late for an elaborate practical joke performed over the course of an entire month and at the expense of veteran major-leaguer Jeff Francoeur.
Writing for Sports on Earth, champion of the people Matthew Kory has utilized Decker’s prank as an entrée into further consideration of baseball’s most notable pranks. A creditable piece, Kory’s, and one which has served as the impetus for what follows — namely, a record of five practical jokes from baseball history which have, for one reason or another, been lost to time. Until this very second, one notes.
1906: Famously eccentric and perhaps also mentally disabled left-hander Rube Waddell, attempting an early and particularly zealous form of what later became known as Hot Foot, straps teammate Socks Seybold to the latter’s bed, sets it aflame, and then exits the premises. Thanks only to the heroism of local fire authorities, Seybold is rescued, but is no longer capable of smell.
It’s important, in this life, to recognize that certain things do, while other things don’t, exist. A thing that does exist, for example, is your in-laws. Just sitting there at home, they are, judging you for how your job is 90% just producing sophomoric Photoshop images for mindless internet consumption.
A thing that doesn’t exist, on the other hand, is a vineyard along the banks of San Leandro Creek, right beside the home ballpark of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics.
Were such a thing to exist, however, the image below is an image of the sort of wine such a vineyard would likely produce. (Click to embiggen, naturally.)
Twice now, in these electronic pages, the author has alerted the public to ballcaps of great merit made available by means of internet auction house eBay.com. What follows represents an unimaginative sequel to those two earlier installments.
Oakland A’s Eckersley Hat (Link)
Style: Snapback
Time Left: N/A
Cost: US $28.39 (Buy It Now)
It’s much less the actual appearance and more the idea of this particular cap that is attractive. Dennis Eckersley was, for years, an above-average starting pitcher. Upon joining Oakland in 1987, he became more or less the majors’ best reliever for nearly a decade. Now, even 15 years after having retired, Eckersley persists in sporting a coiffure typically reserved for those either en route to or on the way home from a sexy key party. Multitudes, he could be said to contain.
Lew Brown played for Providence, at least two Boston clubs, and assorted other teams during a seven-year career. He retired, it would seem, following his age-26 season. In January of 1889, just weeks short of his 31st birthday, he somehow broke his kneepan (an antiquated word for kneecap) on a stone cuspiodor (i.e. a spittoon) whilst wrestling. Then, somehow, he immediately contracted pneumonia, became delirious, and then died.
Cause of death, ultimately: the 19th century.
Click image to embiggen. Notice of death care of Boston Globe. Credit to Deadball Era for data, as well.
It is not generally the case that NotGraphs is in the business of publishing unsolicited contributions. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, however, Koheleth — known most commonly as the son of David, king of Jerusalem, and also the world-weary author of Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament — requested to write a game recap of Monday night’s Phillies-Braves game.
What follows is the entirety of his submission.
1 All human endeavor is futile. Likewise, Monday night’s game between Atlanta and Philadelphia was futile.
What the author has done is to poorly edit out all baseball-relevant footage from freely available video of Game Six of the 1987 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals — to edit out all relevant baseball footage from the first three-plus innings of that game, leaving only select advertisements from that particularl broadcast.
What the author has also done is to provide the following, hastily composed annotations to certain of the aforementioned commercials.
0:01 — Firestone Antifreeze
In which a baritone-voiced narrator assures the viewer that winter, previously thought to be indomitable, is actually totally domitable.
Three years ago, in these same electronic pages, the present author published a ranking of all 30 clubs’ center-field broadcast camera angles. The immediate purpose: to create a reference for anyone with access to MLB.TV, MLB Extra Innings, or some other manner of game video, so that he or she might be better equipped to choose the ideal feed.
What follows is the product of an almost identical exercise, except updated to account for more recently adopted center-field cameras (or, in the case of Miami, more recently constructed ballparks).
In general, cameras have been assessed according to the ability with which they document the pitcher-batter encounter. More specifically, I’ve utilized three guiding criteria, as follow:
In what follows, I’ve embedded screencaps for all 30 of the league’s center-field cameras, broken down into three categories: Bottom Five, Top Ten, and The Rest. In every case, I’ve used images featuring only right-handed pitchers — so that the orientation of that pitcher’s body might least distort the perception of the camera angle. Furthermore, I’ve attempted to identify feeds from regional broadcasts — as opposed to national broadcasts, which might utilize a different feed altogether.
The reader will note that straight-on shots constitute the most highly ranked of the center-field cameras. This makes sense, of course: straight-on shots portray lefties and righties in the same way and document pitch movement in a way that off-set cameras can’t. The reader will also note that a small collection of notes and observations appears at the very bottom of this post.
Finally, if the reader finds that I’ve erred in any of the screen captures here, don’t hesitate to make note of same below.
Bottom Five
30. Colorado Rockies
