Despite the fact that it happened only just 15 years ago, many people have forgotten Wade Boggs’ overthrow, by force, of the New York government and his brief and frightening reign over that same city.
The photo you see here captures Boggs in 1996, just moments after having wrested — along with a small but loyal faction of the city’s police — wrested control of the city from then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The alert reader will suspect as much already — but I’ll state it here for posterity’s sake (and also for the sake of the less alert reader) — that internet personality and real-live baby daddy The Common Man will be contributing to these pages now.
While, for contractual reasons, we’re unable to reveal his true identity, we are allowed to say that he’s at least one of the people in this photo:
Although they didn’t know it at the time, when Scott Feldman, Ian Kinsler, and Mike Napoli made their respective ways to the pitcher’s mound at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington last night, they were fashioning the set-up to a hilarious, and only probably slightly offensive, street joke.
The set-up to said joke definitely goes like this: “Two Jews and an Italian walk up to a pitcher’s mound.”
As for the premise and punchline, I know less about those, but I’m guessing it has something to do with their mutual admiration for pastrami.
Not suitable for work — or so says “society.”
I’ll begin this piece by directing the reader’s attention — if he hasn’t directed it there yet himself — to Ryan Campbell’s two-part interview with Oakland right-hander and 2011 AL FIP leader Brandon McCarthy from Friday. While there are a number of things to enjoy about the McCarthy-Campbell piece, the most notable for our purposes is McCarthy’s sense of self-awareness and his capacity both for understanding and articulating what it is that makes him successful (and, conversely, what has caused him to fail in the past).
While McCarthy’s voice is an entirely welcome one in these pages, he — and the interview in which he participates — are exceptional specifically because this sort of self-awareness and -understanding appear to be rare in baseball.
Those who watched Game One of the World Series will be aware — and those who didn’t watch will learn right now — that FOX experimented with a thermal-imaging camera during their telecast Wednesday night. The cameras, supplied by Australian Warren Brennan, are designed to detect heat — including the friction-type of heat generated by a ball hitting a bat, for example.
Using our vast resources, NotGraphs has purchased its own thermal-imaging camera and used it towards, if not nefarious, then at least generally irreverent, ends.
For example, here we find the image of Mike Napoli included in Robert J. Baumann’s debut post at NotGraphs:
Using thermal-imaging technology, however, we are able to locate the various “hot spots” in the image.
While the heat emanating from head of the swimmer to the left — and from Napoli’s (ahem) lower body — is self-explanatory, the reader might be confused about the warm area below Napoli’s chin and neck. Amazingly, this is due to the friction caused by the considerable rate at which Napoli’s chest hair grows.
The current issue of Baseball America — the one with Jeremy Hellickson on the cover — just arrived at my house this afternoon. Here’s a pie chart of where I’ll be reading it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson loved pretending to read.
As discussed this morning in some detail by Bradley Woodrum and, more generally, by the concerned citizens of the internet, the Red Sox and Cubs are currently engaged in talks over what sort of compensation the former team should receive from the latter for the right to realease from his present contract, and sign, (quasi-) former Boston GM Theo Epstein.
The situation is a complicated one — and when complicated matters arise, the only prudent course of action is to appeal to Important Voices of Yore. We look not for a precise answer to our own particular dilemma — that would be impossible — but at least for foundational ideas on which we can arrive at our own conclusions.
Fortunately, for our purposes, we find among the works of celebrated American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson an essay actually titled “Compensation”. As a service to the reader, I’ve spent the afternoon in my richly paneled study, drinking deeply both of Emerson’s text and some really expensive scotch that I just drink whenever I want to.
Does Emerson speak directly to the quandary in which the Bostonians and Chicagoans currently find themselves? In a word: no. And in two words: absolutely not. And in three, largely blasphemous, words: Oh God, no.
In the event that you neglected to fetch from the end of your driveway this morning your city’s widely circulated and totally infallible morning daily, please excuse me for informing you right now that the Milwaukee Brewers fell Sunday night to the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Six of the NLCS by a score of 12-6.
Following the elimination of Milwaukee, there was considerable discussion of the team’s defensive weaknesses. Although defense certainly appeared as though it would be an issue for the team entering the season, the Brewers actually finished around league average in terms both of defensive efficiency and UZR. The seven errors committed by Milwaukee between Games Five and Six of the NLCS, however, certainly played a part in the team’s dismissal from the postseason.
Curiously, the most notable defensive shortcoming of the night was the product neither of a misplayed grounder nor poor throw, but rather that most silent destroyer: ennui.
In the top of the third inning — with runners on second and third, two outs, and the Cardinals winning 7-4 — Tony LaRussa made the somewhat unorthodox decision to pinch hit for starting pitcher Edwin Jackson with Allen Craig. Brewer manager Ron Roenicke countered LaRussa by replacing left-hander Chris Narveson with LaTroy Hawkins. Despite falling behind 3-1, Hawkins managed to induce a weak-ish chopper up the middle.
What happened next is captured by the GIF’d footage you see below. Craig’s batted-ball makes its way up the middle and into center field, scoring David Freese and Yadier Molina from third and second base, respectively. While that sequence of events is all-too common, it’s difficult not to observe something curious about the play — namely that, even though the Craig’s grounder clearly makes its way through the infield on the shortstop side of the second-base bag, it’s second baseman Rickie Weeks who comes within, say, three or five feet of playing the ball (and perhaps preventing run No. 2 from scoring). Meanwhile, actual shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt is seen merely trotting towards the middle of the infield.
Today we answer the most important question of the last 30 or so seconds — namely, “Which of the players in the Milwaukee Brewers lineup for Game Five of the 2011 NLCS — which of those players’ names appear in the Oxford English Dictionary?”
Answers below. You’re frigging welcome, thousand people who read this.
1. Hart, RF: Noun. The male of the deer, esp. of the red deer; a stag; spec. a male deer after its fifth year.
2. Hairston, 3B: N/A.
3. Braun, LF: Not in OED. But braunite is. Noun. An anhydrous oxide of manganese, a brittle dark brownish-black mineral occurring both crystallized and massive.
4. Fielder 1B: Noun. A person who or animal which works in a field. (Rare.)
5. Weeks, 2B: Not in OED. But it is a plural of week. Noun. The cycle of seven days, recognized in the calendar of the Jews and thence adopted in the calendars of Christian, Muslim, and various other peoples; a single period of this cycle, i.e. a space of seven successive days beginning with the day traditionally fixed as the first day of the week.
6. Betancourt, SS: N/A.
7. Gomez, CF: N/A.
8. Lucroy, C: Not in OED. But luctation is. Noun. Struggling, wrestling; an instance of this. (Obsolete.)
9. Greinke, P: N/A.
While it goes without saying that NotGraphs has, in its lone year of existence, become the standard by which literary-minded and generally marvelous baseballing websites are judged, I’ve always been of the opinion that it (i.e. NotGraphs) would be greatly improved if only it were possible to acquire writers who were more talented and attractive and better and smarter and better than the ones already writing for the site.
Fortunately, as a product of our most recent — and only slightly drawn-out — talent search, the dream that I’ve dreamed so hard has become a reality.
In fact, it’s with great pleasure that I introduce four new writers to the site — each of whom is better and more physically fit than any of the site’s current stable of writers.
Regard:
Robert J. Baumann received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas and has had poems published in/at 3:AM Magazine, DIAGRAM, and Shampoo — i.e. journals that you’ve never heard of, but which are important nevertheless.
Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a real-live novel satirizing the world of corporate law and described by USA Today, not for nothing, as “wickedly amusing.” He’s also had work published by McSweeney’s.
If you’re familiar with Paul Lukas’s UniWatch, then you’re likely already familiar with Summer Anne Burton, who is (a) an Astros fans and (b) drawing every member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year at her site Every Hall of Famer.
Cody Wiewandt was a four-year Varisty football player at sporting powerhouse Oberlin College and is very likely — although no one can prove it — the secret lovechild of George Plimpton and Alan Alda. You can read his work at The Paris Review.
