Hey there, citizens of those Majestic Gleaming States of Hot Sexy America, you must be sick to death of the World Cup by now, right? All that socialist teamwork and not using your hands to move the ball into the thing at the end.

Why do all the games end 0-0, right? Have you ever noticed that the score 0-0 looks like John Lennon’s glasses? Bloody peaceniks.

I, your English correspondent, am here to baseballize things for you. So here’s some World Cup photographs from Mexican newspapers that I’ve made Coulter-and-Shaughnessy-friendly.

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It’s five years today since I was last visited a ballpark in the United States. So, self-indulgently, here are some paintings of all the major league parks I have visited.

Yankee Stadium, April 23, 2006

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The Diablos Rojos del México play in a fairly crappy ballpark. It’s way too big for the team’s fan base, and the only game that gets near to selling out is the home opener. So it’s nice to go to other parks in the country. On Wednesday, I went to Puebla, a city about 130km southeast-ish of Mexico City. Puebla is where all the cinco de mayo stuff happened. More importantly, it’s the home of mole poblano. And it’s also the home of the Pericos de Puebla, who have a nice little park, called Estadio Hermanos Serdán. Los Diablos were playing the Pericos. And the following is my semi-true account of my time in Puebla, watching baseball.

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When I was asked by Signore Cistulli if I would consider regularly debasing myself to contribute to NotGraphs, I read between the lines and saw the invisible words “post stuff that appeals to as few readers as possible.” Today, I present something that appeals to a tiny demographic. You, as a NotGraphs reader, are in a small subset of all baseball fans. Discerning, right? Not the normal meathead home run fuck yeah bozos. A smaller subset of you NotGraphs readers are New Order fans. An even smaller subset of you New Order-lovin’ NotGraphs readers are graphic design nerds. This post is for you.

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Click it if you want, but it’s ain’t gettin’ any bigger, pal.

Here’s drawings of some of the vendors at Foro Sol, the home of Diablos Rojos del México, my local team.

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If you want, click it. It gets bigger. You will undoubtedly notice that there is no snow in this snow globe. There’s a reason for that: I couldn’t be arsed to draw bits of fake snow. Please send your complaints to Carson Cistulli, 69 Rue de Merde, Paris, France.

I’m quite sure I’m not alone in this: I see some square things as baseball diamonds. This concrete slab with small rocks at each corner on a bed of gravel is in the front yard of my mate’s house in London, England.

You know the score: clickbig.

Drawing is something I enjoy a lot. Sometimes it can be a real ballache, but most of the time, it’s the thing I enjoy to do the most. Apart from the few seconds when I have an idea, when my brain fizzes like Pop Rocks, the best part of drawing is when I’m happily going along the same path I’m used to, and then something simple happens, something different, and you see a whole new direction opening up. This happened with the drawing you see above these words. So, I figured it may be interesting for a handful of you to have a look behind the curtain, at the stages of the process that ended up with this picture.

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I was in the mood to do a fairly big portrait of a baseball player’s face, where I would split the face into nine parts and do each part separately and assemble them at the end, like a very easy jigsaw puzzle.

So I opened a Web site that had all the MLB teams listed on it, closed my eyes and moved my cursor around.

I opened my eyes and, well, it wasn’t resting on top of a team name, but the closest team name was the Houston Astros.

I opened their roster page and did the same. I opened my eyes again and the cursor was resting just to the left of José Altuve’s name.

I umm-ed and aah-ed about whether to do him, just because it’s a bit lame to do a big portrait of a small-ish player. Dumb boring joke stuff.

But, I had to stick with my choice, so here it is. And by “here,” I mean “above these words.”

Click = más grande.