There are those who look just fine in fashion eyewear, and there are those who look like they were born in fashion eyewear. Finally, there are those who look as though they’ve been wearing fashion eyewear for so long that the fashion eyewear has morphed into another physiological organ system, the purpose of which is to secrete vague disapproval. Danny MacFayden is such a man:
(Thanking-man’s thanks: Mop-Up Duty)
Baseball, besides providing us with boundless joy and Things to Talk about with The Stern and Distant Fathers of America, also lays out before us the full complement of modern eyebrow styles. Let us now see to the essential business of identifying and naming those styles …
As you may have noticed, there is no baseball here. There is, however, baseball’s older, slightly more distinguished and certainly more long-winded cousin. So please go here and watch a video of a rather amazing cricket catch that defies both belief and efforts to embed. Is it a “catch,” or do they have some rather very cricketty word for it like “capture” or “glom” or “Bonnie Prince Ensnarement”?
In any event, if this cricket video sustains even a single base-and-ball fan through this pointless respite, then the entire breadth of British colonialism will have been worth it.
There is no baseball here, but there are things somewhat like baseball somewhere.
From Tom Verducci’s column on his Hall-of-Fame ballot comes this little (Chicken Mc) nugget:
It was not preventing me from voting for Bagwell in 2010, but a development gave me pause just as I was filling out my ballot in his first year of eligibility: a perplexing interview in which Bagwell condoned steroid use and attributed his bulk to “eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and . . . working out,” making no mention of the andro, the beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate, the zinc tabs, creatine and whatever else.
Once more with the relevant portion in the town-crier’s all caps for maximum emphasis:
“EATING 30 POUNDS OF MEAT EVERY SINGLE DAY”
Like you, I don’t know whether to believe that Jeff Bagwell indeed made a habit of eating the equivalent of four human newborns every day, but I think I shall believe it anyway. Jeff Bagwell ate 30 pounds of meat every day. Thank him for the memories, but pity the hellscape of his colon.
(Nom nom: BTF)
As the Internet teaches us, it’s Hall-of-Fame voting season, which means a bounty of carefully nursed grudges and logic tortured to the brink of demise. The actual, bricks-and-mortar Hall of Fame is a lovely place that is worth your time and U.S. currency. Those charged with populating the Hall of Fame, however, are in not small part bloated, slappy harlequins with no sense of proper mission or context. Thus, Dick Allen’s — Mister Dick Allen’s — criminal absence from Cooperstown.
The good news, however, is that Mr. Dick Allen, despite the chronic neglect, is as healthy and confident as something unimaginably confident and healthy. And that leads us to this enduring truth …
Mr. Dick Allen — he’s just fine, thanks.
What follows is an image of Alex Rodriguez, invader of boudoirs, at something called a “Professional Hollywood Basketball Game”:
You might notice that Mr. Rodriguez, in this daguerreotype, is both becocked and bespectacled. It is the latter quality that is somewhat surprising. What is also surprising is that Mr. Rodriguez is visibly agape. Is it something he sees? Or has Cindy Crawford, in tones hushed but not hushed enough, prescribed something crude and immodest for him — something that assumes him to be both cad and masher? Careless whispers indeed.
The glasses suggest craft pale ales shall be sipped. The countenance suggest standards of decency shall be reconsidered.
(Love and the making thereof: HBT)
Over at SB Nation, which has its own currency and standing military and everything, Jon Bois has done the blessed and necessary work of putting together the top 50 sports GIFs of 2011. I tell no tales when I say the Internet World Championship Belt is now around the handsome waist of Mr. Bois.
As is the case with all great acts of Internetting, however, I am left with questions. For instance, how is number five not number one? Another: When will the woman — the philistine bitch-face — in the following GIF be boiled in oil in the town square for the satisfaction and amusement of the right-wise? Click and then ready your pitchforks and torches …
Short of a public execution, which I understand is frowned upon by those who don’t realize Increase Mather was right about everything, I hope this lady breaks a shin once a year for the rest of her life and gets pregnant with triplets at age 52.
As I am wont to do, I was recently reading Woman’s Day and ran across this championship bit of information, which was under the ever-evolving rubric of “Things You Can Put in the Dishwasher”:
4. Baseball Hats and Visors
“The dishwasher is a fantastic way to make sure hats keep their shapes,” says Linda Cobb, a cleaning expert who is also known as the Queen of Clean. Put hats on the top rack, head opening down, on a separate wash cycle from dishes because you can’t use dishwasher detergent (many contain bleaching agents). Instead, fill the detergent cup with borax, found in the supermarket laundry aisle. Run a regular cycle without the heated dry option, then place hat over a glass or jar to dry. Reshape brim while damp.
Slipping in (tee hee) a transparent double entendre like “reshape brim while damp”? That’s sooo Woman’s Day.
This has been a post about putting your hat in the dishwasher. This is the offseason.
The nomination process, which is not unlike an Iowa Caucus of undaunted clap sufferers, is complete, and the Committee for Acceptable Outcomes has pared the list down to 10. At stake — at dirty stake — is the nickname, “Science or Bravery?”
As always, if you are not prepared to vote in accordance with the wishes of the Utmost Culminating Exchequer, then please report to the nearest mass grave. Forthwith!
Thank for you exercising the franchise.
Our ongoing quest, in the manner of a noble knight-errant, is to assign cool nicknames to players rather than indulge in the tired, lamewad paradigm of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out? Joba Chamberlain was rebranded as “Gargoyle O’Boyle.” So Mr. Chamberlain has been added to our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling …
“Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
“Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks
“$45 Couch” – Yuniesky Betancourt
“Liván Hernández” – Liván Hernández
“Frog in the Pot” – Carlos Zambrano
“Aqua Velva Man” – Chase Utley
“Victorian Sex Rebel” – John Axford
“Good, Round Friend” – Prince Fielder
“I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” – Kyle Farnsworth
“Interrobang” – Adrián Beltré
“Turbaconducken” – Ty Wigginton
“Hot Lettuce” – Jeff Mathis
“Gargoyle O’Boyle” – Joba Chamberlain
And the nickname now hanging in the balance? It’s “Science or Bravery?”!
Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:
Via this thread over at BTF comes this tale of Germany Schaefer and his maximum nobility:
One day Schaefer saved the day with a one-handed catch of a line drive over first. Amidst the cheers Schaefer demanded, “Was that science or bravery?”
“Bravery, of course, Germany, bravery,” answered a leather lunged fan.
“Then salute your hero,” demanded Herman. Instantly, as one, the bleachers crowd arose, doffing their hats.
So, as you may have surmised, the player who shall be nicknamed “Science or Bravery?” is one whose unthinkable, impossible exploits prompt you to ask of yourself, your subjects or the heavens above: “Was that science or bravery?”
Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:
Anyone generous with base-and-ball miracles certainly qualifies. Babe Ruth, Rickey Henderson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Mike Laga. It can be someone who is very good at baseball and thus, by dint of science or bravery, leaves the appreciator in a state of constant guffaw. It can be someone who is not great in the least but nonetheless offers up, on a shockingly regular basis, small moments of abracadabra. “Science,” you might say of him. “All of this is owing to science.”
“No,” someone else might say of him. “‘Tis bravery.”
Guiding, Determinative Query:
What current major-league player should be nicknamed “Science or Bravery?”?
The convention floor, which is filled with quite a lot of science but decidedly little bravery, is open for nominations …