Over at the Atlantic, which is a Serious Journal by and for Serious People and which, as the name suggests, is housed deep within the intrepid waters of the ocean to your right if you’re facing north, Conor Friedersdorf has some ideas about how to make sports more palatable to those among us who prefer that their cultural pursuits not last long and be shitty. Here’s Mr. Friedersdorf’s baseball thought experiment:

Presumably I’ll never persuade purists to eliminate a whole inning. So I’ll offer my next best suggestion: allow managers one opportunity per game to borrow an out or two from a later inning. So it’s the bottom of the third. There are two outs, with men on first and third. Your batter strikes out. And you can decide to borrow an out or two in order to try and drive in those runs… but it’s going to cost you, because once the current inning ends the opposing manager gets to decide at his leisure when to charge you that out or two.

Like most proposals for radical change, this has not a whit of a scintilla of a chance of happening, but it’s decidedly less half-baked than most of its species. Usually, we get indeterminate bleats like, “MAKE THINGS GO QUICKER NOW!” or things like, “PAY CUTS FOR ANY PLAYER WHO IS RUDE TO A DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST!” or, “MAKE PITCHER PITCH BAT, MAKE HITTER HIT WITH BALL!” or “ARGH!” Mr. Friedersdorf’s, at least, sounds like something worth trying in rec-league softball, which means Charlie Finley could’ve come up with it during a Dewar’s bender. (Lest it seem otherwise, that’s totally a compliment.)

As for how to improve our fair game, the NotGraphs Highly Reputable and Totally Real Think Tank needs your help. To get you started, here’s one heavily focus-grouped suggestion: pre-game flyovers by Falcon Heavy.

What follows is an object lesson in what can happen when you go poking Google to see if the bees come out. Turns out, they do. There’s this:

Page viewers of a certain age will recognize this as the sculpture of Lionel Richie that was sculpted — as sculptures necessarily are — by that cute blind girl in the “Hello” video. If anything I’m saying here tolls not the bells of sweet memory for you, then by all means go back to necking at the skating rink or trying to buy “the angel’s dust” drug at the mall or whatever it is you kids and your loud radios do these days.

For those who are still with me and in need of some remedial coursework in smooth-jazz balladeering, here’s the musical video in question. And please do watch all 5:29 of the damn thing:

Yeah, I didn’t watch it, either. Anyhow, about, oh, three-and-a-half years ago (as I said, I was wandering around Google after dark) the scribes over at Ladies-Dot-Dot-Dot posited that the blind girl’s tender ministrations led not to a loving rendering of Lionel Richie but rather to the determined visage of Blue Jays legend George Bell. I submit into evidence:

Eureka: That sculpture is of George Bell. The poor girl may have wound up with Lionel Richie (I dunno, is that what happened? I didn’t watch it and can’t remember MTV plot elements from 25 years ago.), but she was clearly under the impression that George Bell was teaching that acting class, and, more principally, it was George Bell with whom she fell deeply in love.

Lionel Richie, you devious cad. Not since Jacob donned the fake chest hair to swindle the birthright from Esau has someone taken such vile advantage of the visually impaired.

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I’ve been ambling through some early 20th-century newspaper archives. The best part of all this has been disinterring the sports prose of one W.J. Slattery of the long-dead San Francisco Call.

Suffice it to say, if a man like Mr. Slattery still brandished his quill (which, I imagine, he did in much the same way that decorated cocksman Aaron Rowand brandishes his bat) then the print dailies of the world would not be in such a state of crisis.

Why do I say this? Please dig his lede from April 8, 1907, in which he mourns a San Francisco Seals loss to the Portland Beavers:

The Seals had enough of the left-over victorious spirit to put it on the Beavers when the teams made their bow to the Oakland fans yesterday morning, but the afternoon mixup before a house that was overflowing was a delusion, a snare, an imposition and a joke to the admirers of the native talent who were rooting for San Franciso. Never was the score a tie.

This “snare” was particularly surprising if you’d seen the mighty Seals go through their warm-up liturgies:

The Seals rushed on to the field with seemingly an overstock of real pepper when the bell rang. They whisked the ball around in practice like a flock of two-time pennant winners. There was confidence in the demeanor of each man; In fact, the entire team made the play so strong that the majority of the spectators conceded them the game before the first ball had been pitched.

And of the villain of this story, the poised Portland hurler by the name of Mr. Groom who vanquished the Seals despite the triumphalist vigor of their infield practice, Slattery writes:

It was his curves that kept the Seals off the bases in virtually every Inning, though the willing fans did the best they could to ruffle the youngster by saying things that only a baseball rooter can say when he feels like talking.

Indeed, the things a baseball rooter will say when he feels like talking.

Yours truly is a baseball rooter, and he happens to feel like talking: Mr. Slattery, we need your like and ilk among us today.

So Kathy Lyford, my gifted and patient editor over at FOXSports.com (much like Yahoo!’s exclamation mark, the caps-locked FOX is a marketing flourish without which the business model could not survive) has undertaken the yeoman’s toil (yeowoman’s toil?) of putting together galleries of every mascot, ballpark and signature concession in MLB.

And now we shall crowdsource … What’s the best mascot? What’s your favorite ballpark? Delectable?

As for moi, you can probably guess from the photo above that I’m quite fond of the Oriole Bird. While Fredbird will always have my greater, more profound loyalties, Oriole Bird gets this nod. This is because I’ve always admired birds who walk upright, have no wings, and wear caps, stirrups and clown-cleats. He was also outstanding in season five of “The Wire.”

Ballyard? PNC without question. Concession? Wholesome, nutritious alcohol.

And what of you, handsome readers?

Actually, I did not receive a tome called Diamond Dishes, but since this is The Day of the Ridiculous Person of April, I feel sanctioned in telling a humorous fib. Here’s the book:

So, “author” Julie Loria,” send me one of these, and I’ll stop talking (temporarily) about how your husband murdered Les Expos, about how his lust for the public teat knows no bounds, and about how he looks like a tanned and rested Uncle Fester. Fail to send me a copy of this cookbook, and I will continue doing these things without ceasing.

Also: Look at Joe Mauer baking and stuff!

I look forward to trying Prince Fielder’s lard wraps and Matt Stairs’s recipe for gorilla-meat tartare.

(Subtle head nod: With Leather)

This is the jacket of a man who can tell you a few things you need to do in order to ensure that no one gets hurt. For instance, pay the lady upfront and treat her real nice. I’ll be in the spacious Lincoln parked outside the service entrance. Or: Go and start a kerosene fire at this thoroughbred stable, the address of which is on this cocktail napkin, which is from the Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge out by the airport. Or: Hire me to do the plumbing in that building you just purchased in the warehouse district and pay me this price, which is determined by factors unrelated to present market conditions and sub-contractor overhead.

This is the jacket of a man called Peter Edward Rose.

(Secret handshake: BBTF)

Happy Opening Day, dear NotGraphers.

Let us now have this thing called baseball.

Yesterday, I gave the people what they have long demanded: the opportunity to receive a nickname befitting the 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles. The problem, though, is that too many of you received duplicate nicknames. Too many of you received my nickname — “The Salty Bronco.” Clearly the fix was in, and I’ll not abide such sullying of my honest toil.

So what to do? As ever, the impulses of Nyjer Morgan provide the blueprint for success in life and in business. If Morgan can call himself “Tony Plush,” which is the greatest presently extant baseball nickname, then why can’t you, page viewer, roll yer own? You can.

Below, after the jump, I’ll list the complete menu of nickname choices — many of them buried by the name-generator interface in the service of its sordid intentions …

Read the rest of this entry »

Because I am a man of many pressing obligations, I’ve cooked up one of those random-thingy generators. Mine will tell you what your nickname would have been had you played for the 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles. As you are no doubt aware, the Orioles of that vintage were a tough bunch of men. They drank all the liquor in America, they went decades without sleeping, they brawled against Norse gods, and they saw all of their children killed gruesomely by primitive farming equipment. All of these things are facts.

Anyhow, go here and find your 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles nickname.

Mine? “The Salty Bronco.”

While tenured academics tell us we’re no longer in a recession, it remains, to a man, hard out there for a pimp. So it is uplifting to learn of a man like D-backs bullpen catcher Jeff Motuzas, whose enterprising spirit would’ve allowed him to thrive in the gravest of economic conditions. Remember when, as history teaches, a dust bowl descended upon Germany not long after the Treaty of Versailles kicked in and Okie Deutschlanders were reduced to paying for things with coal, serpent plasma and palpable regret? Jeff Motuzas would’ve been fine, thank you. Why is that? Because eating the reputedly inedible and letting Livan Hernandez konk you in the pills for cash makes for a downturn-proof income:

A recitation of Motuzas’s money-making exploits should come with a disclaimer: Kids, don’t try this at home. He has snorted wasabi and eaten horseradish by the bowlful. He has devoured a dozen donuts and guzzled 13 bottles of water. And this is the PG-rated version. “Tooz will eat anything except poop, urine and vomit,” Diamondbacks reliever Sam Demel said. “No, wait—I’m sorry. He will eat vomit.”

Demel cited the memorable day when a former teammate regurgitated some yogurt and slathered it on a potato chip for Motuzas. Demel also said he once saw Motuzas ingest a concoction of chewing tobacco dip spit and 3-day-old chili.

Pitcher Livan Hernandez became something of a sadistic benefactor when he arrived in Arizona in 2006. Motuzas said Hernandez once paid him $3,000 to drink a gallon of milk in 12 minutes. The two also hammered out a deal that permitted Hernandez to punch Motuzas in the groin for $50 a pop whenever he felt the urge. Motuzas would receive a $300 bonus after every 10th punch.

Motuzas, 39, freely volunteers his feats. How about the day he dry-shaved his armpits and left a thick coating of medicinal hot balm on them for an entire game? (“It burned so bad.”) Or ate 11 bananas in four minutes? (“That’s easy stuff.”) Or the time he let pitcher Dan Haren fire at him from close-range with a BB gun? (“He’d shoot me right in the earlobe.”)

Checking account reaching unimagined depths? Jeff Damn Motuzas would say you’re just not trying. Which you clearly aren’t.