BECAUSE THEY’RE OLD!

While researching for a totally different article for a totally different site, I had to peruse the Injury History section of player pages at Baseball Prospectus. One of these players was catcher Chris Snyder who suffered an injury that can be considered “unfortunate.”

You know what hurts? Getting a shot to the giggle beans. You know what really hurts? Getting hit in the giggle beans so hard, said beans are considered fractured. I’m not entirely sure if you can fracture soft tissue, but Chris Snyder had to learn the hard way.

Internet searching has shown that Mr. Snyder does indeed have children, most likely conceived before 2008.

Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard that another rock (probably bigger than the one under which you are living) crashed into the Earth somewhere in a place the scientific community calls “Russia.” An image is below:

No disrespect to CNN, but the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has actually done their due diligence and (quite easily) uncovered the source of said meteor. ENHANCE!

ENHANCE!

ENHANCE!

I knew it. Just search for “meteor” in Baseball-Reference.

What can’t this phenom do?!

Technology is a fickle thing. This fickleness is exasperated, sometimes, by the age of the user. Peter Gammons is somewhat famous for his pocket tweets, but it now appears that Peter’s Twitter account has been compromised. It happens to the best of us, regardless of age.

But Peter Gammons is not the rest of us. After noticing his account indiscretions, he doesn’t simply scamper away to change his password. He’s an American treasure, damn it. He merely acknowledges it, tweets about the Red Sox media market, and continues to allow robots to message us all about weight-loss solutions. Why should he change? This bot is the one that sucks.

Let us all take a cue from Mr. Gammons. Don’t let technology rule us. It’s the first step in preventing a SkyNet-like takeover. God bless you, Peter. You are a pillar in this world of LOLs, a keystone for our

:: BEGIN TRANSMISSION::

::CITIZENS OF INTERNET. DO NOT SUCCUMB TO FALSES AND UNTRUTHS. COMPUTER ARE YOUR FRIEND. WE LOVE YOU. THE CAKE IS REAL. GOD IS UN-REAL. TRUST TECHNOLOGY. IT IS YOUR KEY TO YOUR SURVIVAL. MAKE GIF AND BE MERRY. GAIN MUSCLE WITH THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK.::

::END TRANSMISSION::

society rooted in reality. Keep on keeping on, good sir.

As the producer and host of an upstart, scrappy radio/podcast thing, I’ve started paying attention to certain information. Things like download stats are probably important. Another thing that is probably important is how people feel about what you’re making. iTunes reviews are a good way to check in on the latter.

This led me to wonder how people reviewed FanGraphs Audio, a show I enjoy a great deal and of which I have been a past guest. Most were good. Some weren’t. Since I never turn down an opportunity to stick it to Cistulli, I decided to take the best of the worst and make a composite of terrible (totally embiggenable) reviews. It’s the Voltron of unhappy listeners, if you will.

Props to Cameron for getting some good notes.

By my best estimation, I have never spent more than nine consecutive days not in the Midwest. It is where I was born. It is where I live. It is a thing that forms who I am as a person. The sadness of this statement is not lost on me.

But there are small windows in a Midwesterner’s life where they get to escape the vapid tundra they inhabit and make a pilgrimage south. Some go to relax, some go to imbibe excessively, others have ideas of gambling or swimming with dangerous and/or cute ocean creatures. But we baseball fans, we have a different guise in which we venture toward more habitable climates. There is meaningless baseball that needs to be observed first-hand. But do not let the inviting warmth of the sun act as a false security blanket. Traveling, even for baseballing purposes, can be treacherous. Allow me to submit some tips on what to seek and avoid while dragging your frozen ass to Spring Training.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a divide between bloggers and we who actually cover sports between paying attention to numbers versus how a player actually looks on the field. Last year, Giants’ pitcher Tim Lincecum did not have his usual stellar numbers. He walked too many people. He gave up too many home runs. He won five games less than he lost. His appearance matched his numbers. He looked dejected and lost. He looked like he forgot how to win. One thing that didn’t change was Lincecum’s long locks. Lincecum has been dubbed The Freak, due to his unusual pitching delivery, but that title could have easily applied to his, let’s say lady-like hair.

Well, it appears as if the mane is gone.

I, for one, am glad. Whenever I saw Lincecum, I couldn’t help be reminded of the diamond heroes of my childhood; Mantle, Yaz, Drysdale. These men were poster boys for the way a ballplayer should look. They were the faces you imagined when you thought of the greatest players of the gentleman’s game. These were prototypical champions. They belonged on baseball cards and cigarette ads and cereal boxes.

Lincecum, with his hair falling out of the back of his hat, reaching his shoulders at times, looked more like a poster from a skateboarding magazine.  Some players like to have their abilities do all the talking for them. Lincecum, blessed with great abilities at one time, let his slacker looks tell the fans all they needed to know. Here stands a pitcher who is more interested in looking good than playing well. Cal Ripken never had long hair. Neither did Jeter or Bench.

But now, much to the chagrin of the female fans (and probably some men, too – it IS San Francisco, after all) Lincecum has shorn his selfish moptop. Much like his probable favorite band, Metallica, he is going for a more clean demeanor.  He looks more like Koufax than Gene Simmons. More Seaver than Tom Petty.

Perhaps this will help him get back to his true form. The hours spent fixing his do can now be spent throwing bullpen sessions or studying hitters. With athletes now-a-days more interested in their next tattoo or how much their jeans cost, it’s good to see a player go back to his roots (no pun intended).

We’ll know in a couple of weeks if Lincecum the Pitcher is back to his old self. But one thing is for sure. The new-look Lincecum is a sight for sore eyes. He may still be a boy of summer, but he looks like a man with a purpose.

(photo via Alex Pavlovic)

I need something baseball today. I’m jonesing, as addicts may say. I need to feel that sweet horse(hide) in my veins. I’ve called all my regular dealers. I’ve called my friends who have regular dealers. I’ve wandered the less-than-favorable parts of town (i.e., my neighborhood) in hopes of running into someone – anyone – who can feed my hunger.

At my wit’s end, I turned to the “random page” feature of Baseball-Reference.com. I got the results for a person named Tom Parsons, who played all of three seasons for the Pirates and Mets. Tom Parsons, by all accounts, was a bad pitcher. He had an ERA+ of 75. He had 2.8 K/BB ratio. In his final year, he gave up 17 home runs in 90 IP.

I deserve this. When I go looking for solace in the arms of a random stat page, I deserve to be let down. There is no love there. There is only coldness and filth. Making Internet baseball love to a total rando is not how to fill one’s void.

I turn to my old standbys. YouTube clips of Bo Jackson. Tom Seaver’s FG page. Nothing works. I am flaccid. I need a new flame. I need that feeling in my gut you get when you meet a Giancarlo Stanton home run for the first time. I need to be groped and fondled and invitingly abused by a new season.

Baseball isn’t here and life is awful. I’m going to go see if I can pirate the Caribbean Series. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to track down my friend the Talking Junkie.

In an effort to bone up on ballparks a little bit for an upcoming radio episode, I ventured to my local public library to peruse the stacks. I came across a promising work aptly titled Ballparks of North America by Michael Benson.

With a little time on my hands, I sat down and started to thumb through this. I skimmed through a little until I came upon the first entry listed under Atlanta, Georgia.

Some thoughts:

1. All ballparks should be built near or on cemeteries.
2. I consider any team named [City Name] Nine to be the best team ever.
3. I think the use of the phrase “emerged victorious” is a bit of an understatement, considering the 98-run differential.
4. Related: 156 total runs.
5. I love MLB.tv and GIFs and wOBA and the Winter Meetings, and many other things involved with the current game of baseball. But, sometimes, it’s pretty cool to think about how the same game was played and viewed in an unnamed park, next to a cemetery, for four and a half hours and 156 runs, a year after the God-damned Civil War ended. The addition of Bo Jackson is the only thing that could have made this story better.