So I read Cistulli’s write-up on home runs he gave up and I’m like what about me? You got your pitchers and you got your hitters is what I say. I mean the hitter is like half the equator so I’m here to tell you my side. I mean I didn’t face Cistulli but I faced pitchers just like him and man let me tell you they didn’t like me one bit.

They were all like scoot back! Scooooot baaaaack! Ha ha oh man it was awesome. This one kid Rusty he piped a fastball and man that thing was still rolling when I touched the plate. Yeah back then we didn’t have fences. And the ground was pretty hard because I guess they forgot to water the grass but man I hit that thing far.

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This just in: Stung by accusations of racism and yet sensitive to the appeal of nostalgia, Indians officials are attempting to replace Chief Wahoo with a less incendiary but similarly named ambassador by field-testing a variety of applicants.

The results thus far:

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This is fun: Last Monday, in the seventh inning of a Spring Training game against the Reds, Indians manager Terry Francona used a conventional method – i.e., emitting words from his mouth hole – at an unconventional time – i.e., during a pitching change on the mound – to inform right-hander Blake Wood that he (Wood, not Francona) had made the Cleveland rotation.

Less fun, at least for NotGraphs President and CEO Carson Cistulli, is this true fact: While Wood celebrated his achievement and Francona told the tale, the aforementioned mogul was forced to relive the many and various ways by which he, as a young and dream-filled ballplayer, learned that he had not made the team.

What follows is a truncated list:

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Owing mostly to his fondness for the MLB Network, but also to his chameleonic ability to shift his political passions to exciting new ideologies, serial presidential hopeful Bob Davis has announced his formal departure from the Ain’t No Party Like A West Coast Party Party to become, in his words, “your Change of Scenery candidate.”

Said Davis at his announcement, held in the alley behind a Detroit Taco Bell: “As Joe Saunders will soar from the ashes of a 5.26 ERA, and as Mark Trumbo will rise Phoenix-like – ha! pun intended! – from a season that wasn’t quite good enough to prevent my using it in the example that I am now articulating to you, I will change America – for the better! – by employing – nay, celebrating! – the very motif – fancy word! – of Change of Scenery, or my name isn’t David Hasselhoff.

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So, it appears that various humans of the seamhead breed are spearheading a decidedly ’Murcan crusade: namely, to secure Opening Day as a national holiday, thus positioning the day of the inaugural overpriced hot dog alongside such perennial classics as Thanksgiving, Easter and Shark Week.

Frankly, this seems an effort worth fighting for, and fighting hard, perhaps with bleeder nunchucks and mind-control tactics not unlike those on The Manchurian Candidate. Why? It’s not just because we’ll all get a day off from the steel mill. It’s also because we’ll get a really big parade! And parades are what we Americans do. Mostly for the exercise, because of all the sitting.

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It is with some frequency that we as baseball fans are made privy to a prospect’s hit tool via an all-too-familiar allusion, that annoyingly vague reference to the distinct sonic quality of said prospect’s bat against a recently pitched ball.

“The ball just sounds different coming off his bat,” we are told.

“When the ball comes off his bat, it just sounds different,” we hear.

“Different, is what the ball sounds like off his bat,” our ears pick up.

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As a relative newcomer to the FanGraphs Family Of SuperBlogs & MarketPlace Grille, I am often asked by everyone everywhere if the FanGraphs Family of SuperBloggers is – or should that be are? – as dashing and magnificent as they seem. Now that I am fractionally recovered from my first Spring Break, or, rather, Spring Training with the aforementioned supergroup, I can say without pause or equivocation that, in fact, they are even more dashing and magnificent than they might seem to anyone who has not had the pleasure of sitting in a hotel bar with them until such time that the manager announces that they don’t have to go home but they can’t stay here – like, dashing and magnificent to the power of 10!*

* Graph not included.

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It is a basic property of mathematics, as first described by the three-year-old son of Aristaeus the Elder, Aristaeus the Third*, that a trilogy must contain a third (i.e., 3rd, a.k.a. IIIerd) part lest it be a duology, which is a very rare word that nobody wants to use because it is so easily confused with Diwaligy, which, as you know from watching Season 3 (i.e., Three, a.k.a. Robert Griffin) of The Office, is the study of the Hindu Festival of Lights, signifying the victory of light over darkness, hope over despair and the number 3 over the number 2 in a battle of which is more.

*Only later did Aristaeus the Elder, a.k.a. “Pops,” realize that his son should’ve been named Aristaeus the Younger, or “Corky.”

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SURPRISE, ARIZ. — Inspired by former teammate Ian Kinsler’s recent characterization of Rangers GM Jon Daniels, Texas ace and serial accumulator of super-awesome pitches Yu Darvish has added what he is calling the “sleazeball” to his already impressive arsenal.

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This we know: All those TV shows about Bigfoot and UFOs – or, in extreme cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs, or, in extremer cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs in search of the Loch Ness Monster engaged in a subsurface mating ritual with Jimmy Hoffa, or, in extremest cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs in search of Ron Washington’s most effective bunt strategy – always end the same way, right? They end, in uniform fashion, with a provocatively ambiguous pronouncement that supports the mystery by hinting at the possibility that it just might be solved, probably in the next episode.

This we also know: During baseball’s off-season free agency period, there is now and always a “mystery team” that offends tradition by competing with the Yankees for the privilege of spending the equivalent of Kiribati’s gross domestic product on a 33-year-old right hander who might make 26 starts.

Now, standing in tandem here, are these twin pillars of the known unknown. That’s right, fellow sleuths: There is a mystery team, and by the end of this piece you might or might not know that the mystery team is still a mystery.

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