Happy Thanksgiving.

Last Thursday I presented to you readers some useless snack-like facts to get us from one thing happening in the offseason to the next thing happening. I’m sure it left you momentarily satisfied, and then, about an hour later when your blood sugar dropped, egregiously unsatisfied and cranky. Though my methodology in determining most of the facts I listed could be described as “dubious” and “mainly derived from answers people provided on WikiAnswers,” some of the facts were even less rigorously determined. They were determined by no method, really, except for me guessing and laughing. One such item was particularly amusing to me and is reproduced below:

Possible Defensive Alignment with Nobody On if Baseball Was Played with a Jellybean and Not a Baseball

What this post is, is more of these types of silly guesses on how one might align themselves defensively on a field if one were playing baseball differently or under unusual circumstances. All of the following assume no one is on base.

Read the rest of this entry »

Things of substance are happening in Major League Baseball! Things like Prince Fielder and Ian Kinsler getting swapped. Things like A-Rod storming out of his arbitration hearing. Things like Chris Carpenter retiring. Who even KNOWS what kinds of substantial things will happen next?! Zowie! It’s the offseason! A time for sitting around waiting for things to happen! The American Dream!

BUMMER ALERT, THOUGH: One bummer about all the offseason substance is that we have to wait for it. We hate waiting! Take meals for example: We LOVE meals. Meals involve eating, and Americans are nothing if not prolific food-to-poop converters. If only we could have meals ALL THE TIME. Too bad our stupid bodies won’t let us consume 2300 calorie meals every five to seven minutes. Instead we’re stuck waiting for our lame-o corporeal vessels to “metabolize” that steak we had for breakfast. Luckily snacks exist! Snacks are the best. They let us use our mouths and tastebuds for 100% of the day. Check out this bitchin’ pie chart that I screen-captured from a freely available online slideshow on the state of the snacking industry:

What this pie chart shows is that we want something in our mouths at absolutely every possible moment we can have something therein. Showering? Have a Twix. Driving to da club? Have a bag of Doritos. Filing your taxes? Engorge thyself with some cracklin’ pork rinds. About to copulate with a comely dame? Engage in some Swiss Cake Roll foreplay.
Read the rest of this entry »

Please direct all complaints concerning lazy photoshopping to cistulli at notgraphs dot com.

Yoga was invented by British naval officers during the Siege of Malta to confuse enemy semaphore interpreters, and brought to the mainstream by Japanese schoolchildren in the 1950’s. These days yoga is for everyone, not just Brits and young Asians. This is good news! Along those same totally not untrue lines, it just so happens that my favorite yoga positions are inspired by real-life baseball players. This post is me sharing three of them with you.

Counsell Pose

This pose is only fully realized if you have a baseball bat handy. First grab the bat, left hand over right. Take a deep breath, and feel the fat draining from your horrid, porcine excuse for a human body. You now weigh 85 lbs., like Craig Counsell. Your mind, too, is in Counsell-space . Feel the alignment of the universe as Craig felt the alignment of well-executed double-plays during his 16-year career as a defense-first infielder. Splay your legs wide beneath you and slowly raise the bat above your head. Now raise the bat even higher. Feel the stretch in your chest as you poke the gods. Take a breath. Release the pose as if weakly dribbling a grounder to second base.

Martinez Pose

This two-part pose is meant to get your juices oogling and boogling. Carlos Martinez is, of course, a rowdy young fire-baller known for his yoga-inspired delivery. To channel his Martinezness, begin by putting all your weight on your left foot and sticking your leg out to the side at a 90-degree angle. Try to focus on one point, like a tree in the distance, or Yadier Molina, to help maintain balance. Now think of all the things in your life that are stressin’ on you, like the kiddos, troubles with a lady-friend, getting blamed by the boss for something that was Doug’s fault, or pitching to red-hot David Ortiz in the World Series at age 22. Next, picture all those stresses congealed as a fuzzy-bad-ball-thing floating in the air in front of you about thigh high. While maintaining eye contact with your “object in the distance” (your “Yadi”), violently twist the hips and sweep the right leg through the fuzzy-bad-ball-thing like Charlemagne swept the Lombards out of Northern Italy. Repeat until you feel like your stresses are thoroughly routed.

Rizzo Pose

Next let’s try an endurance pose. The Rizzo allows us to embody eternity within the terminal confines of our infirm human shells. Start by forcing a smile—make sure it’s forced! Don’t think of any actual reason to smile. Instead, think of a time you have to force a smile, like anytime someone shows you a YouTube video. Next, twist your arm back as if thousands of fantasy owners are punishing you for disappointing them when they needed solid first-base value. Now, hold that pose for ten-thousand years. This one is tough! Keep that forced smile and twisted arm as long as you can. Eventually your smiling face will melt into a vacant world-weary stare, and layers of dead calciferous sea organisms will coat your face (you think that’s shaving cream?) as you rest on the ocean floor where Chicago once was (thanks global warming and other ocean-causing catastrophes!). Your twisted arm will fall off and become a gathering place for bored sea minnows. Your other arm will meld into your side as your body slowly becomes a featureless monolith. As you watch human civilization crumble around you, try to recall the little things, like fresh sheets or how the smell of blown-out candles reminds you of your eleventh birthday. After ten-thousand years of holding Rizzo Pose, relax and carry on as usual.

On Tuesday I asked you to recommend baseball-related media that I should consume, digest, and defecate into the port-o-john known as my brain. I received so many good recommendations that I will probably become overwhelmed trying to decide where to start, and instead re-watch MacGruber precisely one–thousand times. So way to go guys. (But seriously: way to go. I will consume so much of what you threw down in the comments)

However, I did notice that some of you bemoaned (or just kinda weren’t into) my desire to read certified masterpiece Juiced, by Jose Canseco. “What this book will lack in tact, insight, truth, and readable syntax, it will make up for in being written by Jose Canseco,” was my thought as I added it to the list.

It’s really, really, really, easy to make fun of Jose Canseco. I’m not so much above making fun of the man as I am too lazy to compile the relevant material. Given the wealth of quality material Jose generates, this should tell you something about how lazy I am. What this post definitively is not, then, is me making fun of Jose Canseco. What it is, is me letting Jose Canseco tell us two things:

Life holds a cruel ending for all of us.death

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 8, 2013

Poop

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 20, 2013

This has been Letting Jose Canseco Tell Us Two Things.

I played baseball for one season in 4th grade, maybe 3rd, and I had no idea how the game of baseball worked. My three primary memories from that season were: 1) Nearly crying after I struck out, 2)  being genuinely surprised when I caught a fly ball in center field, and 3) hating baseball. My first experience was deeply off-putting, and so I “chose” football in the way children take sides because they think side-taking is important. The result of this being that I didn’t come around to baseball for a long time. Of course, I did come around eventually, otherwise why else would I waste 2-6 minutes of your life twice a week writing for NotGraphs.

I was visiting colleges in Boston during the 2004 ALCS/World Series and fell in love (juicily, tenderly, eternally) with that postseason. Shortly thereafter my friend David introduced me to Fire Joe Morgan, and my parents bought me Moneyball for Christmas. In maybe 4 months my opinion on baseball changed from “meh, I’d rather not” to “YES YES PLEASE MORE WHAT IS THIS GLORIOUS MYSTERY.”

The point of all this personal back-story bullshit, besides being my personal outlet for missing baseball and feeling nostalgic about the season and all that bullshit, is to explain to you that for most of my life I missed out on baseball as an American cultural experience. I’ve never seen Bull Durham or Bad News Bears. I’ve never read any baseball books besides Moneyball and some passages from The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Even though I’ve obviously had time to catch up since 2004, there’s always been a steady rush of other media to waste my life on, and I remain a woefully undereducated baseball lover.

This offseason it’s my goal to catch up. Below I’ve made a list of books, films, and other media that I haven’t seen/read/consumed, or that I have consumed but want to re-consume because it’s been too long. What this can be for you, hopefully, is a reminder of some baseball staples that you maybe haven’t munched on yourself. Selfishly, I hope to hear the books, movies, shows, documentaries, etc. that you recommend in the comments.

Ten Baseball Movies/Shows/Documentaries I Want to Watch this Offseason
Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (I’ve only watched Part 1)
Bull Durham
The Natural (I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember much)
Major League I & II (must rewatch)
Eight Men Out
Bad News Bears (1976)
Bang the Drum Slowly
42
The Pride of the Yankees
A League of Their Own

Ten Baseball Books I Want to Read and/or Attempt
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Game of Shadows by Mark Fainranu-Wada and Lance Williams
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri
The Book by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, Andrew Dolphin, and Pete Palmer
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It
Juiced by Jose Canseco
Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample
Drinking with Boileryard Clarke by Dayn Perry (duh)
The Art of Pitching by Tom Seaver
Any other compelling baseball biographies or autobiographies

Yes, I am horribly behind. And there are billions more! Of course there are. It is now your job to tell me what they are in the comments.

 “I say I work in a museum…”

–Jonny Gomes, Docent

Jonny Gomes, Docent, doesn’t do well with groups of middle schoolers.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, dabbles in curation–primarily the curation of postseason awe, and ancient Etruscan crested helms.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would appreciate if you could keep it down, please.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, finds dinosaur bones “trite, but necessary.” Much like post-game interviews, and bunting.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, shook hands with former Louvre Director Henri Loyrette in 2005, and has not yet washed his hands (i.e. his own hands).

Jonny Gomes, Docent, finds l’art dans tout, even shoddily attempted MS Paint images.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would like you to exit through the gift shop, or, after exiting, cross Yawkey Way and enter the gift shop there.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, invites discourse on the evolution of late art deco architecture in 1930’s Latin America, but asks that you take your discussion of statistical analysis in baseball outside, please.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would like to remind you that the utility closets are for museum staff only, and not for scoring tongue-action with Jenny Michaels during the class field trip.

Craigslist.com is a questionable, slimy internet zone where people express opinions about beards. That’s what I learned today. I mean, I already knew Craigslist was questionable and slimy, but, until a couple hours ago, I didn’t know that it housed semi-rational* beard-related opinions. It does! Allow me to share one such opinion for your continued amusement and workday distraction (click to embiggen):

*For Craigslist, that is

Hatred! Is there any emotion more pure and blameless than hate? In my opinion: yes. All of the emotions are more blameless than hatred. Hatred is horrid, almost universally, unless directed at other horrid things, like poverty, hunger, rhino poaching, and pitcher wins. But boy is it fun to hate! And boy do we hate it when people tell us not to hate something. When people do that we start hating them, too! Hate is like an infection that spreads when someone points out to you that you have an infection. Imagine if influenza worked like that:

“Hey Tom, you’re looking a little under the weather today.”
*Tom coughs uncontrollably*
“Whoa! Sounds pretty bad. Want some Robitussin?”
*Tom vomits all over the office*
“OH MY GOD TOM YOU COULDN’T HAVE AIMED AT THE TRASH CAN!?”
*Tom’s body rejects his liver.*
“We need to get you to the hospital!”
*Ten thousand maggots devour Tom’s body*

Gross! This, in essence, is how hatred works, and we all have a little touch of it hiding within us. Most of us baseball fans have found a “healthy” way to exercise hate through sports fandom. As fans we choose our sports-hate toward a division rival, perhaps, and let it dwell in the part of our hearts classified as “games and pastimes” instead of the part classified as “people and their rights”. So that’s good. It’s better to be an A’s fan who hates the Giants than an A’s fan who hates people of a certain race/class/gender/sexual preference/body type/etc. Unfortunately those hates can overlap, or fan-hate can grow far, far, far, too intense, but I think for most of us, we’ve found a safe spot for our darkest inclinations and we let them reside there without it spilling into the rest of our lives.

What all this is leading to is that we stats-lovers—men and women who make love to statistics—are just as prone to rooting against a team as for a team when we don’t have previous affinities. What distinguishes us from the masses of internet-comment-wielding-haters is not our ability throw about prejudicial slurs, but our ability to pull statistics from our asses fangraphs.com. We are haters with data! And we will misuse it to form opinions!
Read the rest of this entry »