With the new season underway, it’s high time to consult our Google Translate and make some sense of the cryptic statements made by players and coaches. Below you’ll find all of Monday’s games neatly summarized. Enjoy!

Red Socks 3, Orioles 1

“We’ve got a terrible the group of guys. It is easier to see the ball, in high spirits, good mental state, your team wins.” – Clay Buchholz

“I do not want to hit a home run. It just worked out like this, but to contribute, let us take the lead after a fierce game, Buck pitched well in something, I think anyone who stepped on the box ( been looking for that).” – Daniel Nava

“Tomorrow we may spend all day crying, holding each other’s hands as a team all day, walking through the Prudential Center (Prudential Center) (Boston) cried.” – Adam Jones

NOTES: Boston’s new closer to perfect three storage try this season…Red Sox and not in their seven games, their longest of the season opener correctly made a mistake-game winning streak…Former astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walk on the moon, attended the game.

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Eager to hear from Yu Darvish in the wake of his dalliance with one of the greatest feats in sports, I naturally turned to his official blog, Thoughts of Yu. I was rewarded with this entry, just posted this morning (and helpfully translated by Google):

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My last post, on the oldest living Yankee, seems to have encouraged certain tasteless individuals to “have a little fun” at the expense of New York’s, shall we say, overmature roster. My opinion has always been that the best way to deal with these things is just to get them out of our system as quickly and fully as possible. So, let’s go ahead and do this now. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2013 Bronx Bombers:

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Virgil Trucks died on Saturday at 95, relinquishing his crowns as both the oldest living former Tiger and the oldest living former Yankee (he finished his career in the Bronx in 1958). So who has filled his shoes? Well, it seems the new oldest Yankee is a guy by the picturesque name of Rugger Ardizoia. I had never heard of him, so I looked him up.

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By popular demand*, here is the companion piece to Eno Sarris’s excellent Joey Votto on Hitting, published yesterday. As this is an exploratory post on a poorly understood subject, my intention here is not to give you any kind of exhaustive analysis, but simply to highlight some basic strategies that will be familiar to attentive fans. I hope that gathering these in one place will be enough to get a conversation going, because what we’re looking at here is quite possibly the next frontier in sabermetrics.

The Pickup Line

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Today is the 145th birthday of Skyrocket Smith, first baseman for the 1888 Louisville Colonels, and namesake of my next-born child. These Colonels also included Ice Box Chamberlain, Toad Ramsey, Dude Esterbrook, Farmer Vaughn, Kick Kelly, Hercules Burnett, and Chicken Wolf. Just look at them. They can’t manage to locate a camera, let alone mount a concerted effort at baseball. They have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The following year they became the first club ever to lose a hundred games. Skyrocket was long gone, though. He joined the fire department in St. Louis and died of uremia at 48. Incidentally, Chicken Wolf was also a firefighter, and died of brain trauma at 41. Seems Toad Ramsey also died at 41, of pneumonia, while Farmer Vaughn succumbed to pneumonia as well, at 49. Dude Esterbrook passed away at 43; he jumped from a train that was taking him to a mental hospital. Pete Browning, longtime sufferer from cancer, cirrhosis, vertigo, and alcohol-induced brain damage, died at 44, shortly after release from a mental hospital. Paul Cook died of unrecorded causes at 42. Reddy Mack fell off of something and died at 50. Hub Collins died at 28 of typhoid, and Phil Tomney died at 28 of tuberculosis. OK, time to bring this post home with something light and amusing. Um…

Recently spotted headline: Emerging Craig, Cards agree on 5-year deal. This seemed like an appropriate time to reflect on that miracle of nature — a miracle transpiring each year, like clockwork, in our own back yards! — of the emerging Craig.

PHOENIX, Ariz. — R.A. Dickey, who started Team USA’s opener in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, set a few things straight when asked about the team and its chances. “It’s not about the names. It’s about the makeup,” said Dickey, emphasizing that any gap in the Americans’ star power will be amply filled by mascara and rouge. Asked about his teammate’s comments, David Wright added: “Listen, don’t get me wrong, we’re all going to leave it all out there and hopefully come home with a trophy. But let’s be real — the main reason I’m here is to look completely fabulous in front of an international audience.”

The World Baseball Classic is underway, and that means I’m way late on getting you your triennial/quadrennial Best Names Bracket. For this year’s field of 32 (with pairings randomly assigned), I made sure each WBC-qualifying nation was represented, although inevitably some countries (I’m looking at you, Netherlands) are better represented than others (*cough* USA). Click to embiggen, download, fill it out in whatever fashion you like — even if it’s just a list of each round’s winners — and send in your bracket! A CHAMPION WILL RISE!

NOTE: In order to fairly assess each matchup, creative and politically incorrect mispronunciation may be required.

NOTE (2): Pictures are provided for educational purposes ONLY and should be ignored when selecting winners; otherwise some entrants, and by some entrants I mean Odrisamer Despaigne, might enjoy an unfair advantage.

I just got word that for the 2013 season, Albert Pujols will be portrayed by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The first leaked photos from the Angels’ set can be seen above. I’m curious how the community in general, and Halos fans in particular, feel about this. Can The Rock do Sir Albert justice? He’s shown us more range lately, but it’s a big leap from “Tooth Fairy” to the face of a contending franchise. On the other hand, if anything can turn around a four-year power slide, it’s that set of pythons right there.