Lovers of base and ball, we have a crisis. A crisis of terrific and overwhelming proportions, necessitating the author’s very purplest prose. I speak to you today of the Triple, that loveliest and most thrilling of base hits. Whereas once that graceful animal seemed to flit its way through every box score, today, sadly, it is rarely and fleetingly encountered. I will not mince words: if immediate, drastic, and comprehensive action is not taken, there is a very real possibility that this creature will go the way of the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian wolf, and the barehanded catcher. Regard! And feel the awful urgency of this lamentable state of affairs:

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This is America, for God’s sake. I should not have to pronounce confusing foreign names like “Nelson Cruz,” and neither should you. Therefore, I propose that we refer to each foreign ballplayer by the closest English translation of his name. As a modest service to my fellow patriots, I have taken the liberty of producing some — in this case, for a sampling of Spanish names of particular relevance. Some interpretive license was involved, and you are welcome to question my translations. Just don’t question my right to call a man whatever I damn well please, no matter how embarrassing.

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Each of us has an MLB Twin: that player, active or retired, whose age most closely approximates our own. Carson Cistulli’s, for instance, is Joe Valentine. Though the two share little apart from appearing insane, being ill-equipped to face major league hitters, and being raised by lesbians in Las Vegas, Cistulli can take some vicarious pleasure in the accomplishments of a man of his exact vintage. Dayn Perry’s MLB Twin, as is well known, is Boileryard Clarke; both men were born on October 18, 1868.

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The following headlines actually appear on MLB.com today:

Giambi Gives Tribe a Brant New Day
Another Homer for Miggy Before Tigers Get Jiggy
Fish Feel LoMo-mentum Shift Late in KC
Blue Jays Lay Down Lawrie, Edge Red Sox
Hair Rays-ing! Walk-off Win Snaps Skid
Texas Bullish Against Milwaukee ‘Pen
Robbie Is Aptly Named as Astros Stun Athletics

The questions abound. When did this start? Who thinks it is a good idea? Why does the National League not get the same treatment? Does MLB.com have one person on staff writing their NL wrap headlines and another person, presumably 9 years old, writing their AL counterparts? Has MLB decided to market the junior circuit as their “fun” league? How long can this possibly continue before the eyeballs of Internet readers everywhere rupture from the sheer pressure of awful punnery? And, most importantly, what awful puns can we ourselves contribute?

The early 1970’s were a pivotal and epochal epoch — the most pivotal and epochal, perhaps — in the great Mustache Wars that have convulsed civilization since its very inception. If we were, for the sake of building a narrative, to point to a single event that forever turned the tide of those wars, it would surely be the 1972 World Series. Famously dubbed “Hairs vs. Squares,” this contest pitted the full-foliaged Oakland A’s of Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers against Sparky Anderson’s baby-smooth Reds. The outcome — Oakland by a hair — validated mouthbrows everywhere and tipped off a long slide into obsolescence for shaved-lip purists.* It must have been a tough pill to swallow for old Sparky, who was so tenacious a defender of the clean-cut face that it cost him his firstborn son for a year and a half.

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Just as Aaron struggled to escape the corpulent shadow of Ruth, and Rose the wiry one of Cobb, it is often said (ad nauseam, really) of Michael Tucker that he played the game under the shadow of Marc Newfield. Now, for the first time, we have photographic documentation of the latter man’s umbral presence in Tucker’s life.

From the eBay listing:

I have not seen another one—1993 SP rookie foil cards with this anomaly/phenomenon in the past 20 years. I guess the only “scenario” that can top this card would be if the card is of Johnny Damon with ghost shadow of DEREK JETER from the same set (both potential HOF), but doesn’t exist!!!…This ghostly error card is truly a rare find on a monumental scale of all errors cards and could be the ONLY ONE that has slipped through rather than being destroyed at the factory! This GHOSTLY ERROR CARD is and should be the “KING OF ALL ERROR CARDS”!

As if JETER would ever permit his ghost shadow to be revealed! Note that this priceless piece of baseball history and irrefutable evidence of the paranormal can be yours for $10,000.

Freddie Freeman = REAFFIRM NEEDED
(Honorable mention: DEFER DREAM? FINE)

Craig Kimbrel = CRABLIKE GRIM
(Honorable mention: KARMIC GERBIL)

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Not content with merely reigning as Chief Marlin, the vigorous and onomastically elusive Giancarlo Stanton has declared himself lord of the entire watery realm. Behold!

In his honor, then, a Hymn*:

HEAR, Postanton, ruler of the sea profound,
Whose liquid grasp begirts the solid ground;
Who, at the bottom of the stormy main,
Dark and deep-bosom’d, hold’st thy wat’ry reign;
Thy awful hand the brazen trident bears,
And ocean’s utmost bound, thy will reveres:
Thee I invoke, whose steeds the foam divide,
From whose dark locks the briny waters glide;
Whose voice loud founding thro’ the roaring deep,
Drives all its billows, in a raging heap;
When fiercely riding thro’ the boiling sea,
Thy hoarse command the trembling waves obey.

Behold the dark locks from whence the briny waters glide!

* With apologies to Orpheus.

Hey guys, my name’s Jeff. Football’s awesome! But baseball is my FAVE!!

Aw, give me a chance guys. Come on. You know you want to!

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This begins with Carlos “El Caballo” Lee, who recently hung up his horseshoes after a shapely, if unspectacular, 14-year career. Here are Lee’s home run numbers*:

16 24 24 26 31 31 32 37 32 28 26 24 18 9

My, I thought upon seeing these, that’s beautiful; Carlos should get some credit for sculpting such a sequence. Sure, symmetry like this is largely coincidental, but it doesn’t come together without a certain amount of honest consistency. One gets the feeling that, while El Caballo may not have been the greatest hitter ever, he was one of the most self-actualized, or something.

So then there is this question: what player has boasted the most beautiful career? And how exactly would we quantify such a thing? Well, here is what I did. I looked at the career WAR curve of every player with 30+ career WAR (about 500 hitters and 300 pitchers, for the record). I assumed that long was preferable to short, that smooth was preferable to jagged, and that gradual was preferable to abrupt. Then some math was required, but this is Notgraphs, so I made up two half-assed metrics: Years Per Inflection Point (YPIP) and Standard Deviation of Increases and Decreases (SDID). YPIP measures how often a curve changes direction; for Lee’s home run numbers, it would be 14/1 = 14. SDID measures the variation in year-to-year changes, independent of direction; a player with big spikes and plateaus in WAR gets a higher (worse) number than one with a steady climb. Then I ranked all the players by each metric, added the two ranks together, and found the lowest total. As you’ve already discerned — edging out such lovelies as Billy Nash and Dom DiMaggio — it’s Ivan Rodriguez:

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