You can’t make that stuff up. Hence the “#TrueStory” hashtag.

What a disaster. On the bright side: The Twin Cities’ nightmare is almost over.

H/T: @PatrickSull. He’s my favorite Masshole.

I’m at the Rogers Centre. Section 217, first base side. The lid’s open. There couldn’t be finer weather for the grand finale, the last baseball game in Toronto this year.

Vernon Wells is getting “the business” in left field. An elderly woman to my right booed him when he came to bat in the fifth. She’s merciless. A couple of enthusiastic Blue Jays fans, or, as I like to call them, “clowns,” just started the wave.

There’s an Englishman sitting behind me, at his second game this week. About baseball he said: “I just wish we had this in England.”

Baseball’s the best. It’s going to be a long winter.

ADDENDUM: Edwin Encarnacion — “Double E,” not “E5” — walked it off for Toronto. It was glorious. The Blue Jays made sure that since they weren’t going to the postseason, neither were the Los Angeles Angels. Here’s to playing spoiler.

In the 9th and 12th innings, when Jose Bautista stepped up to bat, most everyone in the building rose to their feet and showered the American League’s Most Valuable Player with applause, and chants of “MVP! MVP! MVP!” This warmed my baseball heart. We might not have given him the many curtain calls he probably deserved, but Bautista was appreciated. His has been another incredible season, one this city won’t soon forget.

I had it all Wednesday night: Great company; delicious sweet potato fries; a beautiful night; a couple of Bud Light Limes; and an extra innings, come-from-behind walk-off Blue Jays win. If that’s the last baseball game I ever have the privilege of watching in person, I’m good. No complaints.

The heinous act above — the silencing of Tony Campana — was captured by a brave Getty Images photographer last Thursday. Naturally, as you’ve by now come to expect, we sent one of our correspondents, part of our award-winning Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, to, well, investigate.

When asked over the weekend about what exactly happened in the dugout at Great American Ball Park last week, all the color, all the joie de vivre, as Chairman Cistulli would say, left Tony Campana’s face. He wouldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. Campana shook his head, from left to right.

“Is that a ‘no comment’?” our intrepid reporter asked.

Campana, again, said nothing. He shook his head once more, this time up and down. No comment.

Our investigate reporter pressed on. (This is why we’ve won awards.) Finally, after looking to his left, and then to his right, Campana motioned for our reporter to move in, to get closer. Then Campana whispered:

“… I see Carlos Zambrano.”

As soon as Campana had opened up to us, had let NotGraphs in, Alfonso Soriano walked by in the clubhouse, and stopped to the right of our reporter. Soriano then took two fingers, pointed them at his eyes, and pointed them at Campana. The interview was over.

Tony Campana’s been through a lot in his young life. He’s forever been told that he was too small to play in The Show. He’s battled, and beaten, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now he’s in for the toughest fight of his life: Being a Chicago Cub.

Image courtesy, as mentioned, the one and only Getty Images. Via Daylife.

I dare you to look at the aged — yet oddly handsome — face of Dusty Baker, and not be impressed. I don’t know about you, but I see wisdom.

I see a mix of young and old: A pair of stylish frames I’d most certainly rock; a Phiten Tornado necklace; and some gray, some years, both in the mustache and soul patch that Baseball Lifer Baker wears so well.

I see a reflective man, one who ponders his place in the universe, who contemplates when he will be freed from the shackles of Bronson Arroyo.

I see a leader’s mustache; a manager’s mustache. Respect, Dusty Baker.

Image courtesy Reuters, via Daylife.

#Feastmode.

Life: Mike Hampton could pitch, man. When he wasn’t injured, at least. And he could swing the stick, too, a baseball player born to ply his trade in the National League. It’s hard to believe now, looking back, that Hampton, from 1995 through 2004, was good for, at the very least, 150 or more innings. Mike Hampton, defined by injury, threw over 200 innings a year from 1997 through 2001. He pitched, and he pitched well, to the tune of 3.3, 2.4. 5.1, 4.4 and 2.9 WAR those five years, respectively. In 2001, in 86 plate appearances, Hampton hit seven home runs, scored 20 runs, and drove in 16. He hit .291, and put up a wOBA of .366. Mike frigging Hampton!

Spiritual Exercise: Mike Hampton disappeared from baseball in 2005, only to return in 2008, to give it one more shot. And another shot after that. Ask yourself: Faced with adversity, richer than your wildest dreams, would you leave the game you love, leave it behind, and throw in the towel? Or would you have surgery after surgery on your elbow, in order to one day pitch again?

A Prayer for Mike Hampton

Michael William Hampton!
You were so much more than the injuries.
Yet they’re what define you,
And what I remember.
Why?

You won 22 games in 1999.
You have five Silver Sluggers to your name.
Fuck the injuries, I say, Mike Hampton.

But it’s hard.
Colorado won’t forget, they can’t forget.
And after signing you to an eight-year, $121 million dollar contract,
The richest in pro sports history at the time,
Can you blame them?
I don’t. I can’t.
But I don’t blame you either, Mike Hampton.
I would have signed that contract, too.

Tommy John surgery in 2005.
Goodbye, 2006.
“I’ll be back as good as new,” you said.
And I believed you.
A torn oblique muscle in 2007.
Then, the unthinkable: More elbow pain,
Another elbow surgery.
Goodbye, 2007.

Read the rest of this entry »

I tried. I really did. I tried my best not to laugh. I told myself, “No, that’s not funny.” But it’s totally funny. I laughed. And then I watched it again. And again. And another time after that. I mean, it’s only 10 seconds long. And I laughed some more.

I even e-mailed the video to a friend of mine. I wanted to gauge her reaction, you know, as someone without the average Canadian male’s sense of humor. Her response:

Watched it 4 times. hahahahahaha

All I needed was the “hahahahahaha.” Validation. She was judge and jury, and the verdict was in: Funny.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while, I know, but today seems as good as any to resurrect NotGraphs’ award-winning feast-days series.

#Feastmode!

Life: Drungo Hazewood’s actual, real-life name is Drungo Hazewood. Actually, it’s Drungo LaRue Hazewood. Even better. He major league career was six games long, in late September and early October, all the way back in 1980. Five at-bats. No hits. Four strikeouts. But a run scored: Drungo the pinch-runner.

Spiritual Exercise: In the minor leagues, Drungo could hit. He only got a cup of coffee in The Show. But at least he got a cup of coffee in The Show.

Prayer for Drungo Hazewood

Drungo Hazewood!
I wonder: What was going through your mind,
When after you hit .583 in spring training in 1980,
The Orioles still sent you down.
Earl Weaver kept it real:
“I’ve never cut a guy hitting that high before,” Weaver said.
“But he was making the rest of us look bad with that average.”
Oh, Drungo!
Even back then, the Orioles were the OrioLOLes.
Were you mad?
Sad?
Resilient?
You worked hard, and earned your call-up.
But it didn’t last long.
They never last long when you’re only 21-years-old.
“I’ll be back,” you must have said,
You must have thought.
You have to believe.
Three years later, Drungo, your baseball career was over,
Without a hit.
Damn, Drungo.
But it wasn’t all for naught;
There was the Drungo Ice House,
In Austin, at the University of Texas,
Named in your honor.
But, wait, that’s gone now, too.
What’s left?
The memories, Drungo.
And the statistics.
Six games, and five plate appearances.
You’ll live forever.

Image courtesy The Great Orioles Autograph Project.

Brian Wilson is on the disabled list. His beard is not.

Fear the beard, my friends. I do.

Before we begin: I know the Dick Allen Research Department is Dayn Perry’s domain, almost exclusively, but I’ve only ever wanted to make Dayn Perry proud, and Carson Cistulli happy.

Let us begin: In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

Today’s episode: Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha,” the lyrical tale of the lifelong spiritual journey of an Indian man during the time of the Buddha …

While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Dick Allen was listening
with a quiet face, Dick Allen’s listening gave Siddhartha a stronger
sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from
his counterpart. To show his wound to this listener was the same as
bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the
river. While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,
Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Dick Allen, no
longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,
that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,
that he was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha stopped thinking
of himself and his wound, this realisation of Dick Allen’s changed
character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered
into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Dick Allen had already been like
this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite
recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
He felt, that he was now seeing old Dick Allen as the people see the
gods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding his
farewell to Dick Allen. Thorough all this, he talked incessantly.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EUTEPFq5iQ&

Alec Baldwin: Living the dream. That’s not to say I’m on Baldwin’s side in his fight to the finish with card-carrying Red Sox Nation member John Krasinski. Not at all. As a Blue Jays supporter, I’m mostly just bitter.

Fine, not “mostly.” Just plain bitter. Laughter helps. Booze, too.

And: Let it be said that as the gulf between rich and poor, have and have-not, in our society only grows wider, I might actually believe that 912 is 911 for rich people.

Addendum: I called 912. Nothing happened. But that’s not surprising; “they” know I’m not rich. Trust nobody.

H/T: The Hall of Very Good. Follow him. Yes, right now.