Just when I thought I couldn’t love President Obama any more than I already do, he goes and does that. After those in attendance shelled out $250 to be there, and after Boston contributed over $3 million to Obama’s re-election campaign.
The point is: You have to represent your team, no matter the time, or the place.
Four more years, yo.
H/T: Amanda Maher.
Shout-out to Dayn Perry.
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: In the afterword of Rohinton Mistry’s brilliant first novel, Such A Long Journey, Alberto Manguel writes, “Dick Allen is a creature doomed.” Aren’t we all?
After his second Tommy John surgery Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Drabek, still only 24-years-old, has a long road of rehab in front of him. And, let’s be honest, nobody likes rehab. It’s a real drag.
On Tuesday night, Drabek, for one evening at least, was like the rest of us: Watching the game — Blue Jays visiting the Brewers — on TV at home, high on some drugs.
And it was some bloody game. A graph on NotGraphs, if I may:
I had no idea who Juan Berenguer was, had never heard of him, not once, until I saw that, above, at Old Time Family Baseball.
Baseball players come and go. Thousands of them, over a lifetime. That is how I hope you remember Juan Berenguer.
Actually, Berenguer, I’ve discovered, was kind of a big deal. He had a few nicknames: “El Gasolino,” “Senor Smoke,” and “Pancho Villa.” All of them awesome.
Then I found this, about the “Berenguer Boogie”:
I’m reading Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer. It is, for lack of a better word, amazing. I’m taking my time with it because, frankly, I don’t want it to end.
Kahn grew up a huge supporter of the Brooklyn Dodgers. “Within shouting distance of Ebbets Field.” By 25, he was covering the team for the New York Herald Tribune. Yet, after having read Kahn’s prose, which strikes you immediately (pardon the pun, bro), I’m having a hard time thinking of Kahn as a Dodgers fan first, and a writer second. Nobody who writes about baseball today writes the way Kahn did about the Dodgers. (Except masters of prose Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry.) Today’s baseball writers strike me as baseball fans first, and writers second. Kahn may have grown up a Dodgers fan, but he’s a writer before anything else.
I urge you to read The Boys of Summer. You’ll learn why they were called the Dodgers, something I didn’t know until I bought the book. You’ll read about the incredible racism in the American South in the early 1950s, and what Jackie Robinson went through, and said, as he broke baseball’s color barrier. And, finally, you’ll read 484 of the greatest words I’ve ever come across about the art that is pitching. I’m going to turn it over to Mr. Kahn …
The result of this afternoon’s Mets and Nationals game doesn’t matter. We’ve all already won.
Actually, now that I think about it, the result does matter. Between Dickey and Wang, who will last longer? Everything is on the line.
Enjoy, my friends, because it’s unlikely a matchup this perfect ever comes around again. It’s an amazing time to be alive.
The baseball cleared the right field fence at U.S. Cellular Field on the South Side of Chicago, past the outstretched glove of Alex Rios, and landed in the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen for a two-run home run. Colby Rasmus did what he always does: Not smile. He had business to take care of, a couple of bases to round. This is about as close as Rasmus got, even after a career night: a five-for-five performance, one that saw his wOBA rise from .304 to .326, and his wRC+ rise from 89 to 104, on the season.
Rasmus is stoic. The polar opposite of his fellow high-ceilinged teammate Brett Lawrie. And it’s been a study in contrast to watch the two of them play baseball on a day-to-day basis.
It’s the t-shirt the Cobra, Dave Parker, made famous way back in 1976. And via the folks at Homage, it’s only $28! Or $39.63, in total, including shipping to the great nation of Canada. Pricey, yes, for a t-shirt, but at NotGraphs, we get paid the big bucks, and I sleep better at night knowing that I’ve done my part for your struggling economy, America.
On an aside, I want the Pittsburgh Pirates to be great again. Is that weird?
H/T: Calafornaheim.
It’s a thing, apparently, to take the field at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in your unmentionables, with a message painted across your chest, when the Boston Red Sox are in town. I don’t know; kids are stupid.
I preferred the YOLO fellow. He was saying, “I’m going to streak because I must streak.” This guy’s saying “I’m going to streak so I can get caught, arrested, have my picture taken by a professional photographer, go to jail for a bit, maybe, and then have a stupendously handsome writer document my experience on the Internet.”
A fine young performer named INK, along with his friends Illicit, Zica, and Pain, have put together a “bumping track,” as the kids say, called “Texas Back at It.” Enjoy: