Continuing our series of email interviews with some of our favorite writers around the web, we move to Matthew Leach of MLB.com. Leach, as he points out below, has wandered a meandering path that has led him to covering the Cardinals beat. Thanks to a great writer for being willing to sit down with us – although it’s obvious from his twitter feed that he’s pretty much ready to talk baseball with anyone.

Eno Sarris: Where did you grow up and go to school? Did you always want to be a writer growing up?

Matthew Leach: I’m a north Florida native — born in Jacksonville and grew up in Tallahassee, attended Leon County public schools, and I’m very much a product of the area. It’s still what I think of as my hometown, still where my family is.

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Strong mug shot but probably still drunk.

Let’s get a disclaimer out of the way first. In no way are we making fun of alcoholism or driving under the influence, those are serious problems. Miguel Cabrera seems like he might need a little help overcoming a common yet grave addiction.

Still… the circumstances of his of his DUI arrest call to mind some of the worst behavior of famous people in our culture. The feeling of entitlement that pervades that simple phrase – “Do you know who I am?” – is one that deserves to be mocked, and heartily. I mean, really? Really, Mr. Baseball Player Swigging From An Open Bottle Behind the Wheel, Really? Do I care who you are right now?

So, in Mr. Cabrera’s honor, a mixed list of classic “Do You Know Who I Ams?” for your pleasure.

Filed under, Recent
Just this week, NFL Player Legedu Naanee walked through the middle of a homicide crime scene, then cursed officers for questioning his decision, got pepper sprayed and arrested and then screamed the money phrase while being led away. No, dude, you wear a helmet. No-one knows who you are without your jersey on.

Filed under, Scholastic
This urban legend has it that a student taking an exam runs late and continues to to scribble despite the yelling proctor, then calmly walks to the front of the class. He asks the proctor if he knows who he is, and after the proctor says no, throws all the test booklets into the air (mixed in with his own) and runs out of the class. I imagine him laughing hysterically – and getting away with it.

Filed under, Civilian
A suburban mom in a minivan jumped a curb, plowed through a front yard, hit a stop sign, slurred her words, smelled of alcohol and was to be led away by a couple of officers… but first she had to resist violently and utter the famous words. Well, who was she? The deputy coroner.

Filed under, Baseball, Classic
In perhaps the most ridiculous version of this trope, Padres prospect Matt Bush, “fresh” off of a .204/.310/.276 season at high-A Lake Elsinore in 2007, drunkenly attacked some high school lacrosse players in 2009. He, and I quote the story here, “picked up and threw a freshman lacrosse player,” screaming the question of the moment before answering it: “I’m Matt (expletive) Bush,” and “(expletive) East County.” Asked, and answered.

Just a little eyewear mix up at my last key party.

The plight of the bespectacled athlete is worth some attention. After our fearless leader immortalized the younger DiMaggio in prose this week, it seems appropriate to turn our attention to a visual ode to the goggled gods of baseball.

Yes, there is a site dedicated solely to baseball players wearing eyeglasses. Sometimes BespectacledBaseball seems to cheat with the odd pair of sunglasses from time to time, but rest assured – those are prescription. And not only does the site provide the visitor with visuals worth recommending, it also adorns those images with poetic captions – in Craig Kusik’s case, “I tied the Major League record for most times hit by a pitch in an extra-inning game with 3 in 11 inning contest, August 27, 1975.” Practically William-Carlos-Williams-ian.

Bespectacled Baseball is just a baby, man, but the urge to laud players with face windows is not. Check this Wikipedia list of major leaguers with glasses, including this historical fact worth enshrining somewhere:

The first major-league player to wear spectacles was Will ‘Whoop-La’ White in 1878-86.[1][2] Only pitchers dared wear glasses while playing until the early 1920s, when George ‘Specs’ Toporcer of the St. Louis Cardinals became the first outfielder to sport eyewear. Bespectacled pitchers are less rare as they have less need to field the ball.

‘Whoop-La’ there it is. Let’s end with the most famous of spectacular athletes – Reggie Jackson. After all, he’s one (of two) bespectacled baseballers to ever make the Hall of Fame, and with the advent of contacts and Lasik surgery, he will be a member of what may remain a rare breed in the future. NotGraphs salutes you, oh meister of (double) monacles and star of shades.

Hat/Tip: My mother (seriously). And Esquire for the Reggie picture.

Does this Seattle concept look upside down to anyone else?

We try to stay on top of all things internets here at NotG, but somehow this one slipped between the cracks for too long (say about 13 years too long). While we all may desire to visit each stadium on the continent, but in the meantime, we can surf the stadium porn that is Stadium Page.

It’s an amazingly complete resource. Want updates on the Marlins’ stadium construction? Check. Want to visit the stadium graveyard and see the eyesores that were Shea and the Astrodome? Check. A sidebar with stadium logos for the stadiums the author has visited? Check. Want to check out some world series rings? Check (but the link to stadiums is a little specious).

While reminiscing about stadiums past and dreaming of stadiums future are strong enough enticements to visit, the site hits its highest notes when it shows concept drawings of stadiums never made. Like concept car drawings, these faux stadiums are a window into a parallel universe where our culture celebrates the bizarre and takes chances with multi-million dollar stadium designs. Look at how strange the 1965 retractable roof Boston Dome was! Imagine taking in a game on Manhattan Island’s West Side! Pine for the unrealized Portland Dome! Marvel at the futuristic Kauffman Stadium that George Jetson would have loved! The complete page of unrealized concepts is a little hard to find, but it’s right here.

Stadium Page: all your stadium porn needs in one place.

H/T: Ben Kabak of RiverAvenueBlues and SecondAvenueSagas

This series of interviews delves into the formative years of many of our favorite media members in baseball in an attempt to better understand the process of becoming a writer. Continuing the series, we are delighted to turn to Murray Chass, a distinguished baseball journalist that has been covering baseball for over forty years, most of them with the New York Times. A hearty “Thank You” goes out to one of baseball’s most seasoned scribes for ‘virtually’ sitting down with us to chat. You can find Mr. Chass’ most recent columns at MurrayChass.com.

Eno Sarris: Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school and what did you study?

Murray Chass:I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where I worked on the school newspaper, the Pitt News, all four years I was there and was editor of the paper in my senior year. I majored in political science even though I intended to go into the business in which I spent my life. I remember the executive editor of The New York Times, James Reston, asking me in a pre-hire interview why a political science major became a sports writer. Reston himself started out in baseball – he was the traveling secretary of the Cincinnati Reds – before becoming a newspaper guy.

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A Garfoose was perhaps involved (and not harmed) in the taking of this picture.

We ponder the difficult questions here at NotG. What should it be like to attend, get dressed for or even play in a baseball game – these questions have occurred often so far in these pages. One thing we have yet covered is what sort of wild animals should be allowed loose in the bullpen.

Good thing Dirk Hayhurst, relief pitcher and author of the Bullpen Gospels, was out there imagining things for us before we ever existed. Well, what is a Garfoose? Hayhurst explained in an interview with DRaysBay arranged after the news that he’d be joining the team for spring training at the very least.

…I started kind of fleshing out this character. What would he look like? What would he be like? And so I started drawing pictures of it and wrote a story about it. Then it kind of caught on from there, and people started asking me to draw pictures of Garfoose on their cards or their baseballs and stuff like that, and I just started doing it.

All the sudden everyone wants this autograph from me. And it’s like, “Okay, sure, I’ve got like this really popular autograph now,” and it’s not because I’m a good player; it’s because I draw this thing on my autograph. It kind of came from that.

Now, the Garfoose of the present is nature’s perfect predator. He lives in the Tibeten mountain groves that you can’t find unless you were born there, or something. And there’s these tops of trees in this grove were the MLB gets its perfectly grown baseballs — because the best baseballs in the world are organic-grown from trees in the baseball grove. And the Garfoose protects the grove from intruders. Very few people that have seen the Garfoose in the wild live to tell about it.

The more you know.

Fierce or friendly?

Since we’re at the forefront of uniform reporting here at NotG, this little gem couldn’t co un-discussed. According to Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie blog, it seems the NBA will give its players the option of wearing only a skin-tight compression tank as the top portion of their uniform. The players wear the tight tanks anyway, so why not give them the option of changing it up?

This is, of course, in line with most fashion trends (and even sport fashion trends – see football jerseys), but there’s more going on here. It’s another chance for the apparel manufacturers to make more money and for the NBA’s stars to show off their physiques. Of course, they might have a problem suiting up Shaquille O’Neal, but hence the ‘optional’ portion of the decision. The NBA also is famous for tinkering with the game in the D-League and All-Star game, so this is just another example of forward thinking.

The obvious question from your NotG correspondent is if this would work for baseball. From a game play standpoint, it would make HBP decisions easier and could make swinging easier. And it would be interesting to see Manny Ramirez turn in his baggy get-up for a slim-fitting situation. But the baseball fan base is probably a little more conservative when it comes to game play and uniforms, so it doesn’t seem likely that this development hops sports.

And one last problem with the idea. Baseball players may be in better shape than they are given credit for, but there are still some outliers. Those outliers (saaay… C.C. Sabathia) might make us shudder if they put on the skin-tight tee. So, file under “maybe not.”

Sometimes, a card just fails on all levels and deserves some constructive criticism. You, you 1973 Topps Steve Garvey, you need a little more… Steve Garvey in there. And maybe some sort of impressive moment would help – a few seconds before or after this moment might have even worked. And you, 1991 Upper Deck Melido Perez, you do realize Perez was an American League Pitcher, right? How about getting your subject to look at the camera while you are at it. See? we can workshop these things like any short story.

The trouble with some past lists that have attempted to collate the worst baseball cards is that they’ve missed the point a little. Silly hair or a bad word on a bat don’t take away from the value of the baseball card – in the case of Billy Ripken’s famous bat, it actually added value to a card that otherwise would not have had any. And interesting hair – bad or good – usually adds to the entertainment value.

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Now you’ve seen Barry Larkin rap.

The video above could serve as a cultural artifact for future anthropologists, for sure. Wonder how American men dressed in the late eighties? What sort of music was popular? Facial hair? It’s all in there.

But what’s also in there, once you take your snark pants off (NOT your real ones, please), is worth something to us, now. Here are the World Champion Cincinnati Reds, having fun for your pleasure. The song isn’t great, the singing voices often atrocious, and the fashions just kinda goofy, but they were willing to horse around in a studio for no good reason.

Shouldn’t there be more of this? Well, actually, there is.

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Sometimes, even the loquacious NotGraphs staff is rendered speechless. Sometimes, a writer so thoroughly destroys an idea that there’s little to add. Sometimes, we can just stand back and golf clap for a well-executed and funny idea.

That, my friends, is the case with SBN editor Jon Bois’ latest piece about the best names in baseball history. Not only did he find such greats as the pictured Cannonball Titcomb (the most famous of the Titcombs), but he added such gems as the following conversation in the Balfour family:

MRS. BALFOUR. What should we encourage him to be when he grows up?
MR. BALFOUR. A pitcher.
MRS. BALFOUR. A major league pitcher? Do you know how astronomically unlikely that is?
MR. BALFOUR. We must find a way.
MRS. BALFOUR. Okay, well, what should we name him?
MR. BALFOUR. Grant. Grant Balfour.
MRS. BALFOUR. Hmm, that’s a nice… wait. That would be a terrible name for a pitcher to have! Why do you want to name him that?
MR. BALFOUR. I hate him.
MRS. BALFOUR. How can you hate him? He’s just a newborn baby!
MR. BALFOUR. I hate babies.

Really, is there any way to add to this discussion? Some names fell through the cracks – Tris Speaker is notable, we can wish prospect Ray Liotta had made the majors, and Jimmie Foxx has two X’s, which is two more than I’ve got – but he really hit this one out of the park. So we’ll quit writing now and just bask in the glow. Bravo Mr. Bois, bravo.