In this criminally underviewed youtube link, MVP and crazy face Maury Wills is singing “Somebody’s Keeping Score.” You may not know that Wills was an accomplished banjo player. Also, how come teams don’t do albums like this one anymore? Barry Zito, where are you?
Let’s have a toast to one of the least deserving MVPs and most incompetent managers of all time, and to this big pile of sacks.
Upon hearing the news that Jeff Luhnow, the new General Manager of the Houston Astros, reads Baseball Prospectus and The Book and that 2. Keith Law recently interviewed for a position in the Astros front office, I have found a deeply repressed wellspring of optimism. Does this optimism derive from a single player on the Astros team or in their farm system? No. Does it derive from the fact that the Astros will, after next year, be battling in the more difficult American League, as well as playing in the same division as Albert Pujols (again)? No. Does it derive from an unapologetic personal bias towards executives who understand WAR? Yes, it does. That optimism has, for me, painted a picture of the future. This is what that picture looks like:
“New” uniforms
From the infinite spring of wonder and delight that is Logan Morrison’s twitter account comes today’s illustrated tweet. I am in debt to Notgraphs commenter Yirmiyahu for bringing this one to our attention.
click to enlarge!
Inspired by an awesome email from my even more awesome dad, a breakdown of the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates affiliation with the game. In no particular order:
—
1. Ron Paul
It is not clear whether Ron Paul is now a Houston Astros fan, but we do know that he is a “good friend” of Nolan Ryan, which suggests that perhaps he has switched allegiances since these glorious photos were taken. I am not part of the “rev-love-ution” or whatever the kids are calling it these days, but everyone looks like a stud to me in this beautiful uniform. I hate how much I love these.
“Ron Paul is the only congressman to have hit a home run over the fence in the congressional baseball game’s 50-year history.”
1. April 29, 1978. Three Rivers Stadium. Pittsburgh Pirates vs. San Francisco Giants. Bottom of the 5th. Pirates: 3; Giants: 0. 1 out. No one on base. Jim Barr pitching. 0.048 WPA. 1 RBI. Pirates win the game, 6-2.
What is not but could be if.
We could be crossing this abridged abyss
into beginning.
-Silver Jews
Mendoza, in the fourth year of his career, hits his first major league dinger. It’s worth noting here that in his four years in the Pirates’ farm system, Mendoza hit 18 homers. But still: three years in the majors have passed and Mendoza hasn’t seen that ball fly over the fences. One has to imagine that he’s been trying. It’s easy to imagine Mendoza, during his youth, Chihuahua, Mexico, swinging for the fences and watching his friends watch his home runs sail over their heads. He was almost certainly the best player on his block. Probably the neighborhood. Maybe the city. I’m not the first person to point out that the worst major league baseball player is still a very good baseball player, but have you really thought about how that must feel? To be the best at something your entire life and then suddenly, at the highest level, to have your name become synonymous with failure?
Read the rest of this entry »
Some days you wake up and the world seems a little dreary — you slept for too long, you have a sink full of dirty dishes, and the drawing you were going to post on Notgraphs today isn’t coming together… Then you remember that we live in a world where sometimes dogs wear baseball outfits. All is well!
This probably needs an introduction but I have no idea what to say other than that I believe I’ve lost touch with my demographic.
Britney Spears
Career WAR: 91.2
Comparables: Greg Maddux, Warren Spahn
Best season: 2000 (Stronger, Oops!… I Did It Again, 1.78 FIP)
Brit has managed to assemble a shockingly spectacular career with years left to go, assuming her antics off the field don’t catch up to her. No matter how you feel about her style of play, no one else who has debuted since 1998 can touch her when it comes to the raw numbers. You think she’s only “pretty good”? Look again. If we’ve learned anything from advanced metrics, it’s that the numbers aren’t the liars, our perceptions are. No matter how Britney makes you feel (and for me and for many others, the answer to that question is a jumbled and complicated tangle), she is among — if not the — greatest pop singer of my generation. Those who don’t agree do have some tools to argue with, specifically her extremely low BABIP. However, even after factoring in her extraordinary luck, Britney has still led the league overall every season that she has released a new album. Above all else, she is incredibly consistent, never having experienced a true slump in her entire career. Even 2008, the year she experienced an infamous offseason collapse, her sixth album sold half a million copies in the US in its first week, while Brit broke another record becoming the youngest player in history with five number one albums. Britney is an interesting case because to the naked eye she appears to have very little talent at all. Her voice is weak and forgettable compared to many of the other players on this list, her fastball never gets out of the very low 90s, and while she was once pretty good on the dance floor, that number has sunk as her later career has been plagued by injuries — from 2008-2011 she actually posted a negative UZR. She simply doesn’t have the natural talent to be the superstar that she is and year after year, experts predict that she will regress to her natural talent level, but somehow, some way, she remains at the top of her game.
Read the rest of this entry »
As part of my series of tweets illustrated literally, I take on this mysterious tweet from handsome Dee Gordon, aka “Skinny Swag 9”:
Favored first prodigies, creation’s darlings,
mountain ranges, peaks, dawn-red ridges
of all genesis, — pollen of a flowering godhead,
links of light, corridors, stairs, thrones,
spaces of being, shields of rapture, torrents
of unchecked feeling and then suddenly, singly
mirrors: scooping their outstreamed beauty
back into their peerless faces.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Second Elegy
(translated by Edward Snow)
List from Score’s Baseball’s Hottest Rookies 1989-1990 Book & Card Set.
Words via Google search (“__________ is”).
Selected images chosen from the name’s GIS results.
Jim Abbott
Jim Abbott is NOT a newt.
Kent Anderson
Kent Anderson Is A Powerful Narrative Of Uncomfortable Circumstances.
Eric Anthony
Eric Anthony is no longer eating dairy.
“Just the tip” of the hat to Notgraphs reader Eric Czaplicki for suggesting this story.
1. Doug Fister
“I Hardly Know Her!” …Obviously our best in the bunch both in terms of ability and in terms of innuendo. Here’s a story: when I worked at a bookstore, I used to call people at the other information desks and tell them I needed them to look up something for a customer and then feed them this ISBN and hang up: 1890159026.
