What we are doing is blatantly ripping off Dayn Perry, occasional contributor to NotGraphs; regular contributor to CBSSports.com, the home for all baseball; and constant contributor to the moral deterioration of The Republic; by assigning cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Since Dayn has seen fit to abandon us in our hour of need, we will usurp his nickname creation and application authority and render it back unto the people, so that they can ruin it through the democratic process, like they ruin everything else.

Last time out, perpetual disappointment David Temple tried, and seemingly failed, to determine who should earn the nickname “White Sangria.” As no consensus was either sought nor reached, this remains the Hall of Honour, which Dayn (because he’s an asshole who puts on airs) believes is “so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed ‘u’ is required for proper spelling…” Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers, as you know, signed Miguel Cabrera to a very long contract for a very large amount of money, and while I don’t think it’s the epic mistake of titanic proportions that most of the Internet seems to, I have to admit that it will almost certainly not look good by the last 3-4 years of the deal. But I think as long as TV revenue keeps rising and the Tigers keep putting butts in the seats of Comerica Park (acknowledging that their ability to compete might be hampered by the extra long and expensive Cabrera extension), it won’t be a disaster for the club.

But as I hinted above, the majority feels like the deal is an atrocity somewhere between the rollout of SimCity last year and Idi Amin’s reign in Uganda during the 1970s. Nobody, however, has taken the news harder than the anonymous executives who have been talking to Buster Olney, who would also like you to know he is the victim of your racism.

These executives, according to Olney, are “appalled,” “disgusted,” and “aghast” at the Cabrera contract. This is kind of a higher level of moral outrage than I would expect from around a league that continues to say nothing about the continued employment of Josh Lueke. For let us not forget that, while Miguel Cabrera has been given all of MLB’s money, taking it from the starving mouths of the children of MLB’s owners, who only collectively earned $450 million in revenue last year, Josh Lueke raped a woman. Just so we’re clear, this is the reference scale to tell your run-of-the-mill outrage from that which inspires anonymous MLB executives to trip over each other to get to Buster Olney and titter and gossip away like a cast member of The Hills: Read the rest of this entry »

While it has focused on expanding the appeal of the game both internationally and to various segments of the American population, Major League Baseball has always been careful to not alienate its most loyal and prized demographic, dad-shirt wearing suburbanite people like myself. Therefore, it has cultivated an air of respectability, aggressively going after PED users, taking steps to end home plate collisions, keeping Jamie Moyer around as long as humanly possible. But baseball is not alone in coveting my demo, and the NFL especially has been trying to poach fans by actively blanding down their hyper-violent game to make it more palatable to “ketchup-is-too-a-spice” types such as myself. Eventually, Baseball had to respond or risk losing me and my ilk to games that seemed “safer.”

Not to be outdone by the NFL’s new rules banning “dunking” over the goalpost, Major League Baseball announced today the following 10 changes to the game:

1)      Butt slaps are heretofore banned, and any uniformed personnel engaging in butt slaps, smacks, taps, touches, or gentle caresses on the field of play or in the dugout is automatically ejected from the game.

2)      High fives are only allowed after successful sacrifice bunts, groundouts resulting in a run scoring, or sacrifice fly. After a home run, players are to be given the silent treatment for at least three innings. No fist bumps. God help you if you fist bump.

3)      Uniform tops are to remain buttoned all the way up, and tucked neatly into pants. Socks must be visible to the mid-calf or higher. Stirrups are encouraged.

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Jupiter — In camp on a minor-league deal , second baseman Austin Staufmore was told he wouldn’t be making the Marlins infield and went to The Velvet Glove (a local gentleman’s club). There, he asked for and received his sexual release.

Staufmore has struggled to make it back to the Majors after flopping out with the Pirates in 2009. While once lauded as the next big thing, Staufmore struggled because he only had one useful tool, and even that wasn’t all that impressive to begin with. Still, the minor league veteran plans to keep banging away at it, hoping that the club will have an opening for him sooner or later.

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Scene: A baseball game. Two messenger bags are placed at a table, while their owners slip away to watch the action. The camera watches them leave, then pans back to the bags.

Bag 1: Whew. They’re gone. Finally, a chance to talk.

Bag 2: What is there to say? This is what we do.

Bag 1: Yeah, but don’t you aspire to something more?

Bag 2: Like what? I’m a bag. That’s what I do. That’s what I am. That’s all I’ll ever be. You should get used to this.

Bag 1: I’ll never get used to this. It’s like they carry us everywhere. They never leave us alone. I have interests, man.

Bag 2: Like what? Carrying stuff?

Bag 1: No, dude. That’s, like, my job. I really want to get into woodworking. Can you imagine how great it would feel to just make a chair? For the rest of your life, you would think “I made this,” every time you sat in it.

Bag 2: Look, let’s set aside for a second the fact that you don’t have any hands. Even if you could make the chair, you’re still a bag. When he’s done with you, you get dumped on the floor nine times out of ten. The only chance you have of even using the chair is when you get put in it by somebody who is afraid you’ll get tripped over or get something spilled on you. Just like you were this time.

Bag 1: You’ve got a really shitty attitude.

Bag 2: Hey, don’t shoot the messenger bag. I’m not trying to be a bummer. I’m just saying you need to be realistic about who you are, and learn to accept it. Listen, I’ve been around for a long time; a lot longer than you have. These dumbasses carry us every single place they go. Absolutely. Every. Single. Place. They never, ever leave us behind. They never ask if we want to go with them. They never offer to lighten our load. They stick their laptops and their phones and their books and their “idea journals” and their packs of gum and their spare tissues in us and couldn’t care less if it’s fulfilling or fun or comfortable for us. I’m sorry if this is hard for you to hear, but I really think it’s best that you understand this above all else: We are stuck with these assholes until they find a better, stronger, younger bag, and then we get thrown in a dark closet, if we’re lucky, to live in obscure retirement except for emergencies or moving days. It’s either that or out with the trash. So keep your straps strong, buddy. Because that’s the best that you can hope for.

Bag 1: I’m sorry. That’s not enough for me.

Bag 1 pops a stitch.

Bag 2: What are you doing?

Bag 1: The only thing I can.

The bags owners, Carson Cistulli and David Temple, return. Temple picks up his bag, his laptop slipping from the bottom, towards the concrete floor, saved at the last moment when Temple puts his foot under it to cushion the fall.

Temple: Ow!

Cistulli: Hey, what’s wrong David Temple?

Temple: My bag just got a big rip in it and I dropped my laptop on my foot.

Cistulli: You should get a new one of those. I like mine. It’s always very reliable.

Temple: I guess so. I really liked this bag too. Guess it just wasn’t strong enough.

“I’m one of the league leaders in confidences. If I perform like I’ve always done, I’ll be one of the best players in this game. I don’t need any added motivation of drama at work. I’ll just let my work speak for itself, as every artist should.” – Ryan Braun, to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale

I can’t help admiring the kind of chutzpah it takes to essentially place yourself among the greats. To speak out, and through the power of your utterance to declare yourself the equal of the truly honored and revered. I speak, of course, of your Angelos, Michelled. Your Brandts, Remmed. Your Shias, LaBeofed. I wish I had that kind of self-assuredness, and the talent to presumably back it up.

I speak not, of course, of Braun’s baseball talent, which has been highly evident since the artist was a young man, a portrait of which he has graciously provided for us:

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The fundamentally awful work of one Carson J. Cistulli sent me to Ebay to find a series of hats that were infinitely better than the five he presented you with. I was going to make a joke about not sending a shabbily-dressed man-child to do a respectable person’s job, but then I got distracted by the following:

Vampire Baseball Cards: Team Cullen

So I set aside my snide remarks about Carson Cistulli’s vagrant-y appearance and smell and focused instead on this unholy, undead abomination.

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Reverend Pat Robertson, Senator and future presidential candidate Rand Paul, and former and future presidential candidate Rick Santorum have all pointed out that the progress of same sex marriage in this country will inevitably lead us down the slippery slope to people being able to marry their pets. “You mark my words,” said Robertson, “this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent.”

Now here we have a picture of Torii Hunter kissing an alligator. Think about that. We are already to the point where a player who as recently as 2012 told reporters he would be “uncomfortable” having a gay teammate because “as a Christian…in all my teachings and my learning, biblically, it’s not right” has already succumbed to the hedonistic lifestyle of fornicating with reptiles. This stalwart defender of the faith has been corrupted, as has red-blooded American male dating Kate Upton Justin Verlander, who looks on, rock hard, with what appears to be great erotic excitement. It could even be a male alligator for all we know.

What hope do any of the rest of us have but to just give in and storm our local pet shops? I, for one, am going to buy a turtle. God help us all.

I had hoped we could spend many weeks together, dissecting the Survivor journey of generally despicable Miami Marlins president David Samson. Unlike my previous trip through terrible baseball-related television, I actually enjoy Survivor. At least the people acting terribly to each other in this show are doing it with a greater purpose in mind.

Alas, (spoiler alert) despite professing to have watched the show from the very beginning, David Samson’s season was about as effective as the Marlins’ in 2012: A lot of big moves that backfire and eliminate him early. At least now we know this is an organization-wide problem.

I would like to embed the video for you, but CBS’s video player doesn’t seem to allow that. So, instead, I’ll direct you to their site, which none of you will go to. I mean, you might have watched it if it was right in front of you, but since it’s not, you’re probably just going to keep reading to enjoy all the terrible decision Samson makes, the ridiculous things he says, and the hilarious things people say about him. That’s how the Internet works. Sucks for you, CBS.

This season, as we discussed last Friday, has split the “tribes” up into three groups based on what the contestants supposedly use most in their everyday lives: Brains, Brawn, or Beauty. Obviously, that’s often not a clean distinction, as the beauty team has a student from Northwestern and the brain squad has a professional poker player who is absolutely ripped, but whatever. The brains (average IQ of 130, including Samson, arrive via helicopter to meet their opponents, who arrived by speed boat (beauty) and in the back of a truck (brawn). Super subtle, Survivor.

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It’s usually about this time every year where I sit down and look at the forty man rosters of each club, and realize there are about a billion random middle relievers I don’t know anything about. I don’t think that’s because I don’t do my due diligence. Moreover, given the high turnover rate for relievers, I don’t feel like it’s my duty to memorize all these guys either. They’re all going to be gone in two years, and I’ll have to learn a whole new set of forgettable names. None of you know or care about them.

Don’t think so? Fine, we’ll prove it. Pop quiz, hotshot. Modern day middle reliever I hadn’t heard of or fictional character from an Edith Wharton novel? I’m tired of relaxed grading standards. You need to get at least 80 percent to pass. Read the rest of this entry »