Archive for Actual Thing

I know little about basketball. You throw a ball — much like every American sport — and there is jumping and falling and whistling. And they have steals too, but you actually get something for the steal (a ball). Keeping the stolen ball after the game, I am told, is bad form, though.

Anyway, it turns out there was a recent championship contest, and since the Bulls of Chicago were not involved, I had already cast the sport into a waste bin titled “No Derrick Rose makes me sad” — but my decision may have been premature. Tom Tango passes along this viral video, in which we see an advanced analysis owner — Mark Cuban — clobber most cruelly an old-school television sensationalist — Skip Bayless — during the post-championship live analysis.

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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”:

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FanGraphs: the Game is real. I have proof.

First, how else can you explain my Giants first baseman? He’s ‘hitting’ .235/.314/.350… and Giants’ first basemen are hitting .207/.312/.336. My dude has a better ISO, the Aubrey Huff / Brett Pill / Brandon Belt monstrosity has a better walk rate. Both are right around replacement. Somehow I have my pick of the entire league, and the Giants have their pick of those three dudes, and we ended up in the same place.

On the other side of the coin, cwhitman is doing a heckuva job. His Nationals starter is performing like… a Nationals starter. His starter has an 8.76 K/9, 2.87 BB/9, and 0.83 HR/9 — the staff in our nation’s capital has an 8.48 K/9, 3.04 BB/9, 0.71 HR/9. Again, they had no choice beyond what was on their roster or in their system, cwhitman had plenty of choice, and they ended up in the same place.

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Nothing screams summer like playing a nice game of simulated baseball with a the “Official Jackmster Baseball Knife”.

Who needs to carry around a complete Strat-o-matic game when the game can be stored in that cool little watch pocket on your jeans. It can played outside and inside (until mom finds out). Best of all, the winner can take home one of the loser’s favorite “Home Run” razor blades.

“Fashion is art,” as Daniel Radcliffe once may have said. And whether you agree with him or not, you must resign yourself to the fact that you live in a world in which others do. The hat you adorn yourself with as you leave your house or apartment will, however unwillingly, help shape your identity in the eyes of colleagues and strangers. It could, for example, help you nail that big interview at the firm, earn an extra ten percent on your daily panhandling, or ward off potential conversations on the bus during your commute. It’s a choice that you should make carefully.

With this in mind, we, the dapper assemblage at NotGraphs, are endeavoring to make this critical life choice as simple as possible by reflecting on a few of the myriad of options available to the credit card-wielding internet shopper. Today’s enterprise: how to troll.

Part 1: Trolling Your World Series Opponent

Want something that celebrates the accomplishments of young men who have no idea that you exist? Want to do it in a way that smacks of the bombast and heraldry that a self-selected avatar of a champion richly deserves? Wear a hat with a World Series ring on it. On your head! A ring! Rings don’t even go on heads! The blatant absurdity will be sure to demoralize any past adversaries.
 
 
 
 
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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:

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Well, that settles it: I’m done with cocaine.

H/T: Things I Never Threw Away.

On May 20th, the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team is going to invite a former STATS Inc. intern, a Stanford economics graduate, a former All-American athlete, a College World Series record holder, a diabetic, a man with a Wikipedia page containing over 6,300 words in it, a man who eats bullets washed in the tears of his enemies and a few of his friends, and an active major league baseball player in the booth.

Figured it out yet?

THEY’RE ALL ONE PERSON.

That’s right, Mr. Super Sam Fuld will be joining the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team in the booth to talk about sabermetrics. What?! That’s right. Those fancy acronumbers and oozer ratings.
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Seneca, quoting Epicurus, writes in his Moral Epistle No. 11 that one should — in order to conduct oneself as virtuously as possible — one should “Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them.”

Seneca continues:

Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.

While I won’t attempt to guess at which Master the reader has chosen for these purposes, allow me to take for granted that, for probably 50% or 70% of our readers, said Master is probably the fictional character Alfred Ogilvie of both 1976’s The Bad News Bears and 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.

Indeed, Ogilvie possesses the three virtues most cherished by this publication: he’s bespectacled, is facile with baseball numbers, and, as the above image indicates, enjoys the company of women in high-waisted fashions.

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For the low, low price or $8.99, you TOO can have a keyboard covered in balls — just like the pros!

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