In a recent summer stock production, he starred as North America.
He once offered to un-lean the Tower of Pisa. (Italy refused the offer.)
Along with various dams, highways and cities, he is one of the few manmade objects visible from space, unless he is in the restroom.
He once won a Havana competitive eating contest by downing 52,673 of Fidel Castro’s lightly seasoned ear hairs.
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Okay, how did we miss this?
On May 24th, Coco Crisp tweeted to his followers, looking for a name for an app he’s developing where you catch baseballs in his hair:
I'm developing a new game where you catch baseballs in my hair. Any ideas for names? #namecocosgame pic.twitter.com/glv6tGWgY4
— Covelli Crisp (@Coco_Crisp) May 24, 2014
We’ve missed the deadline, and the name was chosen last week– and with a little Twitter research, you can find out what it was– but I thought I’d see if NotGraphs commenters can do better than what was chosen.
The floor is all yours.
Hey, Max. Yahoo Sports reports that you took out an insurance policy to cover lost earnings in case you don’t end up with a contract offer as big as the $144 million you turned down from the Tigers.
Here at Podunk Insurance, we were very excited to hear about it.
Because it sounds like you’re the kind of pragmatic, risk-averse individual who values quality insurance, to cover all of your potential calamities.
You may be covered for lost earnings… but are you covered in the case of a giant meteor attack?
Major League Baseball is going to have a tough time continuing if the Earth’s atmosphere is blackened with soot. Worried about the Tampa Bay Rays? I’d be more worried about the sun’s Rays, and how they’re not going to be able to get through, to warm your body and fuel the growth of the food you need to compete. And what’s the (David) Price of a policy to cover such a catastrophe? Well, let’s not talk about cost just yet…
Because you may be able to bundle the meteor insurance with another product we’re very excited about. You’ve heard of robots, right? They already have robotic arms that can throw baseballs. We’re not that far away from a robot taking your job, or possibly eating your family.
So you’ll need coverage for that, too.
And what if you decide to freeze your sperm, and the clinic loses it? We have sperm insurance. It’s very important. You never know when you’ll need it.
And how about a fan in the stands throwing ice cream at you? Ice cream insurance. I’ll add it to the list.
I assume you already have car insurance, but did you see the Transformers movie? What if your car turns into something else? Do you have insurance for that? Speaking of movies, you need Godzilla insurance too.
How are you going to pay for all of this insurance? Someone did offer you $144 million, didn’t they? I think they did. So you should probably take that deal, since insurance can be very expensive.
Good luck the rest of the way. Especially if the meteor hits.
From Michael Wray at Jays Journal:
Thanks to a poor lifestyle decision when it was announced on Friday night that Marcus Stroman had been called up by the Toronto Blue Jays and would start on Saturday I was hugging my bathroom’s toilet bowl. By the time I came to my senses, Stroman was already into his fifth inning of work and I had missed what sounded like a spectacular start.
Because we don’t skimp on research here at NotGraphs, let’s figure out exactly how long Michael Wray was on the toilet. Shi Davidi from Sportsnet tweets about Stroman’s recall at 12:38 AM Saturday morning:
#BlueJays lose second in a row as they recall Marcus Stroman to join rotation: http://t.co/MWShQDEOAW
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 31, 2014
The Blue Jays gameday feed seems to indicate that the fifth inning ended at 2:25 PM:
Five Ks through innings of one-run ball for Stroman. He's at 58 pitches.
— Blue Jays Gameday (@TORGameday) May 31, 2014
Wray claims to have recovered sometime during that inning… so let’s approximate and say 2:15.
That puts him on the toilet for at least 13 hours and 37 minutes. I don’t know if it’s Guinness Book worthy… but, nice work, Michael Wray.
In base-ball circles, Yankees backstop Brian McCann is known as being a man of substantial left-handed pop, superb defensive chops and a polo-ist’s sense of propriety. He is also — as we have previously explored in this very electric newspaper — prone to strobe-lit glimpses of the yawning void that lies beyond.
Know that it — and “it” is the unnameable thing that harrows Mr. McCann down to his primordial essence — has happened again …
Brian McCann knows what awaits us all. Such burdens are enough to buckle a thousand Frodos.
Building on yesterday’s post about Hopeless Joe’s Shake Shack Adventure, this post was originally going to be about baseball’s longest hot dogs, perhaps a ranking of them. But it turns out that there is not much of a contest. It’s the 24-inch-long BOOMSTICK down in Texas — originally a tribute to Nelson Cruz, but it became so popular that they kept it even after Cruz was gone. (And the stadium’s concessionaire has brought it to other ballparks for trial runs.) It has even inspired a whole 24-inch-themed concession stand in the ballpark, where the Rangers have offered obscenely unhealthy items like the Murphadilla (after David Murphy), a 24-inch quesadilla, the Rossome Nacho (after Robbie Ross), a BOOMSTICK topped with nacho ingredients, and the Beltre Buster, a 2800-calorie, 1-pound hamburger.
This year, they introduced the Choomongous, a two-foot-long Korean barbecue sandwich.
Clearly, the Rangers believe that their stadium seats are well-constructed and will not collapse under the weight of their fans.
I propose a few new Rangers-player-themed concessions to add to the menu:
1. The ALEX RIOShootthat’sagiantpastramisandwich, a two-foot-long pastrami sandwich topped with mustard, sauerkraut, nachos, and sixteen crumbled up chocolate chip cookies.
2. The DAR-Fish Taco, a 24-inch fish taco, filled with an entire striped bass, two heads of cabbage (shredded), a field of radishes, and four pounds of vanilla soft-serve crema.
3. The Elvis (Andrus), a sandwich made of 24 bananas and thirteen pounds of peanut butter, served between two “records” made of chocolate Oreo cookies, and topped with a game-used home plate dipped in caramel.
4. The Prince Veal-der, a 24-inch veal parmesan hero, accompanied by a bucket of pasta and a wheelbarrow filled with extra tomato sauce for dipping.
5. The Colby Lewis, a gigantic grilled (colby) cheese sandwich, Scott Baker-ed in the oven until all melty.
6. The Mitch More, More, Moreland-and-sea, where two 24-ounce steaks serve as the “buns” for a lobster roll, made from two pounds of lobster meat, four fields worth of celery, and a Costco-sized jar of mayonnaise.
7. The Ron WashingTON-OF-FOOD, a garbage pail filled with whatever leftovers the stadium kitchens have on a given day, pulverized in a blender, and served with a straw (whipped cream topping optional).
Any others?
David Ortiz: trendsetter, world changer, wizard.
First, he turned a no-hitter into a one-hitter.
Then, he turned an infamous error into an infamous hit.
Next, he turned a pop-up into a scorching line drive (in the box score!).
In the process, he turned a one-hitter into a two-hitter … and a two-hitter into just another shutout. Now, emboldened by his mystical success, Big Papi is transforming the very world we live in – the very world we thought we knew! – by altering our most cozy definitions and familiar designations, a Merlinesque achievement in a land where magic was believed extinct.
What follows is a list of what things were and, per Ortiz, what things are.
What follows, indeed, is The World According to Papi.
MINNEAPOLIS — The baseball article scheduled for May 8th from author David G Temple is currently on hold, due to an unusually-long brain delay.
The situation was touch and go leading up to posting, but as the deadline approached, it became clear the article would not start on time.
“We were just kind of waiting around, hanging out on the keyboard,” said the author’s fingers. “We really wanted to get out there and start going through our usual motions, but I guess it isn’t going to happen today.”
A high-pressure system of writer’s block along with reports of some light depression to the west sealed the fate of the article long before it began.
The author’s eyes also had a hunch that the article wasn’t going to happen.
“When we saw the PlayStation controller come out, we knew it would be a while until things got started,” the eyes said. “When you see the video game crews, that’s never a good sign.”
Officials hope to be able to schedule two articles for May 9th, if the brain cooperates.
“We hope two squeeze two in tomorrow,” they said. “Hopefully that doesn’t upset the editor too much, but we doubt he pays much attention anyway.”
From Rotoworld:
Number of strikeouts Nolasco has had in previous starts:
3/31: -1
4/6: The number of moons orbiting the Earth, minus 3
4/12: Prince Fielder’s batting average minus Prince Fielder’s listed weight
4/18: Prince Fielder’s batting average minus Prince Fielder’s actual weight
4/24: Derek Jeter’s OPS+ minus 100
5/2: The number of fans the Braves are hoping to attract to their new ballpark who actually live in the city of Atlanta
(more negative numbers are welcome in the comments)