Read Yves Montand’s private journals, and you’ll quickly learn that he dreamed — desperately, lustily — of walking around the streets of Marseilles looking like a Fathead Wall Graphic. Monsieur Montand is no longer with us, but the force of his vision has given us this, which is a thing that you can purchase via MLB’s Internet computer page …
Gentlemen, start your coin purses.
Eddie “The Brat/Muggsy” Stanky
Eddie Stanky is among the many illustrious players to have two nicknames: The Brat and Muggsy. You, dear acned reader, do not need me to explain the obvious superiority of the Muggsy nickname (for the clean face’d aristocrats who have mis-browsed here: Eddie “Muggsy” Stanky — all “ee” endings!).
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The New Yorker’s most excellent Jeffrey Toobin is astride the current baseball news cycle because of his lucid piece on falling but not yet quite fallen Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Indeed, when, in the course of the same dispatch, you get Sandy Koufax to go on record, have an email conversation with the incarcerated Bernie Madoff and do such a masterly job of teasing out Wilpon’s insecurities that he plaints, “We’re snakebitten, baby!” you’ve got reportorial chops. But as great a scribe as Toobin is, let us recall that he’s also a baseball fan in outstanding standing …
That, readers glistening from hard-won sweat, is an image of Toobin’s laptop when he was on set and empaneled by CNN during the tedious run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Yes, Toobin — rather than listening, in rapt admiration, to Anderson Cooper’s handsome ruminations — was checking in on postseason base and ball. Since politics is a lodestone for all that is miserable about the stinking human animal, we should praise Toobin for this most righteous decision.
History teaches us that Paul Bunyan skipped out on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he had Marlins tickets, so it should be no surprise that Toobin, a distant cousin of Bunyan’s, is similarly inclined. Accruals of power helped along by vacant stares and scripted outrage or green, grassy baseball? Toobin chose correctly, and may all the gods bless him for having done so.
While attending a few garage sales in my hometown in Kansas, I seemed to have come across a relic that is many miles from its home: Jeff Francoeur’s little league bat, a PRO-LINE Little League SUPER-LITE Georgia Cracker, made in Atlanta, GA, Size 9.
It is the fabled bat that Jeff used to swing at pitches in the Atlanta area. It didn’t matter if he missed the ball or hit a warning track pop up, he always loved his Georgia Cracker. It was rumored lost when his parents had a garage sale after he joined the Braves in 2002. It was spotted a few times, but no one knew for sure of its location or owner.
I feel fortunate to have found the bat and hope to make a pilgrimage up I-35 to return the bat to its iconic owner soon. I will enjoy having it in my possession for a little while and maybe, just maybe, go take a few swings with it.
For those who do not know, Babe Ruth was the white Josh Gibson. It is also a widely known true fact that Gibson hit a homer in Pittsburgh, only to have it caught for an out the following day in Washington.
Observe: Gibson not only hit somewhere around 800 homers in his time in the Negro Leagues, but he also did so whilst swinging an estimably 700-pound bat. We can only imagine the two suitcases contain Gibson’s two, 10-feet-wide batting gloves, which could double for tents in a pinch.
For those who like baseball, underdogs, and legends, may I direct your attention to the Negro Leagues, where greats like Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Buck Leonard built both statistics and folklore like castles.
The Actual Thing you see pictured here (and which you’re free to click for embiggen-ing purposes) comes to us not from the wild frontier of the internet, but rather from the Dark Overlord of FanGraphs Inc. himself, David Appelman.
While, as per usual, Appelman’s exact whereabouts are unknown, wherever he is is also the sort of place that sells the item which is (a) currently washing over your senses and (b) called the King Pepper-brand Baseball Bat Pepper Mill.
As the cardboard display makes plain enough, this pepper mill possesses the following qualities:
• Ideal für BBQs
• Perfekte Geschenkidee
• Hochwertiges Mahlmechanism
• Grosse Pfefferkapacitat
Per the internet, this item is available for just 29.95 American dollars. How much that is wherever Appelman has found himself — that’s harder to say.
The bottom of the ninth of last night’s KC loss to Texas offers us a bounty of delights. With the Rangers in front 3-2, Organizational Jesus Erik Hosmer hit a spank to tie the score. Then, small miracle of small miracles, Jeff Francoeur drew an unintentional walk (!). Then … Well, let’s just roll tape …
N Feliz J Francoeur 9 0 ___ 3-3 Jeff Francoeur walked. 2.28 0.52 71.5 % .073 0.39
N Feliz J Dyson 9 0 1__ 3-3 Jarrod Dyson picked off. 3.17 0.91 58.3 % -.132 -0.64
N Feliz B Butler 9 1 ___ 3-3 Billy Butler walked. 1.84 0.28 63.8 % .055 0.27
N Feliz M Aviles 9 1 1__ 3-3 Mike Aviles picked off. 2.94 0.54 53.7 % -.101 -0.43
N Feliz W Betemit 9 2 ___ 3-3 Wilson Betemit struck out looking. 1.42 0.11 50.0 % -.037 -0.11
It’s one thing to have two runners picked off at first base in the ninth inning of a tie game. It’s another thing when both pick-off-ees are pinch runners and, thus, notionally in the game precisely not to do such a thing. It’s something else altogether when said pinch runners are the first two pick-off victims of the pitcher’s career.
Viva la Royals!
It’s come to the editors’ attention that Dayn Perry has, in fact, posted this video despite the fact that it actually appears in Eno Sarris’s work of only one hour earlier. Perry’s implication is clear: “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
It’s Rain Delay Day here at NotGraphs! And what follows is a fine example of whimsy! Rain descends upon a college game of base and ball. How to entertain the flinty souls still in the stands? As with all things, the penetrating wisdom of the renaissance fair is always near at hand …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkuhqsnZF7Y&feature=player_embedded
I promised whimsy, and whimsy you have received.
(Sweeping bow to m’ lady: With Leather)
Unless you’re freshly murdered, you had a better go of things tonight than Vin Mazzaro did. Here is what Mr. Mazzaro and, one must assume, the vengeful Old-Testament God who has it in for him have wrought:
2.1 IP, 11 H, 14 R, 3 BB, 2 K
The list of people I’d wish that upon consists mostly of bloodthirsty dictators. What’s perhaps most harrowing is that Mazzaro had a better FIP on the night than did Kyle Davies, the Royals’ starter. Success!
By far the greatest anything that will happen at Minute Maid Park in Houston this season:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7B4gic1-qU&
He got away. He definitely got away.
H/T: FanGraphs’ own Mike Axisa. Don’t you ever change, Mike.
