Archive for Actual Thing

I’m not supposed to post on Saturdays. And I get Groundhog’s Day off too, as NotGraphs adheres to all bank holidays, Christian holidays, Muslim and Jewish Holidays, Hindu Holidays, the good Canadian Holidays, and mammal-based holidays, such as the present one.

But news, unlike us, does not take a vacation and sip the nectar of goodwill from a shuttered post office.

Hark:

[Brooks] Conrad wore batting gloves during batting practice today because he developed blisters on his hands on Friday.

That selfsame Brooks Conrad rubbed his calloused hambones in the clay of many batter’s boxi across these well-lit United States (and one boxi in Canada); he squeezed tight his 52-ounce bat using only God’s creation, his muscly, determined fingers; commentators swooned as he fisted singles and doubles across North America’s green fields — but something was lost in translation, some majesty of a dusty plant foot and rotating hips, some charm in a jaw jutting with chaw; some magic must have altered its ingredients; the flavor isn’t the same; the spices have the same names but it doesn’t taste like home runs; a blister appears and suddenly it feels like I am wearing another man’s wardrobe.

Baseballnumbers have come a long way in twenty years. They’ve made Jeremy Brown into a D-list celebrity, driven Steve Garvey to gibbering insanity, and transformed Bert Blyleven into a bearded god-child. But lest you fear that the market inefficiencies have all been made efficient, and that the world is horribly, horribly flat, I present one bastion against common sense: the promotional speaking industry.

Yes, for a trifling sum, you can enlist one of many eager retired or current baseball players to speak at your family barbecue and/or corporate retreat. Do you have strategic branding initiatives that lack a celebrity endorsement to complement it? Fetch your checkbook! But be sure you’re not overpaying for RBIs.

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Because he never made the majors and because he was out of affiliated baseball by 1990, Steve Sharts does not have a player page at FanGraphs. What he does have, though — by virtue of his amusing name, if nothing else — is a place in the heart of most every male in the coveted 18-34 demographic. Plus the author’s colleague Dayn Perry, one assumes, who’s not between the ages of 18 and 34 but who is contemptible and of low breeding.

Before you see this, the newest animation from the Next Media team that gave us such classics as Raging Panda Pablo Sandoval and Derek Jeter Mauled by Tiger, a word of warning: Sex. As in, this video is full of sexy time. You’ll see inappropriate outfits, inappropriate touching of equipment, and just a strange story of courtship and copulation involving Billy Beane, Hiroyuki Nakajima, and Brad Pitt.

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

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TORONTO – After agreeing to an extension with the Toronto Blue Jays today, pitcher R.A. Dickey will be in a whole new world for the next three years. This shining, shimmering, splendid extension finalized a trade that sent Dickey from the Mets to Toronto.

Sources were unable to confirm when Dickey last let his heart decide.

“[Toronto GM] Alex [Anthopoulos] really opened my eyes to the wonder of Canada,” Dickey said in a press conference announcing the deal. “He took me on a helicopter trip. We went over, sideways, and under the city. I really felt like I was on a magic carpet ride.”

“I’m excited to show R.A. a new fantastic point of view,” said Anthopoulos. “In Toronto, there’s no one to tell us ‘no’, or where to go. No one says we’re only dreaming.”

Dickey said that though he has pitched in Toronto before, he never got to really experience the city.

“It’s a dazzling place. I never knew. But now, from way up here, it’s crystal clear. I’m in a whole new world. Unbelievable sights.”

Dickey told reporters his feelings were indescribable, and even his plane trip to Toronto made him feel as if he were soaring, tumbling, and freewheeling through an “endless diamond sky.”

“I told him not to dare close his eyes,” said Anthopoulos. “There are still a hundred thousand things to see.”

Dickey was then asked about his recent ascension from minor-league cast-off to Cy Young winner and staff ace.

“I’m holding my breath, in hopes it gets better. I’m like a shooting star, really. I’ve come so far. I can’t go back to where I used to be.”

Dickey’s wife Anne, also at the press conference, was asked to explain the process of negotiating and having her husband on the trading block.

“It was really a whole new world,” she said. Every turn, there was a surprise. But now, we have new horizons to pursue. I hope every moment is red-letter.”

“I’ll chase him anywhere,” she said when asked how she felt about possibly moving to a new country. “There’s time to spare. I’m just excited to share this whole new world with him. Toronto, that’s where we’ll be.”

“It’s been a thrilling chase,” added R.A. Dickey. “But this is a wondrous place for my wife and me.”

Abu the Monkey contributed to this story.

These distant titans of sport, both colossal when the doctors measure their height and weight and colossal in the most adhesive sense of human hero worship, have only a select few like David Price. He strikes the keen observer as neither too distant or too comfortable. He seems like just some tall man you might have known in college or while working as a meat slicer in a deli sandwich shop.

When not engaged in typical Rays dugout hijinks, David engages in atypical Rays dugout hijinks. He is a 6-foot-6 Jim Halpert.

And so on Sunday evening when David had to say goodbye to his long-time friend, now-Royals pitcher James Shields, and the jester giant’s veneer cracked, you will forgive your humble author for blinking back a tear and smiling for that clown, the one who laughs when he means to cry.
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As she noted during her Wednesday appearance on FanGraphs Audio (live on tape from the Winter Meetings!), Sports on Earth’s Emma Span was not always a highly decorated and widely hailed commentator of athletic contests on this (if no other) planet. Before that, she was a highly decorated and same-amount-as-hailed writer of short descriptions for all manner of direct-to-video films.

With regard to perhaps sampling Ms. Span’s prose stylings from that important moment in her career, the internet refuses to fail us. For it’s at electronic auction house eBay that we find one of Span’s charming nugae: detailed item info for Stanley the Stinkbug Goes to Camp.

Drink deeply, citizens of the world:

Lovable but naturally smelly Stanley the Stinkbug struggles to make friends at his new summer camp, in spite of his powerful odor, in this inspirational and warm-hearted kids’ cartoon about tolerance, acceptance, and God’s love. Judge Reinhold voices Stanley, joining a talented cast that also includes Tim Conway and Don Knotts.

Span’s sympathies for Stanley are obvious and beautiful — like something that is both beautiful but also obvious at the same time. Stanley’s pain is Span’s pain; his lessons about tolerance are her same lessons; his complex relationship with noted star of 1988 comedy Vice Versa Judge Reinhold are her same feelings about the entire Santa Clause trilogy’s Judge Reinhold.

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Being inside the Opryland is a lot like being outside in French Polynesia. Plus, balloons.

Here are five things the author has witnessed within his first two hours at baseball’s Winter Meetings:

1. Famous baseballing writer Peter Gammons perform a maneuver not exactly like, but pretty similar to, a crane kick while attempting to navigate a particularly crowded walkway.

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Dayn Perry, our intrepid NotGraphs moral center, broke a story yesterday. At CBS Sports Eye on Baseball (the home for all baseball fans), Mr. Perry pointed out that the winning Powerball numbers from the recent drawing matched with a veritable who’s-who of former Royals greats, and one of the winners is from the Kansas City area. It has yet to be seen if the winner was actually a Royals fan, but I found it to be a cool story nonetheless.

This led me wonder; who are the best six players who have uniform numbers matching the winning Powerball digits?

Based off of FanGraphs WAR, here’s what was discovered:

5 – Joe DiMaggio (91.9)

16 – Hal Newhouser (62.9)

22 – Roger Clemens (145.5)

23 – Ryne Sandberg (62.6)

29 – John Smoltz (82.5)

6 – Stan Musial (139.4)

Total WAR for the Powerball team – 584.8

Total Powerball Jackpot – $587.5M

Totally freaky? No. Pretty freaky? Yeah.

Dayn Perry and I are recording his stupid weekly podcast appearance at 11am ET tomorrow (Wednesday).

Feel free to submit questions or comments or a brief description of your nightmares in which Perry has appeared in the comment section below — or don’t, as, after all, we’re all going to die someday.