Despite what was clearly an impressive — and perhaps best ever all-around — age-19 season from Bryce Harper, it remains the case that no qualified teenage player since the beginning of the 20th century has produced an offensive line better relative to league average than noted Italian-American Tony Conigliaro did in 1964, when he posted a 137 wRC+ for the Boston Red Sox as a 19-year-old.
This video, narrated (I believe) by former Boston broadcaster Ken Coleman, depicts Conigliaro using the sort of powerful power for which Italian-Americans have become famous to hit his first major-league home run, which came in his first-ever plate appearance at Fenway Park. Italy, the end.
The author will refrain from explaining under what circumstances, or in which context, the following occurred. What he (i.e. the author) will state is that the audio clip embedded here is from the very recently concluded recording of Dayn Perry’s weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio.
Reader DShep of SB Nation Rangers blog Lone Star Ball not only edited together a single video of all 221 of Yu Darvish’s strikeouts this season, he also set said montage to the hottest jams of the author’s childhood.
In Toronto, Travis Snider is no longer our What If. He’s Pittsburgh’s now. But that doesn’t mean Blue Jays supporters aren’t keeping tabs on Snider. We are. I check his numbers. Every couple of weeks or so.
The Canadian Sports Media knows this. Over the past three days, Sportsnet, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications, who own the Blue Jays, released a three-part, in-depth interview series with Snider, written by Shi Davidi, one of the more respected and well-liked members of the Toronto Sports Media. It’s been almost two months since Snider was traded, but he’s anything but forgotten.
And then, today, The Snider Catch, because we needed another reminder. I watched it. Three times. I enjoyed it — I feel like there’s still some Toronto in Snider. I watched @TaoOfStieb ask for the video you see above to be made. I — we — saw the Internet deliver.
Acute grief lifts within six months, for most people. I read it in The New York Times. I figure it’s a lot less for sports grief, if I can call sports grief grief at all, because all of this is meant only to entertain us. That’s it, that’s all. I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t sleep much the night Snider was dealt. I simply couldn’t believe reliever Brad Lincoln was the end to a story that wasn’t supposed to end for years.
That being said, I want Lincoln to succeed; to dominate. For for the next four years. Life will be easier that way. And I want the same for Snider. He was just a kid, and we’ve all got to fail, at least once, along the way. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that no matter how Lincoln fares, I want the Blue Jays to be wrong about Snider. Everyone’s got a goddamned lesson to be learned.
Here it is, the two things you were looking for. You opened this page with two emptinesses in your soul, and I have their fillings prepared for you like a city worker who has the asphalt prepared for the divots in the road of a white neighborhood.
Here it is, the first item: The Rays rookies performing — at historic Fenway Park — in historic leotards and wigs — a choreographed dance set to the American classic “Call Me Maybe.” Here it is, as directed by James Shields
It’s hard to impress the ol’ teammates. Just ask Tim Lincecum:
After Saturday’s game, Lincecum released this statement via his publicist:
I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
Which is to say, sometimes you throw a complete game shutout to make some money, sometimes you throw a bunch of sunflower seeds at yo’ mouf to impress, I dunno, is that Ryan Vogelsong?
Hat tip to A. King. No, that’s too obvious. Alexander K.
