Archive for Audio and/or Visual

In my quest for some precious drop of value in the desert of meaning that is the postgame interview, I will use every tool at my disposal. Including the stupid pun. And the cheap audio effect.

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Let us throw up at a ballgame, you and I.

Collars high, gents!
Wangs paraded, cavaliers!
Our testicles are covered with moss and lichen.
This is because they are boulders.

So let us throw up at a ballgame, you and I.

We enslave what we do not kill.
We cuddle with hookers in secret.
We do not visit places so much as we colonize them.
Pregnancies! Muzzle-loading weaponry! Crests on jacket breasts!

Yes, let us throw up at a ballgame, you and I.

Cannonade sex perpetrated with a buccaneering urgency!
Begin each day with a fresh haircut!
Solaced by the species difference between us and the middlebrow remainder!
Phalli forever as crisp as apples!

Lo, doughty brothers, let us throw up at this and every ballgame.

I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sick of the human element, the blown calls, and helmets taking bad hops and hitting umpires. There has to be another way. It’s probably not D’ump, a combination of a deer and an umpire, but I like that there are people out there — sick people, clearly — who are thinking outside the box.

H/T: Nobel Prize-winning NotGraphs reader Matt, who writes at yanksgoyard.com. You can follow him on Twitter, too: @MHunterYGY.

From the Worldwide Leader:

I never watched Pete Rose play baseball. He was before my time. What I know about Rose comes mostly from books, most notably Joe Posnanski’s “The Machine.” Look, I don’t know much — I chose to become a journalist, after all. But I know this: Pete Rose belongs in Cooperstown.

The ESPN short makes me sad. Especially Rose’s quotes.

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Based on the above evidence, I think it’s safe to say that Lawrie is, in fact, Big Blue.

This one comes to us via the fine, hard-working Canadian folks at theScore’s Getting Blanked, and I love it for a number of reasons:

1. The camera angle is perfect. I mean, just perfect. Watching Ron Gardenhire watch it all go so wrong is so very pleasing.
2. This is what deserves to happen when you try to bunt in a run. God is great, sometimes.
3. It has everything to do with the Toronto Blue Jays, which means I had no choice, really, but to post it. Sorry, Chairman Cistulli.
4. It’s a pleasant reminder that the days of watching Edwin Encarnacion at the hot corner are long gone, never to return. Brett Lawrie is very, very good. (And only 22!) Not many guys make that play. Seriously, just imagine how Enarnacion — God love him — would have butchered that play.

H/Ts: @BlueJaysChirps, for putting the video together. And follow @GettingBlanked. Do it. Please?

Vitals:

Game: Out of the Park Baseball 13
Platform: PC
Developer: OOTP Developments
Modes: Franchise
Cool Features: Incredible contracts system, massive player and coaches database, complete customizability, and plenty of add-ons.

Here’s my video analysis of the game. It’s long and full of jumpy cuts. You’ll hate it.
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1. I actually had to google Carly Rae Jepsen, the artist behind this gummy candy of a song — I had heard the name but had no idea how to identify her otherwise. I found out a bunch of stuff, like: she’s 26 (about ten years older than I figured when I heard the song). She placed third in the fifth season of Canadian Idol, which is, um, Canada’s version of American Idol (this is in keeping with a long tradition of non-winning finalists going on to more success after Idol than the winners, except for Kelly Clarkson, who is obviously the best thing that has/will ever come of that atrocious television show). She was the first musician signed to Justin Bieber’s Schoolboy Records, supposedly after the kid heard her sing and demanded her for his kingdom. She actually is quite pretty, in that kind of approachable (read: brunette) way that other girls aren’t spiteful about. She grew up on James Taylor, which I did as well, so I sympathize with that, but now “spins” La Roux and Kimbra, and I don’t know what those things are.

2. As for Harvard’s baseball team, I learned that they were ranked 233rd among Div I NCAA teams this past season, going 12-30 during the season with a team batting average of .285, an OBP of .350, and a slugging percentage of .368. You know what, though? These guys aren’t getting paid. Baseball isn’t their job and they’re probably pretty good at doing what all college athletes are theoretically at school for anyway (learnin’ and shit). I’m happy for them that despite a pretty dismal season, they decided to choreograph this dance routine to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

3. But more than that, I’m happy for all of us that we get to watch it. It is truly a delight to behold, a present in YouTube form, bound to inspire Actual Smiling — unless your face is paralyzed, in which case, I’m sorry, and I hope you’re smiling on the inside! This is great, really. Thank you, handsome college dudes.

Off an arm, off one very unlucky sonofabitch’s, uh, you know what, and into a poor woman’s unsuspecting face. I mean, seriously, what are the odds? Helluva journey for that baseball. I hope some kid ended up with it. I believe in happy endings.

The woman, when reached for comment by the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team this morning, had only this to say, by email:

“No glove, no love.”

Indeed.

Addendum: It’s come to my attention that this was actually a Brandon Inge home run. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Except that the title was wrong, so I’ve changed it.

H/T: Reddit user jeanpaulfartre.

I was surprised, at the completion our offseason crowdsourcing project, to find that FanGraphs readers had ranked Houston Astros broadcasters Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies fourth overall among the league’s 31 television broadcast teams.

Of course, I could also be excused: there has been little reason for anyone to go out of his or her way to watch the Astros over the last couple-few years.

With a new, data-driven front office in place, however, and a team that’s currently ranked 10th in FanGraphs’ totally infallible SI.com power rankings, there are reasons to watch the Astros at the moment.

What I didn’t expect before turning on Sunday’s game between Houston and St. Louis was the degree to which Brown and, in particular, Deshaies could augment a fan’s viewing experience. The duo are both genuinely entertaining (not just “entertaining for baseball broadcasters”) and responsible with the numbers.

By way of illustration, here are five brief sound clips of Deshaies — literally all of them from the first three innings of that Sunday game against the Cardinals.

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