As any good parent knows, there are things in this world very much worth the price, even if that price is the pain and suffering of one’s spawn. Among those things? Hot, delicious pizza. A candlelit evening with Cheryl Ladd. Fist-pumping rock music. And, of course, a cowhide orb freshly smote over outfield fencing:
Suffer the little children? Yes, please.
If you missed last night’s rather taut Game 4 between the ST. LOUIS CARDINALS 🙂 and the philadelphia phillies :(, then you need but three pieces of information to consider yourself fully apprised and in good standing …
2) In the early innings, Shane Victorino encountered was long been known as the Gentleman’s Pratfall and then compounded miseries by indulging in what has long been known as the Gentleman’s Tippy-Toss-Silly. Click! (HT: Dan McQuade):
And 3) In the middle innings, Roy Oswalt’s engagement with a batsmen was momentarily made more delightful by the appearance of a puckish forest dryad hellbent on giving Skip Schumacher a hitter’s count:
And that, doe-eyed schoolchildren, is how America was saved.
Among the Great Orators of The West we count Isocrates, Cato, Cicero, Pericles. Could it be time to add another to the pantheon?
Goosebumps. Are you inspired?
In this space, this writer has, for reasons sufficient unto himself, occasionally likened pennant races to the behavioral phenomena of the animal kingdom. While this practice is borne of laziness, it’s mostly in the service of entertaining you, the muscled reader.
The Action Video Footage that follows, which is — and I don’t use this word lightly — awesome, is of a Darwinist brouhaha in the wilds of Africa. It also, fittingly for our purposes, makes for a tidy metaphorical retelling of recent base-and-ball events.
Your cast of characters:
Lions: The Red Sox and Braves.
Water Buffalo: The Rays and Cardinals.
Crocodiles: The Angels and Giants. Or perhaps just crocodiles.
Please enjoy the following Action Video Footage:
What can future opponents of the Rays and Cardinals learn from this? If you’re going to try to kill a baby water buffalo, then you’d best be quick about it. This is the playoffs, after all.
Chalk up the video below as another reason why the Internet is awesome:
Dan Shaughnessy — unfortunately for him, in this case — will live forever.
H/Ts: Learned scholar Kevin A., and the fine folks at Awful Announcing.
As the reader may or may not know, the present author has thrown his hat — and other, sexier pieces of his outfit — into the metaphorical ring known as the Pitchers & Poets Reading Club (hosted, if one can believe it, by the gentlemen of Pitchers & Poets).
The first book is Chad Harbach’s very new novel, The Art of Fielding, and the protagonist of said novel is named Henry Skrimshander. Though he makes his way to an elite liberal arts college on the lake coast of Wisconsin, Skrimshander’s only real literary experience is with a book by legendary (and also fictional) shortstop Aparicio Rodriguez called The Art of Fielding.
Rodriguez is essentially the Platonic shortstop, but certain details — the fact that he played for the Cardinals, mostly, and is only recently retired — suggest that the character is based, at least in part, on Ozzie Smith.
Because his peak ended before I was really aware of him, I never got a chance to see Smith with any frequency. But his reputation is obviously excellent and, if one were so inclined to make a top-10 list of defensive players by the numbers — by adding together their defensive runs, that is, to their positional adjustments — then one would find something similar to this:
Everyone should have a leitmotif. Like healthcare, food, clothes, and shelter, this should be considered a basic human right. Unfortunately, though, the vast majority of us are not lucky enough to have our presence announced musically (lest we take the task upon ourselves and risk looking mentally unstable by humming the same tune every time we enter a room).
A list of people who are among the privileged few to have leitmotifs:
1. Characters in films, television shows, and plays.
2. Professional athletes.*
*It should be noted that I consider professional wrestlers both of these things.
Indeed, there is perhaps no athlete to whom the leitmotif is more important than the closer in baseball. It has been scientifically proven that the last three outs of a baseball game are the hardest ones to get and it has also been scientifically proven that having a bitchin’ theme song is more valuable to a pitcher than any 100 MPH fastball when attempting to record these outs.*
*It should be noted that science has proven neither of these things.
Eric Freeman of the AV Club recent wrote a nice piece entitled “Prelude to a save: A closer’s guide to choosing the right entrance song,” which I missed when it was originally posted the week before last but was alerted to yesterday by this short post from the fantastic Grant Brisbee. Freeman provides the following rubric to assist closers in choosing the perfect entrance song:
-Pump up the crowd.
-Establish a brand.
-Leave the metal womb.
-Sound isn’t the whole story.
-Don’t pander.
-Know your source.
Naturally, this article got me thinking about heretofore unused songs that would make good leitmotifs. Below I have listed five such songs along with skillfully embedded youtube clips and the current closer for whom I believe the song represents the best fit.
Prior to Saturday’s game between the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals at Nationals Park, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, in the U.S. capital to collect another one of our many awards, caught up with the always personable Thomas Jefferson. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the great United States, Jefferson is now well retired, save for a few part-time hours with the Nationals.
“I like to think of it as consulting work,” said the Man of the People.
Jefferson chatted with NotGraphs about the Nationals’ season, their second-best since moving south from Montreal, the return of Stephen Strasburg, and — most colorfully about — Jayson Werth’s disappointing campaign.
“Werth? I hate to go all David Ortiz on you, and it’s not very Presidential-like of me, but, well, f*ck. Werth’s awful,” Jefferson said. “I knew this was how this story was going to end. The contract was a mistake. Even Keith Law agrees. And he’s arguably the most brilliant baseball mind at our collective disposal.”
Unfortunately for Jefferson, his comments were leaked to Werth, who, in the moments before the game began, confronted the President in the Nationals locker room. Werth was very animated, a season’s worth of frustration boiling over, and had to be restrained, after yelling: “I’m sick of [Jefferson]! Lincoln and Washington, too! I’ll take them all on! Except Teddy. Teddy’s my boy.”
Cooler heads prevailed. Until Saturday afternoon’s President’s Race, when Jayson Werth, with the help of some of his teammates, made through on his promise. Witness:
No word yet on the severity of the injuries suffered by Presidents Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington. Teddy Roosevelt has a mild concussion. He’s resting comfortably at home.
Image courtesy The Associated Press, via Daylife.
As part of his ongoing efforts to bring world peace to the world, Peter Gammons submitted some important thoughts via Twitter late Wednesday night that have given the neterati much in the way of food for thought.
In an effort to fully digest said food, NotGraphs’ own Eric Augenbraun rendered Gammons’ cryptic message into the LOLGammo form that he’s made famouser than famous, as follows:
And because the internet only contains so many images of Peter Gammons, the present author has also attached Gammons’ message to the first three random images proffered by that most indispensable of websites, ROFL Bot.
To wit:
George Washington crossing the Delaware:
And there’s not much more to say, is there? These Ports of Stockton, they are good at celebrating.
