Have you ever wanted to see a helicopter play baseball? Yea, verily. Have you also dreamed longingly of spicing up said game of helicopter baseball with bad baserunning, German brogues aplenty and a soundtrack that quite possibly features Yngwie Malmsteen? Well, despite the lessons of the past, present and future, dreams do come true! But only this one time …
The only thing I know about marketing is that if you use each letter of your company’s name to spell out a positive attribute, it’s golden gold. Thankfully, the Chiba Lotte Marines, to cite but one example, know more about marketing than I do. I introduce this into evidence …
As Zig Ziglar teaches us, cast the opposition as giant, spiteful golems who destroy urban infrastructure and endanger children, and you’ll sell tickets. The Chiba Lotte Marines have taken this lesson to heart, and that heart is beautiful and mighty.
By all means, collect the whole set.
The video above, which came my way via the Twitter account of my mate Michael Clair, took my mind off last night’s tragic events in Arlington, albeit briefly. They were a welcome 90 seconds; a reminder of the joy most young boys have at the ballpark.
Swag, indeed. May the young fella dance forever.
You may have noticed a germinating fondness for Wily Mo Peña in these parts.
I must confess to having been a wee bit of a Wily Mo agnostic when all this first began. After I saw what follows, however, I found myself on the streets of Mesopotamia with eyes aflame and voice aroar: I believe in Wily Mo with more heart-pumping, red-faced certainty than Cotton Mather believed in anything ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgAL_ChzJUA&feature=player_embedded
He spits in his helmet. Believe in that or you shall converted at the point of a sword.
(Genuflection: Awful Announcing)
If you’ve ever longed to see Eric Byrnes tear up Harold Reynolds like a parking ticket, then today, God-fearer, is your lucky-best day …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8iZ7OyP6I&feature=player_embedded
(Form-tackle of thanks: Extra Mustard)
Did you see the Cirque first pitch below? Impressive. And hosannas to the young man who is orders of magnitude more athletic than I am, even in the dreamscape of my mind.
In the interest of balance, however, I’m duty-bound to remind you of this, the unpleasing polar opposite of what we witnessed earlier …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaYuxTj4yh4
I’m not going to say something crass like, “This is why the terrorists hate us.” I am, however, going to say that this is why we can’t have nice things.
Regardless of where you were Tuesday evening – staring at your grill trying to invent the perfect combination of steak and hot dogs, say, or combating the bottom-left corner of the New York Times crossword puzzle – you probably paused and looked skyward for a moment. Perhaps the air smelled a little sharper, somehow, tinged with lilac, conjuring non-existent memories of ancient, pastoral hillsides. Perhaps the pain under your shoulder blades waned, or you noticed a shade of emerald in your vision that you needed to remember, to close your eyes and lock away. Somehow, though, life just felt right for a mere second, as if every atom were arranged perfectly, every effect the rightful output of its cause.
I promise you that it was not imagined. At that moment, out by Cunningham Ridge outside Kansas City, order was restored.
(Clicking on the picture will transport you via magic to MLB.com’s video highlight.)
I must say, I enjoyed the following jaunty jaunt …
I’m not saying the Twins should hire this guy to save the franchise on the diamond and in the broadcast booth, but that happens to be precisely what I’m saying. I think we can all agree that the vocal intonations native to the Upper Midwest are the smoothest of smooth jazz.
While neither grainy nor sepia-toned, the image you see skillfully embedded here (from the fourth inning of Sunday’s game between Philadelphia and Seattle) possesses one quality which merits publication in these electronic pages — namely, the number of people in it who’re wearing eye patches.
Granted, that number of people is only one, but per NotGraphs Editorial Policy, one is actually a totally sufficient number of eye patch-wearing Mariner fans for image-embedding and musing upon.
Lest the sensitive reader propose that the intent of the author is to mock the fan in question, allow me to state sans pause, “Woah, woah, woah” and also “Hold on a minute there, buddy.”
Allow me also to add promptly that, far from mocking the fan in question, it’s actually my intention to celebrate the eye patch and what it symbolizes. For, if we agree that the key to Pleasant Living is the capacity for turning one’s weaknesses into strengths (and I hope we’re all agreed on this point), then the eye patch is the signo under which we’ll have our collective vinces — for it turns a pretty significant weakness (that is, eyelessness) into an equally significant strength (that is, a perpetual reminder to the world that ye, wearer of said patch, have lived — and, on occasion, lived dangerously).
What follows is the work of a YouTube auteur that’s titled, “Dancing Baseball With Mustache.” In this, the age of half-truths, the age in which deception has become hardwired instinct, it warms the heart cockles to learn that, yes, this is indeed a video of a dancing baseball with mustache. In fact, this baseball does what he does — i.e., dances while wearing a mustache on his fake face and a mangled farmer’s tan on his adorable grafted arms — for almost five full minutes. Some might call that boring. In turn, some might call that high treason.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to watch almost five full minutes of a Dancing Baseball With Mustache, then that is what we do …
