As this internal office memo I’m holding suggests, today is Bat Day at NotGraphs. Already, Bradley Woodrum has introduced us to the big stick with which famous Negro Leaguer Josh Gibson walked softly, while Dayn Perry has stared at your daughter for 30 unflinching minutesskillfully embedded a video of Josh Womack performing all manner of bat-related tricks.
In an effort to distill Bat Day to its most whimsical, what I’ve endeavored to do here is collect five images from the internet of Batman the superhero engaged in bat-and-ball related activities.
If you, reader, could hold your LOLs till the end, it would be much appreciated.
1. This is Batman playing baseball with Robin and Superman:
Survey Josh Womack’s professional baseball career, and you come away impressed merely to the extent that he had a professional baseball career. That’s to say, Womack’s bestowals on the diamond are somewhat forgettable. What’s not forgettable is the abracadabra-sorcery-jinx-necromancy that Mr. Womack can perform with a maple stick …
Bewitchment! Pointy hat, gnarled oaken staff and flowing purple robe festooned with astral designs!
Word from the internet today suggests that Major League Baseball is “probing” (as it’s definitely characterized in at least one headline) an obscene gesture that Andre Ethier made in the direction of a photographer before Monday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium. While we’ll leave it to the self-starter to track down the image in question, the reader can rest assured that he’ll be morally ravaged upon seeing it.
It remains to be seen what, if any, action the league will take with Ethier. The bigger question ought to be why this particular gesture is the one getting MLB’s attention.
As the collection of images above makes perfectly clear, Ethier has a pretty well established history of obscene gesture-making — if not always in a manner familiar to North Americans.
Regard:
1. In India, to make this gesture beside a woman in tank top means something to the effect of “I want to make you pregnant with 99 children at once.”
2. For Estonians, this is not a sign of joy, but rather a suggestion of what one would like to do to another’s goat.
3. Here, Ethier indicates how many pieces the pitcher’s testicles will be in after he (i.e. Ethier) has busted the latter’s balls. [Of Italian origin.]
4. Just generally obscene.
5. This is a variation on the dance from the Spice Girls’ hit “2 Become 1” — and obscene for that reason.
It’s come to the editors’ attention that Dayn Perry has, in fact, posted this video despite the fact that it actually appears in Eno Sarris’s work of only one hour earlier. Perry’s implication is clear: “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
It’s Rain Delay Day here at NotGraphs! And what follows is a fine example of whimsy! Rain descends upon a college game of base and ball. How to entertain the flinty souls still in the stands? As with all things, the penetrating wisdom of the renaissance fair is always near at hand …
If every rainy day was like these rainy days, we might not have as much of a problem with them, ’cause these rainy days made for some awesome rain delay action.
Flip Flop Fly Ballin’ spotted this rain delay, where the comedy was all ‘of errors.’ Of special note is the silly hat. Because, hey, if you’re going to do your job very poorly, it’s worth doing it poorly in a silly hat.
In case you missed it, reader, you’ll be pleased to discover that, on this past Friday’s edition of Pardon the Interruption, America’s favorite orange-faced sportswriter Tony Kornheiser made reference to our fair site — and, specifically, to a post by our man Dave Cameron — during a segment on uber-prospect Bryce Harper.
Though modesty prevents us from sharing the entire segment, I can inform you that co-host Michael Wilbon’s reaction would best be described as “totally incredulous.”
As for Tony Reali, his reaction may or may not become the lyrics to The Official Baseball-Nerd Rally Song.
Recently, The Common Man beerily reminded me and others of a gem of a Roy Scheider vehicle called, “Night Game.” The YouTube remnants aren’t particularly illuminating, but …
A number of young women are found dead on or around the beaches of Galveston and the one thing they all have in common is that they were murdered when Houston Astros ace pitcher Silvio Baretto (an amalgamation of real-life pitchers Bob Knepper and Juan Agosto) pitches and wins a night game at the Astrodome. Additionally, each victim had their throats slashed by some sort of knife or hook.
Scheider plays former minor league baseball player turned Galveston homicide detective Mike Seaver who is engaged to a lady with an accent that repeatedly changes from southern to non-southern throughout the film. Her name is Roxy. Seaver is a staunch Astros fan and is the only person on the case that begins to realize the coincidence of the deaths coming after Sil Barretto’s night game wins in the Dome.
Once upon a time, a greenlit project, which starred a reasonably accomplished actor, was structured indirectly around a character who was a pleasing melange — in aspect, carriage and world-view — of Bob Knepper and Juan Agosto. Nothing you hear today will be as amazing as that. My only hope is that the movie culminates in the Astros’ decision to place Barretto on irrevocable waivers in order to spare the women of Galveston from grim demise.
Over at Rotten Tomatoes, just 20% of viewers enjoyed “Night Game,” but, let’s be honest, those are awful, awful people. In an effort to restore “Night Game” to its rightful place in cinema’s firmament, I have added the following objective fact to the film’s aforementioned Wikipedia page:
A consortium of experts recently named “Night Game” as the greatest movie in the history of ever.
What harrows me is that the revisionist beasts over at Rotten Tomatoes will surely remove that objective fact from the record. So enjoy the truth while you can.
