http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6-ks_UP988
For the sake of that little guy, I hope Michael Young is a member of the Texas Rangers forever.
One day, that young fella’s going to be a blogger. And he’s going to find that video. And he’s going to march upstairs and ask his mother, “Why?”
H/T: Old Time Family Baseball. I’m not sure what I’d do without you.
Does this Seattle concept look upside down to anyone else?
We try to stay on top of all things internets here at NotG, but somehow this one slipped between the cracks for too long (say about 13 years too long). While we all may desire to visit each stadium on the continent, but in the meantime, we can surf the stadium porn that is Stadium Page.
It’s an amazingly complete resource. Want updates on the Marlins’ stadium construction? Check. Want to visit the stadium graveyard and see the eyesores that were Shea and the Astrodome? Check. A sidebar with stadium logos for the stadiums the author has visited? Check. Want to check out some world series rings? Check (but the link to stadiums is a little specious).
While reminiscing about stadiums past and dreaming of stadiums future are strong enough enticements to visit, the site hits its highest notes when it shows concept drawings of stadiums never made. Like concept car drawings, these faux stadiums are a window into a parallel universe where our culture celebrates the bizarre and takes chances with multi-million dollar stadium designs. Look at how strange the 1965 retractable roof Boston Dome was! Imagine taking in a game on Manhattan Island’s West Side! Pine for the unrealized Portland Dome! Marvel at the futuristic Kauffman Stadium that George Jetson would have loved! The complete page of unrealized concepts is a little hard to find, but it’s right here.
Stadium Page: all your stadium porn needs in one place.
H/T: Ben Kabak of RiverAvenueBlues and SecondAvenueSagas
So this is an actual thing …
Hey, I thought it was a cool moment. Both guys handled themselves exceptionally well, and Galarraga in particular showed that a sense of equanimity is possible even in the throes of a screw-job, which is something of which I am wholly incapable. With that said, is this all it takes to sustain a narrative these days? I get that there are moments in time that, as book editors are wont to pretend, CHANGED EVERYTHING, but this happened roughly eight months ago. Have we really had time for sober reflection on anything beyond the epidermal layer of consequences? That is, how do we know that Joyce’s blown call CHANGED EVERYTHING?
And wouldn’t this make a better, I dunno, “Vanity Fair” article or something? How are you going to wring 250 pages out of this story? Sure, we’ll get the back-story on Galarraga and a portrait of the umpire as a young man, but what then? Pictures? Blank pages for note-taking? Clip-out flashcards so you can memorize details of their lives? Mazes? A choose-your-own-adventure chapter or three? A carved out space in which you can hide weed? If nothing else, they should change the title from Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History to I Kicked the Sh*t Out of It: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History. I’m surprised I even need to say this.
On the celluloid front, remember the story of the two Indian pitchers who signed with the Pirates after winning a reality show? The least shocking news ever is that their story is going to be a movie. Also unsurprising: The shlock merchants at Disney will be at the switch.
Normally, I don’t trust any Disney outputs that don’t come to me from the loving arms of Pixar. Partly, this is because I’ve never forgiven them for the sadistic lacerations I suffered from watching Old Yeller. (Seriously, you’ve never heard of rabies vaccinations, you rubes?) Mostly, though, it’s because you and I both know that Disney will one day kill us all. Combine Disney’s dubious sense of aesthetics with the central ingredients of bad cinema already present in this story, and the potential for groan-inducement is both boundless and without bound.
The one consolation is that Tom McCarthy will be writing the script, and McCarthy knows a little something about making good movies. Let’s just hope that the suits let McCarthy use the light, aware touch he showed in The Visitor, so we don’t end up with something like the provably awful “Outsourced” set on a baseball diamond.
Also: Actual. Baseball. Now. Please.
The Dodgers want you (yes, you!) to decide which throwback uniform they wear on six throwback jersey days over the 2011 season. These jerseys hearken back to the days in which the Dodgers resided in Brooklyn, first as the Superbas and then as the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here’s how I would rank the three choices.
#3: Brooklyn Superbas 1911 Road Uniforms
For the record, I like all three of these. This just happens to be the one I like the least. I have a feeling that the “Brooklyn” on the button panel will be difficult to see, particularly on TV. The pinstriped look is solid, and I love the stirrups. The hat lacks the flair that the Brooklyn Dodgers logo had. Unfortunately, the Brooklyn on the button panel just really doesn’t do it for me.
#2: Brooklyn Dodgers 1940s Road Uniform
The colored look would be an odd choice to wear at home, but I have to say I personally dig the powder blue, if even some are tired of it. I especially like the fact that the uniform is monochrome instead of going with white or grey pants. The Brooklyn script is classic and the uniform is simple, although I could do without the white outline on the shoulders.
#1: Brooklyn Dodgers 1931 Road Uniforms
Powder blue again, but this time as a secondary color to the primary white. I love the “B” on the chest, similar to one of my favorite alternate jerseys in the game. I’m usually not huge on white hats, either – I thought that many of the patriotic hats from this year looked disastrous – but with the powder blue brim as well as the navy trim and the classic Brooklyn “B” logo, it works here. The only real problem I see with these jerseys is the red trim on the socks, but that’s pretty minor and might even be covered up depending on how the players wear the uniforms.
Really, it’s a toss-up for me between the 1940s uniform and the 1931 uniform, but the uniqueness of the 1931 jersey convinced me to throw my vote that way.
Last night, the baseball world was rocked by Texas Rangers second baseman shortstop third baseman designated hitter utility man team-leader-who-would-do-anything-to-help-the-team Michael Young’s revelation that he feels “misled and manipulated” by the Rangers’ front office. Young feels that the team has been trying to trade him throughout the off-season while telling him the opposite. Ever the consummate teammate, Young has declined to reveal specific details of exactly what went on behind closed doors. However, in a NotGraphs Exclusive (TM), we have obtained leaked video of what we believe to be Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels finally coming clean with the Face of the Franchise.
It’s hard to make out from the grainy video, but “Brenda” (they are using a bunch of clubhouse nicknames throughout) is obviously Michael Young. “Dylan” is Jon Daniels, even though in the footage he looks to be closer to Nolan Ryan in age. “Kelly” is Adrian Beltre (I’m telling you, you can’t complain about video quality when it’s as earth-shattering as this), although he seems to have gotten over his head thing; at least when “JD” is involved. “Brandon” must be Michael Young’s BFF Vernon Wells.
Despite the quality of the video, everything in the exchanged words and, above all, the evident emotions leave little doubt as to its authenticity. Look out for Michael, Vernon, he’s gonna need it.
A Garfoose was perhaps involved (and not harmed) in the taking of this picture.
We ponder the difficult questions here at NotG. What should it be like to attend, get dressed for or even play in a baseball game – these questions have occurred often so far in these pages. One thing we have yet covered is what sort of wild animals should be allowed loose in the bullpen.
Good thing Dirk Hayhurst, relief pitcher and author of the Bullpen Gospels, was out there imagining things for us before we ever existed. Well, what is a Garfoose? Hayhurst explained in an interview with DRaysBay arranged after the news that he’d be joining the team for spring training at the very least.
…I started kind of fleshing out this character. What would he look like? What would he be like? And so I started drawing pictures of it and wrote a story about it. Then it kind of caught on from there, and people started asking me to draw pictures of Garfoose on their cards or their baseballs and stuff like that, and I just started doing it.
All the sudden everyone wants this autograph from me. And it’s like, “Okay, sure, I’ve got like this really popular autograph now,” and it’s not because I’m a good player; it’s because I draw this thing on my autograph. It kind of came from that.
Now, the Garfoose of the present is nature’s perfect predator. He lives in the Tibeten mountain groves that you can’t find unless you were born there, or something. And there’s these tops of trees in this grove were the MLB gets its perfectly grown baseballs — because the best baseballs in the world are organic-grown from trees in the baseball grove. And the Garfoose protects the grove from intruders. Very few people that have seen the Garfoose in the wild live to tell about it.
The more you know.
Generation X is so often pilloried — rightly at times — for being too self-absorbed, too indolent, too prone to calculated ennui, off-brand cigarettes, liberal-arts degrees, and bouts of longing for Winona Ryder. I will argue with none of this.
But sometimes we’re capable of greatness. For evidence — evidence that not even Hollywood attorneys could assail — please take time to watch the video below. It’s the iconic 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series re-imagined through the constraints of RBI Baseball. I just checked, and I’ve never used the phrase “profoundly beautiful” in my life. But I’m using it now to describe this. Highlights? See pixelated Marty Barrett win the Miller Lite Player of the Game, and then look on in mounting horror as the John McNamara of the NES keypad toggles desperately between foredoomed relievers. The dulcet tones on Vin Scully are but a welcome flourish.
Come with me, won’t you?
I’m skeptical of anyone who’s pointed his or her (but, really, mostly his) internet browser to this site but somehow decides he doesn’t have two minutes to watch Mr. Bradley Woodrum’s new video on LOB%.
When you talk about this video, you’re talking about a video that has pan flute-sounding background music, that features a pretty accurate rendering of famous Bermudan Sidney Ponson, and which, perhaps most notably, reveals the true identity of sabermetrical patriarch Tom Tango.
Other thing: don’t neglect to note that this video has also been preserved for all time in Mr. Steve Slowinski’s Saber Library, a project designed to hold you close as your traverse the wilds of sabermetrica.
I’m not sure that I ever considered it possible, until this moment, to feel something like unbridled joy while gazing upon the hirsute visage of Mr. Darrell Porter. But that’s what’s happening this second. And this next second. And now this one, too.
And it can happen to you, bespectacled reader, just by following my seven easy steps to reaching your full potential looking at the images I’ve embedded after the jump.
What you’ll see are paintings by Derek Erdman, a person who, if we’re in the habit of trusting Wikipedia, is a Seattle-based painter and contributes to that city’s generally excellent alternative weekly The Stranger.
All of the following images are stolen shamelessly from Mr. Erdman’s website, where they (i.e. the paintings) are available for what are sometimes very reasonable prices.
What you see in this image here (which you should right click and open in a new window for intimate viewing) is a selection from Baseball-Reference’s draft database thing. Specifically, it’s a selection from the second round of the 1971 amateur draft — a round in which generational baseball talents George Brett (91.6 fWAR) and Mike Schmidt (110.6 fWAR) were drafted one after the other.
FanGraphs Contributor and Ace of Database Jeff Zimmerman sent this to me and asked the question, “Are there any other HOFers drafted back to back?” To which question I replied both “I don’t know” and “I have zero of the skills required to find out such a thing.”
Luckily, NotGraphs isn’t about “knowing” “facts.” It’s about embedding photos and then decorating them with spirited prose.
