I love baseball. And I love hip-hop music.
And after listening to the brilliant track below, “My Oh My” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, I think I’ve finally realized what Dave Niehaus truly meant to the city of Seattle.
My city, my city, childhood, my life, that’s right, under those lights.
It’s my city, my city, childhood, my life, Niehaus, My Oh My.
Rest in peace …
Addendum: You can read Macklemore’s thoughts on Niehaus, and download the track for free, here.
This video of Carlos Pena signing a taco is actually the third in a series of three taking place over three consecutive spring trainings. I’ll submit that, while Episode Two is certainly watchable, it lacks the chemistry between the principal players that one finds in Episode Three. (Episode One, for its part, appears to be entirely absent from YouTube — which, that probably means it’s being remade with a bigger budget or something.)
In any case, here’s what happens in all the videos:
1. The cameraman and his friend — in attendance at Tampa’s spring-training facility — are like, “Hey, Carlos, sign this taco!”
2. Carlos Pena is all, “Signing tacos is weird!”
3. Carlos Pena signs the taco.
4. The cameraman’s friend eats the signed taco.
5. Fin.
As I say above, this particular installment is the third in a series, and it was posted 10 months ago, suggesting that it’s from Spring Training 2010. To say that the world is on the edge of its collective seat, wondering if now-Cub Pena and Co. will continue this tradition — that’d be an exercise in understatement, obviously.
I need your help. I’ve pondered the pros and cons of both, and even allowed time for the darkened penumbras of my subconscious to have their say. Yet I still can’t decide which is more awesome — the t-shirt once worn by freshly minted Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven …
Or that the otherwise banal Fathead product line blessedly allows you to festoon your living room with the Milwaukee sausage-race contestants …
I simply can’t decide. Blyleven in a fart shirt or an addition to the home that adds more equity than a stylish backsplash and the full complement of Energy Star appliances? I don’t want to minimize the gravity of Sophie’s Choice, but this is far more difficult than choosing which spawn to save.
Although his max-effort delivery would make me hesitant to hand out a multi-year contract, there’s no doubting the raw stuff. Fathom:
I played a fair amount of Wiffle Ball games back in the day, and I can say that — were the young Sudden Sam you see above one of the neighborhood kids — after our initial amazement subsided we’d hold games in secret just so this guy wouldn’t show up and make a shameful hash of us all. He would probably have a way-cool bike, too. Like a Kuwahara or a custom-made Hutch or something. Big jerk.
(Curtsy: TedQuarters)
The similarities are uncanny.
Username ‘letsgocyclones’ on AmazinAvenue has a decent day job. As a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city, he is surrounded by some of the most precious cultural artifacts our nation has to offer. No matter how grueling all that standing might be, he can at least look left at a Jackson Pollock, or right at a Jan Van Eyck. It gets much much worse than that, we can agree.
But letsgocyclones would trade it all in for a clipboard and a radar gun. Like many of us, he spends much of his day instead ruminating about the Mets’ second base situation or who their left-handed reliever might be in the coming season. There’s no shame in that, the distraction and entertainment sports provide beyond the actual moments themselves are a foundational part of being a sports fan.
As we’ve been showing – at least in some part – by our email interviews of Craig Calcaterra and Shannon Drayer, some of the best thinking is done by people mixing different sections of their resume. As Drayer used some of her history as a barista to focus on interpersonal relationships in baseball and baseball journalism, and Calcaterra has called upon his legal knowledge in parsing important moments in recent baseball history, letsgocyclones has found a genius way to mix his day job and his passion for his favorite team.
A diptych to the strikezone.
In two legendary FanPosts at AmazinAvenue, letsgocylcones has paired Mets’ icons with Met icons, to hilarious results. Some of the pairings are based on a shared line or perspective, some on gesture, some on content. In the case of this Oliver Perez – Jackson Pollock pairing, the two, together, have something post-modern to say about the strike zone. (Try the comments section here for a photoshopped version that hammers the point home.)
The original Dickey Face.
Though it’s all in good fun, there’s a little meat in there too. These pictures are an important part of our current culture. Though they seem ubiquitous, and are produced daily about eight months of the year, they are an art of a modern medium. It’s both meaningful and unmistakable that the same forms and subjects that humans have enjoyed in history are once again resplendent in our present. Just look at this picture pairing. On the left you find the subject of the popular “R.A. Dickey-face” competition, and on the right, a 17th century baroque piece called Magic Scene with Self-portrait by Dutchman Pieter van Laer, who went by “Il Bamboccio.” Magic, indeed.
Of course, I cannot let my art history minor fade silently into the night without a fight. So, I submit my own pairing. On the left, you have Ben Francisco avoiding a high-and-tight from Logan Ondrusek. On the right, Son of Man by Rene Magritte. Not quite as good as the work by letsgocyclones, I will admit. Perhaps I need a little more time in the museum.
Bowler hat, batting helmet.
It’s a pretty sure thing that the player’s bat is what speaks loudest when it’s contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.
– Brooks Robinson
Over at The New York Times’ website, you’ll find an interesting little interactive feature they’ve put together called Gloves of the World Series.
Photographs of 16 baseball gloves are available to be looked at in stunning detail, from 1910 through to the year 2000. Ever wondered what Babe Ruth’s mitt looked like back in 1926? You can find out without visiting Cooperstown.
Baseball’s gloves have come a long way. Johnny Murphy’s 1941 mitt looks like a short, fat person’s winter glove. By 1965, the modern baseball glove had arrived, and Minnesota Twins left fielder Bob Allison was rocking “The A2001,” Wilson’s nylon-stitched beauty.
The final glove in the interactive feature is from the year 2000, and belongs to Edgardo Alfonzo. A Rawlings number, it serves as a reminder that the New York Mets — yes, the New York Mets — actually made the World Series 11 years ago.
Glove tap — see what I did there? — to The New York Times, and the image aboves comes courtesy of Flickr user mgdms.
The only problem with the above video, called FIP: A New ERA, is that writer, director, producer, illustrator, and narrator (?) Bradley Woodrum didn’t release it before January 1st — which, that means it won’t be eligible for this year’s Academy Awards.
It’s a bit of a must-watch situation, this, but two salient details that’ll give you at least a broad sense of its content are as follows:
1. It’s about FIP, and
2. It has a dragon in it.
A DRAGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
H/T: DRaysBay
Western Civilization seems to be circling the drain these days, so baseball might as well get in on the act. To that end, we have “Cleat Chasers,” the latest offering from the ubiquitous sub-genre of reality programming (curtsy: Hardball Talk). The executive summary:
“It’s a reality show about girls who stop at nothing to score with athletes while they are away from their wives and girlfriends during baseball spring training,” a source close to casting told RadarOnline.com exclusively. “It’s about girls that have gone pro in the sport of ‘cleat chasing.'”
Objectification en masse and calculated erosion of the family unit? I’ll take two!
Item!: A highly placed source tells the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team that the “Cleat Chasers” pilot will feature Snooki giving Ichiro a “Happy Clancy” in the men’s room of a Del Taco in Tucson!*
(* – Patently untrue, and the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has no idea what a “Happy Clancy” is or whether such a sordid indulgence even exists.)
Below are all the available baseball-related films on Netflix Instant — or, at least the ones that come up when you click Baseball under the genre Sport & Fitness.
I do believe you can click on the image to embiggen it.
I don’t believe you should ever watch something called Pitcher and the Pin-Up.
The following comes to us via the Twitter feed of Baseball Prospectus’ Tommy Bennett. Sometimes, there are no words. Prepare to be wowed …
Of course, no YouTube video experience is complete without a quick perusal of the comments section. And to nobody’s surprise, the highest rated comment offers some sage advice on a cold Friday afternoon in early January.
Shut the f*** up, learn to appreciate retarded s*** like this.
I did.
Thank you for sharing, Mr. Bennett. And most importantly: Thank you, Japan.