If you squint and tilt your head and stay very quiet and have a heart as pure as driven snow, you can sorta kinda see Opening Day headed for us. That’s a blessed thing, of course, and, in keeping with the spirit of the season, the royal we here at NotGraphs would love for you to oblige us with your declarations of loyalties and disloyalties. Since you asked, I’ll start …
I’ve often referred to Lookout Landing’s Jeff Sullivan as the Charles Schulz of his generation. Except angrier. And drunker. And less talented.
I’ve never had a reason for doing any of that until today, however, when Sullivan gave us this — i.e. a comic strip rendering of Brian Cashman introducing new Yankee Rafael Soriano, the relief pitcher whom he (i.e. Cashman) has reluctantly signed to a a three-year, $35 million contract.
Below are three select panels, but you should visit LL and let the magic surround you.
Yes, this is going to be one of those meditations that attempts to find things wrong with Jesus’s favorite sport. If I were a newspaper columnist out of ideas and averse to reason, I’d call for a salary cap. If I were on a message board and had a poor grasp of tenability, I’d call for soccer-style relegation of the Pirates. I, however, am neither. So I propose this:
No, I’m not calling for more Chad Paronto (although that would be fine). Rather, I’m calling for the use of championship belts in MLB. On this point, I am as unyielding as a large, resolute, unyielding thing. You see, despite my occasional use of hifalutin prose and my New Yorker subscription, I am at heart something of a rube. And this rube — as a native of the fair state of Mississippi — was raised on professional wrestling.
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.
Were the countdown clock you see here mercilessly discarding the days, hours, and minutes till the end of the world as we know it, that would be horrible. Though it could do wonderful things for the availability of parking in the city, this hypothetical apocalypse would seem to offer few other advantages.
Anyway, as it stands, we needn’t worry quite yet about the End of Days. In fact, this clock is merely designed to alert bespectacled Americans to an event where they can be amongst their own.
Regard this blockquote:
On Saturday, February 12th, make your way to the heart of New York City to celebrate Strat-O-Matic’s 50th Anniversary/Opening Day 2011. For the first time ever, we will be celebrating the release of our new baseball season and other awesome products in the Big Apple, along with a special event in honor of the past 50 years. The day will feature seminars, panels with our research team, guest speakers and of course the opportunity to meet Hal Richman, creator and founder of Strat-O-Matic, as well as plenty of time to check out the new cards and play against other fanatics.
Dates, times:
Location:
Community Church of New York
40 East 35th St, New York, NY 10016Date and Time:
Saturday February 12th
7:30am to 6:00pm
(Registration is 7:30am to 8:30am
Finally, I would be be remiss not to include this — about how you can get discounts in the sexiest way possible.
Restaurant/Lunch Information for Day of the Event:
• Austin’s Café (deli). 10 Park Avenue, corner of 34th Street. 15% off everything when you mention Strat-O-Matic.
• Gigi Café (deli). 64 East 34th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues. 10% off everything when you mention Strat-O-Matic.
So this is purty cool: the fledgling Chicago Baseball Museum is hosting a party on February 3 to celebrate the 100th birthday of the great Buck O’Neil, who passed away in 2006. The details can be found in the link above, but, really, they had me at “Doug Glanville, guest speaker” and “cocktails.”
I can say little about O’Neil’s grace, dignity and historical import that hasn’t already been said much better by Joe Posnanski in his wonderful book, but I’d be pretty pleased if my son grew up to be a fraction of the man Buck O’Neil was (hope is long lost for yours truly).
O’Neil was born in Florida and spent his playing career in Kansas City; however, he spent time as a scout with the Cubs, and Chicago was in many ways the nerve center of Negro League baseball. So it’s fitting in some way that Chi-town play host to an event celebrating the man who’s mostly responsible for the revived interest in the Negro Leagues.
Also, since I live in Chicago, all NotGraphs readers who attend the Buck O’Neil gala are welcome to stay in my home and drink my beer.*
(* – Although my love for all of you is both boundless and without bound, this is absolutely not true. Hope to see you there, though.)
Having lived in Wisconsin now for about five months I can attest to the fact that, while the regional fare isn’t exactly what you’d call “heart healthy” or “good for you in any way,” it provides quite a lot in the way of “taste sensations.”
Now you, bespectacled reader, can participate in the joyous culinary tradition of this Midwestern Wonderland!
Regard:
Provided the image just above these words — and the webpage from which said image has been shamelessly stolen — provided those things aren’t lying, the Milwaukee Brewers are offering the opportunity to submit a new concession item ahead of the 2011 season.
Another, slightly different webpage has these details:
There’s a limit of one entry per person, and the club is looking for equal parts creativity and practicality. The items should be suitable for preparation and serving in the ballpark environment. Representatives from Miller Park’s concessionaire, Sportservice, will initially review all received entries and narrow the list to 10 selections for a panel to consider.
That group that includes Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, executive vice president of business operations Rick Schlesinger, former outfielder Gorman Thomas, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel food writers Nancy Stohs and Jan Uebelherr, executives and chefs from Sportservice and representatives from Milwaukee restaurants Carnevor and Dream Dance.
The panel will select four finalists on Jan. 26, and then it’s up to the fans. Voting will continue through Feb. 3, and samples from the four finalists will be available for sampling at the Jan. 30 “Brewers On Deck” event at the Frontier Airlines Center.
Though NotGraphs is unable to substantiate the rumors, there’s talk that one of the prizes is a long, soulful conversation about xFIP with new Brewer Zack Greinke.
Leading Greco-American and PITCH f/x expert Harry Pavlidis — in response to Frank DeFord’s suggestion that “sports sucked in 2010” — is fielding nominations for the things that sucked hardest about baseball specifically in the last calendar year.
Because we here at NotGraphs want nothing more than to be the warm yellow light that pours all over everyone, allow me to take the very opposite tact and pose this: Which moments or events or other baseball-related things were most excellent in 2010?
At the risk of biasing the readership, here are a couple-few suggestions from inside my soul:
• That one time when Andres Torres metamorphosed into a giant insect… in order to more ably catch a tailing fliner.
• That one time when Colby Lewis was granted sainthood and knighthood.
• That other time when Colby Lewis was awarded all the Nobel Prizes for all the categories.
People, though: I can’t do this alone. Help a Cistulli out.
Though he’s generally remembered as a social reformer, Spiritual Giant Ralph Waldo Emerson wasn’t one of these foppish, pasty-faced liberals you’re always seeing everywhere. In fact, he was kinda the opposite of that.
Regard this literary karate chop, from “Self-Reliance”:
[D]o not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Despite this aversion to “miscellaneous popular charities” and “the thousandfold Relief Societies,” I can guarantee you, America — beyond all the shadows of all the doubts — that one cause to which Emerson would’ve given probably his entire fortune is the “Thank You to Carl Crawford” one currently being undertaken by DRaysBay.
Basically, what project leader Steve Slowinski proposes to do is publish a full-page message to free-agent Carl Crawford in the Tampa Bay Times. The content of the message? Well, you can read it at the site, but basically it says “We heart you, Carl. XOXOXO. Have a rad summer!” and stuff like that.
If nothing else, the project represents an instance of fan-player interaction unlike one this particular author has seen. Of course, this particular author is also a bit of a moron — so, that’s something to consider, as well.
