Archive for Call to Action

So the well dressed ballroom dancers over at Seamheads.com are holding a contest. What do you have to do? Come up with an awesome nickname for a current player. If you prove better at this than the competing hordes, then what do you win? A copy of MLB2K11 for the Xbox 360 machine, which I assume is a series of motorized pulleys that runs on a standard 120-volt outlet.

Once again: Come up with a compelling baseball nickname, and your precious lucre will be a board-certified copy of MLB2K11.

Internet sources tell me — and anyone else who clicks on this link — that a robot, whose prevailing intentions for humankind have yet to be revealed, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at tonight’s Brewers-Phillies tilt. The gritty, which is also nitty:

The robot is the brainchild of Jordan Brindza and Jamie Gewirtz, two students who built the robot in their spare time. The Inquirer reported that in addition to a robotic arm, a “wrist”-like joint also helps flip the ball toward the plate. The framework is a Segway, meaning that the Philliebot can theoretically move – although it’s doubtful that the Philliebot can field its position.

My question, page viewers: Did anyone see the first pitch? Impressions? Pitch F/X data? Suspicions that the Pitch F/X robot is pumping up the numbers in a show of robo-tribalism?

Mostly, though: How many onlookers were slaughtered?

UPDATE: Savvy commenter John K. observes that today is, in point of fact, Tuesday and not Wednesday, when the Philliebot will unleash his awful and boundless powers. This strikes me as a reasonable observation.

Yeah, Brian Wilson’s two-seamer (featured below!) is impressive enough, and I can forgive his reluctance to brawl with randomly outraged A’s fans. What I shall not abide is if Mr. Wilson and his face-forest duck out on this:

The Second Annual $5000 Beard Team USA National Beard and Moustache Championships will take place on October 8, 2011 at the Clipper Magazine Stadium, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

That’s right, Wilson: The Second Annual $5000 Beard Team USA National Beard and Moustache Championships. You know it’s serious because “Beard” is mentioned twice. You know it’s for the discriminating gentleman because “Moustache” is spelled with an “ou,” which is, of course, the preferred spelling of the hardy and right-wise.

Oh sure, it’s possible Mr. Wilson’s team will have something of the postseason-ish flavoring scheduled for October 8, but I see no reason he can’t take a cue from baseball legend Deion Sanders and be hustled by giant flying machine from one event to the other.

Wilson, your beard may be baseball’s best (at least now that Bo Diaz is no longer with us), but can it stack up with the likes of Devin Cara, who is pictured above and surely pleases the crumbled bones of Aaron Burr?

So, Wilson, is that a beard on your mug or a gathering of tiny, hairlike cowards? We’ll find out on October 8.

I don’t play fantasy baseball in the traditional sense (I’m a Diamond Mind loyalist, and for that righteous cause I would lay down the lives of a number of acquaintances), but if I did …

I would spend a romantic evening or three at FantasyTeamNames.net, which is a series of related pages that have been fired through the Internet. There you can submit your fantasy team name to the teeming masses, which I refer to as “teeming” because they so often teem, and find out what they think of your squad’s name and, by extension, the value of your existence.

There’s also an Internet computer link that will reveal to you the highest-rated fantasy team names of all-time. Among the ones that give me chuckle and make me forget for a fugitive moment or two that we are all bound headlong for the abyss are: “Honey Nut Ichiros,” and, of course, “Black Sabathia.”

But then I remembered that all of us are going to die one day.

Over at the Atlantic, which is a Serious Journal by and for Serious People and which, as the name suggests, is housed deep within the intrepid waters of the ocean to your right if you’re facing north, Conor Friedersdorf has some ideas about how to make sports more palatable to those among us who prefer that their cultural pursuits not last long and be shitty. Here’s Mr. Friedersdorf’s baseball thought experiment:

Presumably I’ll never persuade purists to eliminate a whole inning. So I’ll offer my next best suggestion: allow managers one opportunity per game to borrow an out or two from a later inning. So it’s the bottom of the third. There are two outs, with men on first and third. Your batter strikes out. And you can decide to borrow an out or two in order to try and drive in those runs… but it’s going to cost you, because once the current inning ends the opposing manager gets to decide at his leisure when to charge you that out or two.

Like most proposals for radical change, this has not a whit of a scintilla of a chance of happening, but it’s decidedly less half-baked than most of its species. Usually, we get indeterminate bleats like, “MAKE THINGS GO QUICKER NOW!” or things like, “PAY CUTS FOR ANY PLAYER WHO IS RUDE TO A DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST!” or, “MAKE PITCHER PITCH BAT, MAKE HITTER HIT WITH BALL!” or “ARGH!” Mr. Friedersdorf’s, at least, sounds like something worth trying in rec-league softball, which means Charlie Finley could’ve come up with it during a Dewar’s bender. (Lest it seem otherwise, that’s totally a compliment.)

As for how to improve our fair game, the NotGraphs Highly Reputable and Totally Real Think Tank needs your help. To get you started, here’s one heavily focus-grouped suggestion: pre-game flyovers by Falcon Heavy.

So Kathy Lyford, my gifted and patient editor over at FOXSports.com (much like Yahoo!’s exclamation mark, the caps-locked FOX is a marketing flourish without which the business model could not survive) has undertaken the yeoman’s toil (yeowoman’s toil?) of putting together galleries of every mascot, ballpark and signature concession in MLB.

And now we shall crowdsource … What’s the best mascot? What’s your favorite ballpark? Delectable?

As for moi, you can probably guess from the photo above that I’m quite fond of the Oriole Bird. While Fredbird will always have my greater, more profound loyalties, Oriole Bird gets this nod. This is because I’ve always admired birds who walk upright, have no wings, and wear caps, stirrups and clown-cleats. He was also outstanding in season five of “The Wire.”

Ballyard? PNC without question. Concession? Wholesome, nutritious alcohol.

And what of you, handsome readers?

Because I am a man of many pressing obligations, I’ve cooked up one of those random-thingy generators. Mine will tell you what your nickname would have been had you played for the 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles. As you are no doubt aware, the Orioles of that vintage were a tough bunch of men. They drank all the liquor in America, they went decades without sleeping, they brawled against Norse gods, and they saw all of their children killed gruesomely by primitive farming equipment. All of these things are facts.

Anyhow, go here and find your 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles nickname.

Mine? “The Salty Bronco.”

At the end of January, my colleague and actual townsman Jackie Moore invited the wide readership directly into the eye of his brainstorm so’s to contemplate, hand-in-virtual-hand, the best and brightest of fantasy-team naming.

With two months having passed since that post, and with baseball on the proverbial doorstep, it makes almost too much sense to revisit Jackie’s original effort and to see what late March has to offer us in the way of excellent appellating*.

*Of course it’s a word. Shut up.

Master of the Genre Rob Morse has offered a couple of examples via Twitter (pictured above).

Here, you can see the team names for the FanGraphs ottoneu League, too:

Mr. Chris Cwik has tickled me near, if not directly on, the funny bone with Wookie of the Year. Paul Swydan’s Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net is a nod to a post-apocalyptic future sure to occur right after the apocalypse. Team Dark Overlord speaks for itself — unlike David Appelman, whose servants generally speak for him, lest he tires.

So, what say you, commentariat? Have we advanced in this important area of human development? Or are we descending into a dark, dark age?

While the Washington Nationals are trending upward these days, there’s no disputing that the franchise plucked from the wilds of Canada and dropped in the capital of the Milky Way has endured some fits and starts. Part of the problem has been some rather ham-fisted marketing initiatives. Fortunately, for the Nationals and their discontents, we’re here to help.

There’s really only one thing that needs to be done to make this into a model franchise. Better scouting and development? Higher payrolls? Louder rock music between innings? Change the nickname to “Nationalz”? No. Cooler uniforms? Yea, verily.

The Nats have yoked themselves to the evocative powers of the dead president, which is wise, because everyone loves every U.S. president without exception. However, the relationship between baseball and the great landowning Episcopalians of history needs to be strengthened just a bit. First, the Nationals’ new road uniforms will have this image — ideally by way of iron-on decal — emblazoned upon the jersey:

Clearly, that’s an un-doctored photograph taken from some authoritative history text. As you can also clearly see, that’s Lincoln and Washington, each a chest-haired colt of a man, in the throes of a vigorous, manly, virile, potent, sinewy, and rippled presidential wrestling match that will end with someone’s Viking funeral. Who wins? All of us, but especially the Nationals.

As for the Nats’ road uniforms, well, wars on foreign soil aren’t for the spineless among us, so the Nats need to project an image of ruthless and terrible confidence. The jersey image that follows has graced these pages before, and now it’s time to make it a part of baseball’s tapestry forevermore …

Not only is Teddy Roosevelt slaying the foreign Bigfoot hordes in this un-doctored photograph taken from some authoritative history text, but he’s also stout-hearted enough to offer up his belt buckle as a fallout shelter. But besides Bigfoot’s encroachments, what’s he upset about? Probably his baseball humiliations. This is precisely the kind of terrifying presence to which the Nationals should aspire, especially when far from the comforts of home.

Finally, in a nod to the last remaining president whose actual giant, stone disembodied head sits atop Mt. Rushmore …

Some of you might be thinking, “Hey, that’s one of those creepy droid things from ‘Dr. Who.'” No, it isn’t. That’s a board-certified photograph of Robot Thomas Jefferson, and I see no reason why every Nats player shouldn’t wear this exact cumbersome robot suit on the field of play (along with, of course, the appropriate jersey design concocted above).

Do these things, Nationals Baseball Club, and the Republic’s precious discretionary lucre will all be yours. Promise. And please let Mr. Roosevelt win a race before he commits even more justifiable homicides.

Headlines are a funny thing. They are designed to get your attention, or the attention of a search engine somewhere, while summing up the contents in a pithy way. Often they contain internet memes or SEO-optimization key words. Sometimes, like today, they contain both. /header #MLB #baseball

Over the years we’ve had some fun with the “Free Person X” internet meme, which most probably spawned from Free Mumia, but has since gone a little crzazlebeans, if you know what I mean, and baseball has taken the saying under it’s wing. Whether it’s Kila Ka’aihue that must be #freed from the clutches of the incompetent Royals, or Brandon Allen that must fight the good fight against the spaced invaders that wish to take his playing time, we’ve used that sentence construction to encourage young men to go against what’s wrong. Having been guilty of capriciously throwing the phrase around just last week, this is no finger-wagging piece, though.

Instead, call this piece the anthropological wanderings inspired by the title and subject of a serious piece by Larry Behrendt at It’s About the Money Stupid. In his latest, Larry examines the fate of young Lainer Bueno. The Venezuelan shortstop may not have a future in baseball, but attribute that mostly to a fateful combination of a lack of major-league talent (228/.336/.239 in Venezuelan Summer League) and the possibly unfortunate positive test for clenbuterol. The combination has him a free agent, and Larry thinks it’s an injustice.

Read the whole thing, do it. Afterwards, you may feel that our entry point to this article was all wrong today. Behrendt’s piece is a serious uncovering of the holes in MLB’s drug testing policy as it relates to Venezuelans and clenbuterol in particular. It looks like there’s a real reason the league may want to look at the fact that, according to “Scorecasting” by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim, Venezuelan baseball players are about 4 times more likely to test positive for drugs than their American counterparts. It may not just be about skeezy agents in Latin America. The beef may be the real meat to the story.

But the title, and even the article, can make a mind wander to other “Free” movements in baseball. The parallels may seem stretched, and its continued use may even seem to cheapen the phrase. On the other hand, injustice exists. And whether the injustice at hand is an unequal appropriation of playing time, an unfair exclusion from the sport, or an incarceration surrounded by real questions, it doesn’t deserve to continue. And if it takes a hashtag, a slogan, a link and a few re-tweets to uncover and document that injustice, that’s about the least we can do.

Scratch that, it’s the very least we can do.