I’ve long maintained that “Baby Leopard” should be someone’s nickname. And now that the following daguerreotype has been loaded down onto and into my Internet computer keyboard and attached reflective screen, I am even more steadfast in that belief …
You can often identify a Great Man of History by the pearl-handled revolver he keeps tucked in his spats or the unfailing fact that, when posting for photographic images, he places the fingers of his dominant hand, which are sturdy but conclusively not hot-doggish, just within the lapels of his camelhair topcoat, between the fourth and fifth gold lamé buttons. In the absence of such evidence, you can identify a Great Man of History by the heirloom chalice in his grasp, the baby leopard on his arm and the brassy paid whore in his memory. That right-wise John McGraw, he was a Great Man of History!
The lesson, lads? One does not simply walk into Mordor. Unless one is John McGraw.
Wander over to the Boston Globe’s Columnists and Critics page, and you’ll notice that they have animated head shots of almost everyone who marches, swords brandished, under the banner “Boston Globe Columnist and or Critic.” I assume they do this in an effort to appeal to the younger generation and its pompadours and ghetto-blasters and unpressed blue-jean pants. I also assume this initiative has been successful beyond anyone’s hopes.
But that’s not my concern. No, my delight and privilege is to introduce you to what appears when you scroll down just a bit …
There’s hail-fellow-well-met Dan Shaughnessy. But whereas most of the Globe opinion-shapers could be troubled to mug a bit for the artist and his sketchbook, Shaughnessy, who hates everything more than you hate anything, could not. But is that a look of … diffidence? Resignation? Wearied apathy? A half-smile of the decomposed?
No, it’s the look that Shaughnessy has on his face at all times, from upon waking until the soft death of sleep takes him each night — a look that implies a vague desire, yet an equally vague inability, to vomit. The look is called, “A Quiet and Frosty Disgust.”
Teams with dumb names (such as the Mets and Orioles) typically cannot hit as well as teams with average names (such as the Dodgers and Astros), while teams with superior names (such as the Pirates and Tigers) hit as poorly as their ill-named counterparts! These findings were not only significant at the 99% level, but they also had an R-squared near 0.224 — meaning a full 22% of a team’s offense come from the pride they take in their name!
It is a well known axiom that players hit precisely how they feel, so when you go out, day after day, wearing the emblem of a cute little bird, it is very difficult to muster the wherewithal to swing a club at a ball. Using Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Name Awesomeness Plus (NA+, a completely arbitrary stat I invented for the purpose of this study), we can see how having a name that’s too awesome can be just as detrimental to performance!
Proof!
We can only assume that if a team has an exceedingly awesome name, such as the Cubs, Pirates, or Braves, the players have less incentive to play hard. They already feel good about themselves, so they do not need to prove themselves any further.
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.
Some people, like Cardboard Gods’ Josh Wilker, understand what Montaigne meant when he said “chaque homme porte la forme entière de l’humaine condition”* and make it their business to articulate and catalogue those experiences that one might call “quintessentially human.”
*Translated roughly: “Americans are overweight.”
Other people, like those of us here at NotGraphs, notice when one person looks like another — like how former major-leaguer Clay Carroll looks a lot like Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute of TV’s The Office.
It’s all about choosing a life path, people.
Witness other Discoveries here. Also: big up yaself to my friend Ross, who made this historical discovery.
Moments before Justin Verlander completed his no-hitter on Saturday, Rogers Sportsnet presented home viewers with this image — i.e. what sabermetric paterfamilias Bill James would currently look like if, instead of running headlong into a life of cliche-destroying and brow-furrowing, he just wore a whole bunch of orange instead.
Almost as old as literature itself is the concept of the sequel. The great commercial success of the Iliad no doubt compelled Homer to hurriedly produce his Odyssey. Certainly, there would be no New Testament were it not for the widespread popularity of its Old counterpart. Modern Times™ gives us such franchises as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars — not to mention the Bill Cosby vehicle Leonard Part 6, whose creators ingeniously skipped parts one through five to give the impression of a successful run of films.
Lest the reader think even for a moment that NotGraphs is immune to the sequel, think not that, reader. For, with the widespread excitement surrounding yesterday’s post exploring the similarities between American ubermenschen Tommy Hanson and Timothy Busfield, we’ve not been able to restrain ourselves.
Accordingly, we offer you the above, a comparative study between Met knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and a Danny Concannon-era Tim (né Timothy) Busfield.
Is it as powerful a work as our original Busfield Lookalike post? That’s not for me to say, reader. But these bills for Cristal by the case and suites presidential or otherwise — they aren’t paying themselves, is what I mean to say.
Total noogie to Joe Pawlikowski for reasons I’m not at liberty to share.
Sometimes, great accomplishments are the product of ceaseless toil. Othertimes, they spring forth effortlessly and fully formed from their creator.
The image you see above is the latter kind of great accomplishment.
Here we see two men: one, Atlanta Brave starter Tommy Hanson; the other, actor Timothy Busfield of Thirtysomething and West Wing and Revenge of the Nerds and Field of Dreams fame.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s impossible to tell which is which. Is that Timothy Busfield catching a fish? Is that a headshot of Tommy Hanson? We just don’t know.
I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Carson, it actually isn’t that hard to tell. Sure, both of these men have red hair, but they have different enough facial structure, hairlines, etc. that I can tell pretty easily who’s who.”
Humility, reader: practice it. That’s the purpose of what I’m saying now.
The device looks like an ordinary box attached to a computer with a rotating straw. A closer look reveals otherwise. Students at Japan’s Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications have created a small device that uses motor rotations with the aim to simulate the feeling of a kiss over the Internet.
…
Upon closer inspection, we learn that the kissing device responds directly to a person’s tongue. On one end, a person rotates the “straw” in one direction and the “straw” on the other end will rotate in the same direction. The result is a powerful tactile response that feels like you’re giving or receiving a kiss.
And best of all!
With the ability to record kissing patterns, the device could be a one-solution-cure to loneliness.
Some observations, bullet-pointed for today’s business traveler …
It’s really a pity that the name “HotBot” is already taken.
Let’s be honest: who among us has not, perhaps beerily, dreamt of making out with the Internet? If you deny this, then know that the line of lying liars and their flaming pants forms on the right.
If Dan Shaughnessy runs across word of this device, he’ll use it to mock our ilk mercilessly … right after he purchases one to keep in his car, one to keep in his darkened utility closet, and one to keep in his “weeping room.”
I’m guessing that an unhealthy number of us, by force of rote and habit, often give Agent Scully a vigorous, ham-tongued and imagined imaginary Frenching while we coolly regard Pitch-FX scatterplots. If this describes you — and, lo, it does — then know that your life just got easier.
It’s hard to justify a bullet-point list with just four entries, so here’s a fifth.
Bob Uecker is a fixture of American high-brow culture.
Though Larry Granillo of mortal enemy Baseball Prospectus is right to suspect that I’ve thought such a thing in my head, I did not write the following entry for Bob Uecker at Urban Dictionary (emphases mine, everything else sic):
One of the most legendary baseball announcers of all time. Born in 1935, Uecker was raised in Milwaukee, WI. Uecker played major league baseball for 5 seasons, stretching from 1962 to 1967. Career highlights include being “intentionally” walked by Sandy Koufax and getting out of rundown against the mets. He is also an established comedian and actor. His words are that of pure greatness, similar to ones of a deity. Uecker has numerous famous quotes like, “Juuuuust a bit outside” and “Heeey Struck him out”. (Uecker actually says He but in excitement it turns out to be Hey) Bob Uecker won the Ford C. Frick award in 2003 and is a Milwaukee Brewer Hall-of-Fame member. Bob Uecker is more than likely a disciple of God, and one of the greatest men to every grace this beautiful earth.
Who is the author? That’s the million-dollar lire question.
We have some clues, though:
• Our author’s user name is Mitchell-Francis.
• User Mitchell-Francis wrote two other definitions: a (negative) one for Lopez Tonight and also for Jimmy jacked.
• As in, “Everyone’s real jimmy-jacked that this post is finally over.”
