I had a great idea for a post, where I would assemble a baseball team using only members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and fictionalize a team meeting in the club house.

A great idea, no doubt. And so original! Surely, no one had considered transplanting hip-hop artists into a baseball team. What brilliance!

However, just to make sure, I did what any good writer in constant fear of being called a plagiarizer does. I Googled it.

Lo and behold, someone had thought of this premise before. Also, they executed it far better than I could have.

I have been a voyeur of  Flip Flop Fly Ball for some time, though this post slipped through my fingers.

This infographic, outlining a fictitious game between the aforementioned Clan and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band,  is beyond terrific. Clicking the above hyperlink will bring you to the original post, complete with play-by-play. Take note that the umpires are the members of Led Zeppelin.

I love this so much, you guys. Bless you, baseball nerds.

I’ve been a married gentleman longer than I care to remember. My ankles were ensnared long ago by my metaphorical ball and chain, to whom I am destined and legally obligated to love.

But this in no way means that I do not remember the life of a gallivanting bachelor. Vivid are my recollections of “cruising for chicks,” if you will. These were, indeed, dark times. It is within our human nature to find a companion, someone with which to share our greatest accomplishments and most demoralizing defeats. We yearn for a person of substance, a person with whom we can connect on a higher plane of consciousness. This proves to be a difficult task. I speak not only of the prototypical shut-ins and nonentities. There are people out there of a presumably-normal intelligence and hygiene level that need to make this connection. Some of them are baseball fans.

I took to the Missed Connections section of Craigslist in search of stories from such people. I searched in every city that hosts a major-league stadium, and have hand-picked the most heart-wrenching  stories of love found and subsequently lost. I submit them to you, fair NotGraphs reader. I give you permission to weep.

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The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team can proudly confirm that last night, during the second inning of the match between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics, only a few seconds before the recorded footage you’re about to watch, NESN Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy whispered to his colleague, Don Orsillo, “Dance as if nobody is watching, and love like you’ve never been hurt.”

Orsillo really took the advice to heart. The man can jam. Turns out, however, that a lot of people were, you know, watching.

Today, this Fourth of July, like every other Fourth of July, I’m reminded of this incredible video:

Enjoy the holiday, my friends. As I told my comrades at NotGraphs last night, please celebrate accordingly. And, finally, on behalf of Canada: Thank you, America. For everything. We don’t say it enough.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Abhorrence of Abhorrences lurking behind the potted palm, Brian McCann sees you. If it’s any consolation, Abhorrence of Abhorrences, you are absolutely as mortifying as you think you are. At least to the quaking likes of Brian McCann …

Know this, Brian McCann: whatever you have seen is absolutely not as scared of you as you are of it.

(Thanks to MockSession for the initial image and, thus, the walking tour of the abyss.)

The result of this afternoon’s Mets and Nationals game doesn’t matter. We’ve all already won.

Actually, now that I think about it, the result does matter. Between Dickey and Wang, who will last longer? Everything is on the line.

Enjoy, my friends, because it’s unlikely a matchup this perfect ever comes around again. It’s an amazing time to be alive.

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A search at lucky-best Baseball-Reference turns up this meadow of delights …

I have hopes on this day. Chief among them is that “Abner Deatherage” (the lilac hue of his Information Hot Link betrays my curiosity) is not, as the lamewad rationalist within suspects, pronounced “Abner DEATH-ur-ehj.” Instead, the Walter Mitty star-gazer part of me — which I keep buried in my tattered and smelly idiot’s shoe (I own but a single shoe) — hopes that this fine man’s name is pronounced “ABNER DEATH-RAGE” — every syllable accented because every syllable will wreck that shit.

It simply must be.

It simply must be.

There are days when the internet doesn’t provide much joy and I start to think maybe I’m spending too much time in front of a computer screen — that I need to learn more about the different species of birds in my area or maybe finally learn to do a cartwheel or something. Then days like today happen, and I know that I was wrong about the internet. She loves us, she provides for us, and she brings us what we demand:

1. How Many Altuves? is a website designed to measure things in Altuves, which is how I will be measuring everything in my life from now on. For the record, a blue whale is 14.76 Altuves, my couch is 1.66 Altuves, and a trip around the bases is 66.46 Altuves. My heart is an infinite number of Altuves, running like hamsters on a wheel and keeping the blood running through my veins.
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A must for the Leisured Gentleman.

It’s $348, and Coach is, frankly, ridiculous, but having a wallet that looks and feels like a baseball glove just make sense, dammit.

H/T: It’s a long season.

This past weekend at the FanGraphs gathering in Phoenix, Mr. Carson Cistulli stated that he had never seen the George Brett-poops-himself video. I couln’t believe it, so I decided to hook him up. In case some of our other readers have also been deprived of this video, “enjoy.”

[Ed. Note: contains a wide and winning variety of explicit language.]

Original Version

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