It hasn’t been the best of days around here at NotGraphs World HQ, but maybe things are looking up? How’s that? Well, perhaps you’ll recall my affection and longing for the rare confluence of absurdities that is the inside-the-park grand slam (note: you will not recall this, but still). Turns out such a miracle recently came to pass, thanks to Jeremy Moore of the Salt Lake Bees, three of his teammates and the burning fire-god in the sky.

By all means, please dig!

A thing related to my occupation for which I have yearned has come to pass! Let us now praise professional fulfillment in all its forms!

Have you ever wanted to see a helicopter play baseball? Yea, verily. Have you also dreamed longingly of spicing up said game of helicopter baseball with bad baserunning, German brogues aplenty and a soundtrack that quite possibly features Yngwie Malmsteen? Well, despite the lessons of the past, present and future, dreams do come true! But only this one time …

You may have noticed a germinating fondness for Wily Mo Peña in these parts.

I must confess to having been a wee bit of a Wily Mo agnostic when all this first began. After I saw what follows, however, I found myself on the streets of Mesopotamia with eyes aflame and voice aroar: I believe in Wily Mo with more heart-pumping, red-faced certainty than Cotton Mather believed in anything ever!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgAL_ChzJUA&feature=player_embedded

He spits in his helmet. Believe in that or you shall converted at the point of a sword.

(Genuflection: Awful Announcing)

The following has already been linked to over at Mission Control, but IIATMS’s viciously sublime takedown of the McCourts is more than worth your while. Even in this day and age, when news of corporate malfeasance is mere background music, this raises one’s hackles. For damn instance:

How did the Dodgers manage to fund the McCourt lifestyle? Let’s start with salaries: Jamie McCourt received up to $2 million annually for her services as Dodgers’ CEO. Frank McCourt received up to $5 million annually from one or more businesses affiliated with the Dodgers. The Dodgers also paid up to $600,000 in annual salary to two of the McCourt children, one of whom was attending Stanford University and the other of whom had a full-time job at Goldman Sachs.

But $7.6 million a year was not nearly enough money to meet the needs (estimated at over $2 million a month) of the McCourt family. The McCourts spent money at a rate that turned heads, even in Los Angeles. Best known is the McCourt appetite for real estate. After buying the team, the McCourts proceeded to buy four homes in Los Angeles – two in Malibu, two near the Playboy Mansion – at a combined cost of around $89 million. This figure includes the estimated cost of McCourt “improvements” to these homes, including a roughly $14 million bill for tearing out tennis courts at one property and replacing them with a swimming pool. Then there were the other expenses: the vacation properties, the private jet, the private drivers, the hairdresser who worked exclusively for the McCourts five days a week … the list goes on and on. Here’s an expense that’s one of my personal favorites: over one 18-month period, Jamie McCourt paid over $100,000 to various florists, and charged the Dodgers for the expense.

There’s more. So, so, so, so much more. These people are beasts. I don’t wish death upon anyone, so instead I’ll hope that these two, upon being forced to live in the woods by the bankruptcy court, get permanent chicken pox.

Letters of Note, which traffics in noteworthy letters, has unearthed a baseball-ing document from way back yonder in 1898, when men were men and diseases were just, just great. The subject of the missive in question? Sporting gentleman John T. Brush wanted to rid our fair game of the maledictions and impieties common to those who were not raised right-wise.

By all means, click, embiggen and quaff deeply:

What is most pleasing about this letter is that Mr. Brush takes pains to quote the salty (yet, to these ears, soaringly beautiful) phrasings of the time. Because of Mr. Brush’s meticulous cataloging, fans of the era would know that when a baseball-ist quipped, say, “I f****d your mother, you sister, your wife,” he was indulging in ruffian’s talk and was quite likely a cad and a masher. Lest there be any confusion about that.

So it turns out that not all about the Gilded Age was gilded. You big asshole.

Internet denizen Pat Andriola has brought to the world’s attention this actually official document, which reveals that R.A. Dickey was, in fact, the recipient of no less than one vote for New York’s most recent gubernatorial election.

While members of our crack Investigative Reporting Investigation Team have been unable to learn the identity of Dickey’s supporter, they (i.e. said Team) have discovered that it was, indeed, American filmmaker Woody Allen who voted for The Void.

As America’s Kid Brother Jackie Moore brought to our attention yesterday in a piece on the latter’s (unwitting) walk-off double, Nyjer Morgan is the sort of man prone to losing his mind.

Some due diligence courtesy of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team reveals another curiosity from the giant, hypothetical file folder marked “All Things Nyjer Morgan” — namely, some kind of excerpt from a real or not real music video featuring Tony Plush himself.

Regard:

Your eyes do not deceive you, reader: that’s footage of Morgan doing the robot while wearing a silver Elvis wig, set to a song that sounds a lot like “I’m Not a Player” by deceased rapper Big Pun — except for, instead of Big Pun, it’s actually Nyjer Morgan revealing the truth about his nom de champ.

There are answers to the questions you’re asking, reader. Assuredly. Whether they exist in this, or an alternate, reality is a thing we can’t say with any certainty, however.

Please, call it a comeback

Baseball brings us myriad joys, but perhaps none is greater than the comeback. The specter of losing looms, making everyone involved, from the players to the fans, feel uneasy. Even though it’s one game out of 162, even though there’s another to play tomorrow, losing sucks. And so when the comeback occurs, we are overcome with elation. In that way, the eighth inning of yesterday’s Mets-Brewers game might have been the greatest of the season. It contained two come-from-behind efforts and led to another, although related, joy: the walk-off.

The Mets and their fans felt it first. They came into the eighth inning having done little on offense to that point, but still trailing by a 2-1 score. Their lone run came on a balk in the fourth, but after that they managed just one more base runner. Kameron Loe, who had recorded the final out of the seventh, came back out for the eighth, but that almost didn’t happen. His spot was due up next in the order when Mark Kotsay flied out to end the previous inning. That worked for the Brewers, though, who have relied heavily on Loe this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Word from the internet this afternoon suggests that the Colorado Rockies could very well promote Charlie Blackmon from Triple-A Colorado Springs, where he’s currently doing unspeakable things to Triple-A pitchers.

Blackmon, as the bespectacled reader is undoubtedly aware, was the captain of this year’s iteration of Team Joy Squad — an exercise in what is referred to by young men as “rosterbation” but what is referred to as “Ecstatic Truth Roster Construction” by the Puritan-rich sons of New England.

In any case, America, turn on your frigging heartlight, okay. Neil Diamond says so.

H/T: Like three people.

Survey Josh Womack’s professional baseball career, and you come away impressed merely to the extent that he had a professional baseball career. That’s to say, Womack’s bestowals on the diamond are somewhat forgettable. What’s not forgettable is the abracadabra-sorcery-jinx-necromancy that Mr. Womack can perform with a maple stick …

Bewitchment! Pointy hat, gnarled oaken staff and flowing purple robe festooned with astral designs!