The bottom of the ninth of last night’s KC loss to Texas offers us a bounty of delights. With the Rangers in front 3-2, Organizational Jesus Erik Hosmer hit a spank to tie the score. Then, small miracle of small miracles, Jeff Francoeur drew an unintentional walk (!). Then … Well, let’s just roll tape …

N Feliz J Francoeur 9 0 ___ 3-3 Jeff Francoeur walked. 2.28 0.52 71.5 % .073 0.39
N Feliz J Dyson 9 0 1__ 3-3 Jarrod Dyson picked off. 3.17 0.91 58.3 % -.132 -0.64
N Feliz B Butler 9 1 ___ 3-3 Billy Butler walked. 1.84 0.28 63.8 % .055 0.27
N Feliz M Aviles 9 1 1__ 3-3 Mike Aviles picked off. 2.94 0.54 53.7 % -.101 -0.43
N Feliz W Betemit 9 2 ___ 3-3 Wilson Betemit struck out looking. 1.42 0.11 50.0 % -.037 -0.11

It’s one thing to have two runners picked off at first base in the ninth inning of a tie game. It’s another thing when both pick-off-ees are pinch runners and, thus, notionally in the game precisely not to do such a thing. It’s something else altogether when said pinch runners are the first two pick-off victims of the pitcher’s career.

Viva la Royals!

Via Deadspin, we learn that a most interesting paying customer recently graced CitiField. To the daguerreotype …

I’m not going to suggest that world would be a more interesting place if more adult bodies were topped with grimacing baby heads, but —

Wait, that’s precisely what I’m suggesting. Controlling powers of the universe: More Baby Heads Now!

Pair your media experience with Trader Joe’s Mediterranean Hummus.

A teacher of mine in high school — one who was very enthusiastic about what I’m almost certain is called “experiential education” — had a number of guiding principles by which he conducted his pedagogical self. Of these, one he’d repeat pretty often concerned the idea of “authoring” one’s education. “A student,” this teacher would say, “needs to become the author of his education — of his experiences, in general.”

Though I’ve likely fallen short of this ideal — too many “experiences,” it seems, involve swimming nude in a public water source, an activity which I regard as indecent on multiple levels — it’s an idea with merit, this. The passive consumption of experiences/ideas/media is wrong not on a moral level, as many hippies/communists/Portlanders would argue, but on an aesthetic level. Which is to say, it’s imperative that we tailor our experiences to our own specific preferences and talents; otherwise, said experiences will surely underwhelm.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 …

Roxy likes to dance! Bobby Bonilla! But otherwise meh. The Wikipedia summary of “Night Game,” however, is a cornucopia of delights:

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.

UPDATE: And I have underestimated the mobilized opposition.

In this space we are duty-bound to pass along great manager tirades. What follows, however, comes to us from the ivory towers of academia, where they call managers “head coaches” but still make them wear uniforms. Texas head coach Auggie Garrido has lots of success at the major-college level, and I’d like to think that’s because he has a mouth that’s dirtier than Pig Pen’s bedpan. (You have probably surmised that the following walking tour of the undesirable neighborhoods of the King’s English is not safe for work, unless your place of employment is just really great.) Behold, respectfully:

At this point we are, necessarily and in abundant awe, left to wonder: which of the following is the most rousing, most soaring, most eagle-winged speech, delivered to the college man in need of a guiding paternal hand, in the annals of time? Your candidates …

A. “Win one for the Gipper!”

B. “If it was a boxing match and each individual took the beating that we took here today, I wouldn’t have to be doing this. I’d just come and visit your ass in the hospital and say, ‘When you get the fu*king wires off of your mouth from the broken jaw, and you can see again because your eyes are swollen now, and you can walk again because the guy just punched you in the gut 55 fu*king times,’ all I’d have to say is, ‘With all that, when you get better, we’ll have a little chat about how this guy just fu*king destroyed you.’ Okay?”

C. “Totally fu*king stupid!”

D. Both B and C.

As someone who derives unusual joy from baseball statistics, I feel sanctioned in observing that this is a positive development for me and some of my fellow travelers:

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 …

Smooch!

Did you miss the explosive and exploding inaugural NotGraphs chat? If so, then please enjoy one of the highlights …

NotGraphs reader/chatterer/philosopher-king stevedore SubtleStatement passed this along, and let’s just say our gratitude is incalculable. Not even Dave Cameron could calculate our gratitude — that’s how incalculable it is.

Anyhow, Garvey later impregnated that ninja! Untrue fact!

So loyal NotGraphs commenter Card Archives (more on that name in a moment), who is also a broad-shouldered captain of industry, has done a thing and that thing is amazing.

I can’t begin to fathom the Mennonite’s toil that went into cataloguing every Topps baseball card ever, but I stand agape. And then I fall down, still agape.

So lose yourselves within his pages, stick-and-ball enthusiasts, and know that here at NotGraphs a hero walks among us.

It was only a matter of time before this happened, really:

Dynamite, indeed.

H/T: SportingNews.

It seems that every day here on NotGraphs I see something that turns out to be The Greatest Thing That I’ve Ever Seen. Today is no exception. What follows is footage of a promotion put on by the minor-league Wilmington Blue Rocks. It is not, on second thought, The Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Seen. Lo, it is: THE GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. Put on your breeches of amazement and watch …

I’m fond of reminding NotGraphs readers that we will all die at some point. Today, though, I’m not so sure.