We’ve all got that one friend who goes HAM on high fives, who treats every high five like it’s their last. For members of the Toronto Blue Jays, that friend is Brett Lawrie.

Lawrie’s exuberant high five is a window into how he plays the game. Lawrie plays hard. Very hard. He sprints down the line to first base, every time. Ground balls aren’t hit to Brett Lawrie at third base; Brett Lawrie attacks ground balls. A week ago today, Lawrie tried to steal home with two outs, the bases loaded, and Jose Bautista at the plate. Lawrie was out. Ah, the folly of youth.

Speaking of Bautista, he’s learned his lesson. Want to high five Brett Lawrie? Use protection.

High five: The indispensable Toronto Blue Jays gifs.

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has uncovered years-old footage this evening of major-league relief pitcher Fernando Rodney playing baseball for the first time ever in his life.

The reader might mistakenly suppose that, because Fernando Rodney looks like a grown man in this video and because he’s wearing a Tampa Bay Rays jersey (i.e. the team for which he currently plays) and because said footage is very clearly taken from the Rays television network and because it also includes Carlos Pena, a current teammate of Rodney’s — for all these reasons, a reader might mistakenly suppose that this years-old footage is not, in fact, years old, but actually from, say, a half hour ago.

While, yes, circumstantial evidence certainly appears to suggest that this footage is from this very evening, all such evidence is rendered moot when one considers that even a person who had only played baseball in his wistful, Latin American daydreams would likely field a ball with greater aplomb than Rodney here. Then one is forced to conclude that this is, indeed, years-old footage of Fernando Rodney playing baseball for the first time.

Source: something called GIFULMINATION via Timothy Burke.

One frequently encounters, while consuming works of narrative fiction — novels, films, political campaigns — one encounters something called “character development.” This is the process by which a character in a work is introduced to the audience.

While it’s not unusual to find a character ascribed certain traits overtly (i.e. “Ted is an asshole”), it’s more often the case that a character is ascribed those traits implicitly (i.e. “Ted spoke, at some length, about the differences between a souffle and fondant”). The audience is left to draw their own conclusions in this case — although the dots are there to be connected.

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So now, less than three years later, you can get bleacher seats in your nearest National League stadium and look down on left field, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where Jason Bay’s career finally broke and rolled back.

In the box score of our day, this was an “SB.”

In the box score of the future, this will be an “SBOMGLOLZFUBARWTF.”

A pound fit for brosephs to @CurseofBenitez for the GIF, and an arched eyebrow at Kelly Shoppach.

The other night, Gorgeous P. Bourjos of the Los Angeles America Angels hit a home run, which, being a home run, means it was a figurative bomb, even if it was an inside-the-park home run, which it was. As well, the curious behavior of first-responding outfielders Josh Willingham and Denard Span suggests that it was also a bomb in the literal sense. Click twice and bear awed witness:

That’s not a literal bomb, you say? Then why is Mr. Span dropping it like … a bomb and then backpedaling with Mercury’s haste? And why is Mr. Willingham scrambling to get safely below the forthcoming blast field? Hmmm?

It was a bomb, so shut up.

Over the first two games of the Pirates-Dodgers series, right-handed reliever Kenley Jansen (already a Person of Interest for the present site) has faced seven batters over 2.0 innings. Against those seven batters, he’s recorded five strikeouts and two ground balls (one of which went for a hit), having induced swings and misses on nine of his 33 pitches (27.3%). Of those nine swinging strikes, over half (five) have come against Clint Barmes — who, not surprisingly, has struck out in both of his plate appearances.

Owing to what one can only assume is the product both of above-average nature and nurture, the production team of the Dodgers’ broadcast home, Fox Sports Prime Ticket, chose to render lovingly into Super Slo (and eminently GIF-able) Mo the conclusion of each Barmes plate appearance — which footage I now share with the reader. (Note: both GIFs are precisely 1000 frames long, so they should theoretically be aligned in terms of time. Theoretically, I say.)

From the April 10th game (box):

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Click to play.

The above footage depicts the conclusion of Pablo Sandoval’s home-run trot from his first-inning cuadrangular against right-hander and fellow Venezuelan Jhoulys Chacin during this Monday afternoon’s game against the Rockies (in progress, as of press time).

While said footage reveals no epiphanies, it does provide a record of the somewhat sophisticated choreography of Sandoval’s home-run trot — information that will no doubt be of great use to our descendants and our descendants’ descendants and our descendants’ descendants’ descendants. Specifically, we learn that the Sandoval performs four distinct acts in rapid succession as he approaches, and then touches, home plate.

These four acts, in particular:

1. He crosses himself, Catholically.
2. He gestures towards heaven.
3. He claps his hands together.
4. He pantomimes putting on (what one presumes is) a (championship) belt.

In 1794, the incorruptible Robespierre announced in a speech to the National Convention that “Terror without virtue is fatal; virtue without terror is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue” — and then beheaded the majority of France’s ruling class (if not necessarily in that order).

One imagines that an almost identical thought occurred to Carlos Pena during Tampa Bay’s game yesterday against New York — during the first inning of which game, Yankees manager Joe Girardi ordered an intentional walk of shortstop Sean Rodriguez to load the bases for the Rays first baseman. It was at this juncture that Pena responded in the manner preserved by this GIF, a manner informed (plainly enough!) by equal parts terror and virtue.

Yeah, Colby Rasmus went 0-for-7 on Opening Day, and made an error, and you can choose to focus on that. But that’s taking a glass half empty approach to life, and my glass is half full.

Colby cares.

H/T: My man Ian, or @BlueJayHunter, as he’s known on the Internet. Be sure to visit his Blue Jays blog, which he diligently updates. He’s also got a Tumblr account, from where I shamelessly swiped the above GIF. A man of all platforms. Thanks, Ian.