Baseball’s so amazing. The confluence of predictability and unpredictability is so sharp and poignant in certain moments. Consider Jose Constanza, walking to the plate against LOOGY Tim Byrdak in the seventh inning, with his Braves down one run in their road opener. The Mets announcers would have you know the following things:

1) Constanza was the man who ended Daniel Murphy’s 2011 season with a slide.
[Cut to Murphy’s face]
2) Byrdak had knee surgery just three weeks before.
[Cut to grimacing Byrdak]
3) Constanza hit .385 in 39 at bats against lefties last year, so Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez has no qualms about leaving him in there.
[Cut to Fredi squatting and spitting seeds]
4) Michael Bourn, another lefty, is waiting in the on-deck circle.
[Cut to Bourn in the on-deck circle]

So, both visually and aurally, the scene is set for a dramatic moment for Constanza, correct? And yet, if you’d seen this swing before, you might have been predicting something like this all along.

Well, maybe not exactly that. But certainly something like that could have been predicted. And we’d feel worse about mocking the player for it, but from that walk of shame, Constanza knows what he did.

This recent YouTube video imparts several bits of info about Miami Marlins (AKA “Those Miami Darlins”) owner Jeffrey Loria. To wit:

1. Jeffrey Loria appears as though he is chewing on something at all times, possibly the insides of his cheeks.

2. After watching some spring training action, Jeffrey Loria believes that the combination new Marlins/Darlins players and the team’s youngers players, who now have more experience, are ready to “gel into something special” in 2012.

3. Jeffrey Loria knows how to sign “gel into something special” in American Sign Language:

“Gel into something special”

A man of culture — and of regularly rigid arm hairs — Jeffrey Loria is.

Roused from the stupor and torpor of waking sleep by the lovely and talented Summer Anne’s most recent posting, I have taken it upon myself to reduce the SoftBank Hawks commercial — the glorious SoftBank Hawks commercial — to its finest and most praiseworthy trace elements. Bear humbled witness, as though kneeling before the bones of the holy …

GIFSoup

In this world, it seems I love nothing that doesn’t feed my rankest urges, but I do love you SoftBank Hawks Dog. I do love you. You must know that. You do know that, SoftBank Hawks Dog? You do, yes. I can tell you do.

Save us, won’t you, SoftBank Hawks Dog? It’s just sometimes the crush of existence leaves you …

I won’t take anymore of your time, SoftBank Hawks Dog. I just wanted to say I love you with the desperation of a drowning man.

If you forget us, SoftBank Hawks Dog, then we shall surely vanish.

Cito has spoken.

H/T: Much like yesterday, all praise be upon my man @TheScottLewis, and the gang at theScore’s Getting Blanked. Yes, again. Look, it’s been a long week. Too many meetings.

Yesterday’s MLB.com box score reads, “Raul Ibanez flies out sharply to right fielder Jason Heyward.” I vehemently disagree.

I like to think that each baseball that’s put in play has its own destiny. And the baseball you see above, caught — no, brought back — by Jason Heyward, wasn’t destined to be a home run. Such is life.

One more thing: Home Runs Brought Back (HRBB) ought to be a new defensive statistic. Because that was no ordinary fly out. And because we don’t have enough statistics around here.

H/T: My fellow Canadian @TheScottLewis. And be sure to check out Getting Blanked; the boys do great work.

This is very likely not the best defensive play Braves shortstop prospect Andrelton Simmons has ever made — or, indeed, will make in the future. However, it’s the best defensive play that Simmons has ever made and which has also been captured from the internet, edited, exported into a GIF file, and then embedded in a NotGraphs post, from the fourth inning of a March 14th spring-training game with Mark Teahen batting.

To point is one thing; to laugh, another. Sometimes, however, there are occasions that call for the combination of the two, such that one finds oneself both pointing and laughing.

While I, an avid drinker of the milk of human kindness, hardly condone such behavior, a number of respondents to our call for GIF-worthy footage are not so reserved in their capacity for finding joy in the weakness of others.

Said respondents pointed the author to the above footage, of a gentleman — a gentleman “tanked” to the “gills” — falling out of the stands while attempting to retrieve a foul ball at the Red Sox’ jetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Florida during a Sunday afternoon game.

Making the sequence more amusing — for Red Sox fans, a least — is likely the fact that said tanked gentleman is, like many devotees of late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, a Yankees fan.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rookie of the Year updated for 2012:

Doctor: I’m sorry to hear you’re out of work, Mrs. Rowengartner, but if you no longer have health insurance then you’ll have to find a way to pay for Henry’s shoulder surgery yourself.

*Smack*

Doctor: FUNKY BUTTLOVIN”!!!

(Later, outside of the doctor’s office, Henry’s Mom sits at the bus stop looking distraught.)

Henry: Don’t worry about that medical bill, Mom. I think I have an idea…

It is the offseason, and baseball players are not playing baseball. They are instead abetting weathermen. In the case of Derek Holland, his disembodied head and arms are abetting the false certainties of Metroplex weathermen. I can prove it:

GIFSoup

This is the offseason, and baseball players are not playing baseball.

(Chance of scattered thanks: Todd)

Football is dead and buried, and the grave containing the withering corpse of football is being danced upon. More specifically, it is being homered upon and then danced upon by Rickey Henderson and Jimmy Rollins, men who are as beautiful as they are multitudinous. Bear humbled witness:

GIFSoup

We shall get through this, you and I. Baseball is coming for us. I just know it.