The Internetting Gentleman is surely by now familiar with this Taiwanese video interpretation of the Red Sox’s recent and rib-tickling collapse. And that leads to this, which is a crudely animated rendering of Jon Lester, John Lackey and Josh Beckett in clubhoused repose, eating chicken, drinking beer and playing video games without ceasing as though an imperiled life depended upon their eating chicken, drinking beer and playing video games without ceasing.

Click and then watch closely to see the exact moment that team morale gives up and dies peacefully while surrounded by loves ones …

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

In the event that you neglected to fetch from the end of your driveway this morning your city’s widely circulated and totally infallible morning daily, please excuse me for informing you right now that the Milwaukee Brewers fell Sunday night to the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Six of the NLCS by a score of 12-6.

Following the elimination of Milwaukee, there was considerable discussion of the team’s defensive weaknesses. Although defense certainly appeared as though it would be an issue for the team entering the season, the Brewers actually finished around league average in terms both of defensive efficiency and UZR. The seven errors committed by Milwaukee between Games Five and Six of the NLCS, however, certainly played a part in the team’s dismissal from the postseason.

Curiously, the most notable defensive shortcoming of the night was the product neither of a misplayed grounder nor poor throw, but rather that most silent destroyer: ennui.

In the top of the third inning — with runners on second and third, two outs, and the Cardinals winning 7-4 — Tony LaRussa made the somewhat unorthodox decision to pinch hit for starting pitcher Edwin Jackson with Allen Craig. Brewer manager Ron Roenicke countered LaRussa by replacing left-hander Chris Narveson with LaTroy Hawkins. Despite falling behind 3-1, Hawkins managed to induce a weak-ish chopper up the middle.

What happened next is captured by the GIF’d footage you see below. Craig’s batted-ball makes its way up the middle and into center field, scoring David Freese and Yadier Molina from third and second base, respectively. While that sequence of events is all-too common, it’s difficult not to observe something curious about the play — namely that, even though the Craig’s grounder clearly makes its way through the infield on the shortstop side of the second-base bag, it’s second baseman Rickie Weeks who comes within, say, three or five feet of playing the ball (and perhaps preventing run No. 2 from scoring). Meanwhile, actual shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt is seen merely trotting towards the middle of the infield.

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Thanks to the joke-cracking excesses of Sophocles, it was, for a long time, no longer funny to make puns out of people’s names. For centuries this was a reliable source of Comedy Gold and, on more than one occasion, spared the stinking human animal from extinction. Inevitably, though, fresh produce wilts, and comedy is and has always been a nutritious vegetable.

But, lo, despair not! When French industrialist Jean-Sebastien D’Internet, for whom the Internet is named, invented the moving image in 1997, puns made out of names were disinterred and revived as a thing that can be useful and even amusing. Doubt this? Take off your tight-fitting doubting pants, click, and then bear awed witness:

You see, the Cruz Missle, unlike its nefarious progenitor the (Pablo) cruise missile, does not end lives, destabilize right-wise monarchies and violate non-aggression pacts. It “merely” wins important baseball games and perhaps our hearts. Check that: especially our hearts.

Many able baseballing commentators have noted that the media coverage of Texas Ranger (principal) owner and president Nolan Ryan is perhaps exaggerated relative to his actual role in assembling the team currently playing in the ALCS — for which achievement general manager Jon Daniels and his colleagues are largely responsible.

For me, personally, it’s fine. Daniels certainly deserves credit, but the media will always tell the most interesting available story — and that’s Ryan. The thing I absolutely can not tolerate is how super judgmental Ryan has become recently.

Like, consider this interaction I had with the former ace pitcher just last night:

Me: Hey, Nolan Ryan how do you think these shoes look with these pants I’m wearing?

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The Florida/Miami Marlins, in advance of moving into a football-free abode of their very own, are busy re-branding themselves as the Señor Frog’s of baseball. First came the fashion-forward logo, then came the hat festooned with said fashion-forward logo. And now? Now comes … this. Click and fathom. My God, click and fathom:

That, friends and enemies, is what’s going to happen each time a Marlin (meaning, mostly, Mike Stanton) hits a home run. Once more for emphasis: This is going to happen.

Over at SBN, Grant Brisbee insists, with evidence, that this is a real, true thing conceived by, presumably, people paid in U.S. currency to conceive of things.

To what should one liken this thing? Would this be the output if Poseidon sexually assaulted Jimmy Buffett? Is it a rendering of the rarely glimpsed Kennedy Compound? Is this what “Eyes Wide Shut” meant? The entrance to a Very Infectious Seafood Restaurant where even children get the senior’s discount? Or just: The fuck?

Since the Marlins have already crossed the pastel-colored Rubicon, there’s really only one final step to take. Purchasers of season-ticket packages also receive … an evening of carnal pleasures with the Official Marlins Reverse Mermaid!

Undersea Baseball Yes!

Not technically a graph.

At Bluebird Banter this morning, real-live Dutchman and Pitch F/x understander-er Woodman663 published some notes on the movement of various right-handers’ fastballs. Almost without exception, said fastballs occupy the top-left quadrant of the Pitch F/x graph — which is to say, they all feature arm-side run and “rise” relative to a spinless ball.

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Maddening.

Baseball, and life, can sometimes devolve into a spiral of sounds and colors. Drunken sailors on this choppy sea, we try to find one thing to hang on to before it slips away again and leaves us bewildered. In and out and up and down and yet we try to come back to that one, stable anchor in our vision. Your own hand at the bar. That woman’s foot. The gleaming brass doorknob. That white pillow. But it’s folly — you’ll eventually end up rolled up in a ball in the bathroom, screwed up and hurting, recounting the moments that led you down this path. How did this happen?

If you missed last night’s rather taut Game 4 between the ST. LOUIS CARDINALS 🙂 and the philadelphia phillies :(, then you need but three pieces of information to consider yourself fully apprised and in good standing …

1) The forces of the right-wise and well-bred prevailed over the ungentlemanly hordes that have afflicted us for too long.

2) In the early innings, Shane Victorino encountered was long been known as the Gentleman’s Pratfall and then compounded miseries by indulging in what has long been known as the Gentleman’s Tippy-Toss-Silly. Click! (HT: Dan McQuade):

And 3) In the middle innings, Roy Oswalt’s engagement with a batsmen was momentarily made more delightful by the appearance of a puckish forest dryad hellbent on giving Skip Schumacher a hitter’s count:

And that, doe-eyed schoolchildren, is how America was saved.

While the word sin is commonly understood to mean “an offense against God” in modern parlance, the corresponding words in the Greek and Hebrew versions of the Old Testament (hamartia and chet, respectively) actually both mean something closer to “missing the mark” — the way, for example, an archer might miss a bull’s eye. The suggestion is not that one has purposely aggrieved God, but has, instead, fallen short of imitating Him.

As the attentive reader will note — either by using his memory or peering deeply into the footage embedded above — Milwaukee right-hander Shaun Marcum sinned the crap out of a 1-2 fastball to Arizona first baseman Paul Goldschmidt Tuesday night. Nor did this particular sin go unpunished, as Goldschmidt smote (a) Marcum’s offering into the right-field stands and (b) Milwaukee’s probability of victory by about 15% (the largest single play of the game).

To his credit, Marcum is instantly aware of his error, tossing his glove air-ward in a manner that one might refer to as “disconsolate.” In truth, the Brewer should take heart: sin is inevitable. It’s how one reacts to same that is meaningful.*

*Note: may (a) not be theologically sound and/or (b) be totally fabricated by heathen author.

It’s with some hesitation that the author has given the present post its entirely sophomoric title. The achievement that is Justin Verlander’s curveball deserves heroic couplets, not thinly veiled references to the male anatomy (itself consisting of couplets that are, generally speaking, considerably less heroic).

However, it’s also the case that (a) more people will click on articles with thinly veiled references to the male anatomy and (b) Verlander’s curveball ought to be viewed by as large an audience as possible. Furthermore, much like Walt Whitman and our country’s worst public schools, NotGraphs is large and contains multitudes.

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