Archive for Item

The 1986 MLB season is the first that I can remember. The main reason that I remember it was 1986, I think, is that it was the year that I started collecting baseball cards — those Topps cards being so recognizable to me now.

While I grew up in Milwaukee, one of my mom’s best friends lived in Long Island at the time and was/is a huge Mets fan. Starting in 1986, he would collect all of the Mets cards from the year’s Topps set and send them to me. I remember Darryl Strawberry and Gary Carter being big, though I wouldn’t comprehend the extent of their greatness or tragedy until twenty years later. Read the rest of this entry »

Eddie Gaedel[e] has gotten a decent number of mentions at the FanGraphs subsidiaries and elsewhere. As I noted last week, poet and biographer Tom Clark has a long poem about him.

I am not here to weigh in on whether rostering little people constitutes a demeaning gimmick or is the answer to a market inefficiency in baseball.

Instead, I am here to offer you an opportunity to hold Eddie Gaedel’s real life game-worn jockstrap.^[1] You need only travel to the Baseball Reliquary in Monrovia, California where it is safely housed.

Smell it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I regret to be the one to inform you, but baseball as we know it was murdered in 2008. What you’ve been watching in the ensuing three years has been simply the death throes of a game we all love, gasping for air and seizing as it goes into shock…or something (I’m not a doctor; that’s a thing, right?)

“What felled mighty baseball?” you ask, in expectation that in the next paragraph I will tell you. “Surely no one human person is capable of destroying something so fine and beautiful.”

You would be correct. While some might argue that Ryan Braun is killing the game we love so much, baseball was not murdered at the hands of man. No. Baseball was ruined, as most things eventually are, by vampires. Observe:

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MLB Business PR Manager Jeff Heckleman brings our attention to the foodstuff you see situated to the left of these words (an image that you should feel very comfortable embiggening) — an item known either as a Smoked-Beef Brisket or Pulled Pork Parfait, depending on which meat you’d like to be the cause of your immediate death. The dish features two layers each of mashed potatoes and your preferred meat and is then topped with barbecue sauce.

When asked, one fan at Milwaukee’s Miller Park described the meat parfait as “delicious.” Another said, “I see a bright light at the end of a tunnel and my Grandpa Pat in the cardigan he always wore on gameday.”

Many will enter (bids), only one will leave (with an autographed Tom Milone hat).

The attentive reader, using the part of his brain responsible for memory, will recall how, yesterday, the author provided a clear-minded and level-headed status update on an autographed and game-worn Tom Milone hat recently made available at MiLB Auctions.

It’s with no little difficulty that the author maintains his trademark calm this Wednesday evening. For, in the hours between the present post and the one from yesternight, no fewer than nine bids have been placed on the Tom Milone hat in question, pushing the current high bid for said Tom Milone hat up to $26.00.

Despite the stark jump in price, many experts believe the game-worn and then autographed hat could eventually be worth enough to pay for an entire college education — or, that’s likely what experts would say were anyone to ask. With that sort of potential value at stake, it’s unlikely that bidding has ceased on this game-worn and autographed and green, yellow, and red Syracuse Chiefs hat from Latino night by Tom Milone at Alliance Bank Stadium on August 8, 2011.

“Instant collector’s item” is only one of many phrases that describes this autographed Tom Milone hat.

Hey gang, just wanted to let everyone know that the autographed and game-worn Tom Milone hat I’ve been talking a lot about lately — the one he wore during the Syracuse Chiefs’ game against the Buffalo Bisons on August 8, 2011 — is still available via auction for just 10 dollars.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, so I’ll say now that the hat is from Latino Baseball Night and is green, yellow, and red. Also, not to belabor the point, but “game-worn” means Tom Milone wore this specific hat in a game. Like, the Tom Milone.

The description also says that Milone signed the hat “following” the game. For me, I imagine Milone walking back to the Syracuse clubhouse. Like, the game has just ended and he’s gonna take a shower or whatever. And then the Chiefs’ manager of promotions is like, “Hey Tom, could I get you to sign the hat for the charitable auction?” And then Tom Milone takes off the hat he was just wearing and signs it with his own name.

Imagining that gets me excited about possibly owning this hat — something that I, or anyone, could currently do for 10 unbelievable dollars.

For those who were too young to watch — or just didn’t care about — Game 2 of the 1991 World Series, the abovely embedded image appears merely to be a depiction of the Kama Sutra maneuver known as the Melancholy Sea Captain.

Those familiar with the aforementioned game might be amused to discover that a bobblehead of the very famous Ron Gant/Kent Hrbek contretemps (pictured below) is being distributed as we speak to 10,000 friendly faced Minnesotans at Target Field.

Relive the excitement of the event via this low-resolution daguerreotype:

Historical event brought to author’s attention by THE Dan Lurie.

Proprietor of liquor store: “What are you doing, sir?”
Me: “I’m taking a picture of this.”
Proprietor of liquor store: “Are you to buy it?”
Me: “No. I’m going to buy something more expensive.”
Proprietor of liquor store: “Very good then.”

I don’t believe in awful beer. I do, however, believe that items refashioned to resemble baseball bats are small, good things. So I compromised. I purchased the Oberon and took a terrible picture of the Old Style bottles refashioned to resemble baseball bats. Sometimes, even in this zero-sum life of ours, everybody wins.

While attending a few garage sales in my hometown in Kansas, I seemed to have come across a relic that is many miles from its home: Jeff Francoeur’s little league bat, a PRO-LINE Little League SUPER-LITE Georgia Cracker, made in Atlanta, GA, Size 9.

It is the fabled bat that Jeff used to swing at pitches in the Atlanta area. It didn’t matter if he missed the ball or hit a warning track pop up, he always loved his Georgia Cracker. It was rumored lost when his parents had a garage sale after he joined the Braves in 2002. It was spotted a few times, but no one knew for sure of its location or owner.

I feel fortunate to have found the bat and hope to make a pilgrimage up I-35 to return the bat to its iconic owner soon. I will enjoy having it in my possession for a little while and maybe, just maybe, go take a few swings with it.

The Actual Thing you see pictured here (and which you’re free to click for embiggen-ing purposes) comes to us not from the wild frontier of the internet, but rather from the Dark Overlord of FanGraphs Inc. himself, David Appelman.

While, as per usual, Appelman’s exact whereabouts are unknown, wherever he is is also the sort of place that sells the item which is (a) currently washing over your senses and (b) called the King Pepper-brand Baseball Bat Pepper Mill.

As the cardboard display makes plain enough, this pepper mill possesses the following qualities:

• Ideal für BBQs
• Perfekte Geschenkidee
• Hochwertiges Mahlmechanism
• Grosse Pfefferkapacitat

Per the internet, this item is available for just 29.95 American dollars. How much that is wherever Appelman has found himself — that’s harder to say.