Archive for Naming Names

So I picked a fight with the Internet, and the Internet is beating me as though it entered a cheat code. The blow-by-blow …

Yesterday, I threatened to Ruin Everything^TM by posting the same thing as Eno Sarris, a mere hour later. Content redundancies are frowned upon, particularly by Dear Leader, so after I spent a sleepless, unmentionable night in the NotGraphs Dungeon of Citizen Reprimand, one would think the scales would have fallen from mine eyes. One would think …

Yet, lo, I awoke, fired a Tweet through the Internet, and watched disaster unfurl before me like Dave Cameron’s rolled-up knapsack of Medieval torture devices …

I thought Jose Reyes’s projected stat line was pretty cool, but it did not rise to the fleetingly rare level of “cool enough to repeat this four or five times in succession.” I don’t repeat things like that. I repeat drink orders just to be sure. And I repeat, usually in moments that don’t seem to occasion it, my refusal to quarter soldiers in my home during wartime because the third amendment means that much to me. But I don’t repeat Jose Reyes’s projected stat line. At least, not unless the Internet makes me.

So what does one say at this point? This? “I’m sorry, Internet. Please leave me alone.” Also: Et tu, Firefox.

This very reputable psychologist contributed to our report.

In a piece from yesterday’s Times, John Branch documents — and, one might accurately say, mourns — the disappearance of great nicknames from American sport.

On one level, Branch’s point stands so far as baseball is concerned: relative to generations past, fewer current players today possess colorful sobriquets. There’s Kung Fu Panda, obviously — along with Big Papi and Pronk and some others — but the data show that a lower percentage of players have nicknames.

Branch, however, fails to make a distinction, it seems. For while, yes, there are fewer well-known baseballing nicknames, it’s come to the attention of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team that, instead of disappearing, the art of nicknaming has merely gone underground. In fact, it appears as though the practice is as robust as ever.

“It makes sense,” said a totally credentialed psychologist who preferred to remain nameless, “that, as media more completely documents and pervades the lives of players, that they would develop mechanisms for fostering a team spirit. The secret nickname is one such device.”

With that, we present here — for the first time ever — some secret nicknames from around the majors. In most cases, there are no explanations for the names — although many of them are self-explanatory.

Regard:

Casey Blake: Business Time

Todd Coffey: Heath Bell*

Ryan Doumit: Pizza Butt

J.D. Drew: Jimmy Smiles

Adam Dunn: Sexual Chocolate**

Adam Jones: Quinoa Jones

Jason Kendall: Uncle Stinky

Carlos Marmol: Prison Shank Marmol

Mike Stanton: Leopard Pants

Ryan Theriot: Merde Hands

* This is a bit embarrassing, actually: when Nationals GM Mike Rizzo acquired Todd Coffey, he actually thought it was Heath Bell he was getting.

Tip of the double-flapped batting helmet to my old, and now totally famous, friend David Modigliani.

The pitch you see here was (a) thrown by Daniel Bard to Nick Swisher last year and (b) appears to possess changeup-type (or at least two-seam fastball-type) movement while also traveling at 99 mph.

Sean Murphy, who’s preserved the above-embedded GIF at his site, refers to the sequence as “baseball porn” — and for good reason, too: there’s something equal parts filthy, captivating, and primeval about what Bard’s able to do with/to/all up on a baseball.

Yesternight, Oakland starters Brett Anderson and Brandon McCarthy got to tweeting about this pitch — a conversation to which Man About the Internet @BigMike05 alerted me. Mr. Big Mike was also curious about how we might accurately characterize this pitch which, it must be said, defies superlatives.

As I say, filth is the definitive quality of the offering. Watching this pitch is like watching Christina Aguilera give a lap dance to a side of beef — i.e. both disgusting and impossible to look away from.

The question is, what ought we to call such a pitch?

Some ideas, from the dirtiest part of Dirtville:

• The Slavic Tongue Kiss — Tongue-kissing can be romantic, but not the way they do it in Eastern Europe.
• The Pantless Velociraptor — A velociraptor with pants is bad enough.
• The Well-Oiled Ambassador — Oiled with what, exactly?
• Hepatitis K — The filthiest possible virus.
• The Moist Handshake — Ick. Not so nice to meet you, actually.

Pete Rose killed a lot of things: Betting on baseball, Cincinnati pride and dinosaurs, to name three. But not everything he touched went extinct. Until today, I thought this special subset – things Rose didn’t kill – was limited to hot Asian women liking old white men with money. But no, OH NO, there’s one more entry for that category… THE PLAYER-MANAGER.

And who else to pick up where Rose left off than baseball’s other most-controversial once-superstar: Jose Canseco.

The Yuma Scorpions, an independent team with a big-league idea for a gimmick, named Canseco both manager and all-around bad ass. Their reasoning? Easy: “He’s very ready at this point in his career to smoothly transition to managing.” Yes. at THIS point.

But Canseco aside, it brings up a very important question, one that should be thought of somewhere between how to solve the national debt and how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop (it’s not three, don’t proffer up that malarkey)…That is, who would you (more importantly me, as I’m writing this) like to see as the next player managers?

So, without further ado (and a pay-per-word agreement) I’ll cut to the chase.

Top Five:

5. Kirk Gibson. If the man could hit a home run half gimp in 1988, the 53-year-old second year manager of the D-backs surely could make a contribution.

4. Texas General Manager Jon Daniels. At 33, he’s really only a few years past his prime. And with his body type, his skill set should be deteriorating slowly… right, Jon?

3. Charlie Manuel. Father Time could probably teach these whipper snappers a thing or two… Unless that thing has anything to do with using statistics in managing a team?

2. Ozzie Guillen. Rumor has it he’s three parts man and one part honey badger. If you know anything about the honey badger you know it’s not their size or their age that matters, they’ve got a fight in them measured only by the kiloton.

1. Obviously, Don Mattingly. This by no means is a criticism of James Loney. It’s not that I don’t like the guy – in fact, I think he’s a great person on tops of a being a darn good ball player. But you have to ask yourself this one question: Was he ever on the Simpsons? Has he jacked six grand slams in one year? Is his last name “Baseball”? No. Donnie Baseball is the clear choice.

Who would you like to see bring back the player manager?

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I’ve been ambling through some early 20th-century newspaper archives. The best part of all this has been disinterring the sports prose of one W.J. Slattery of the long-dead San Francisco Call.

Suffice it to say, if a man like Mr. Slattery still brandished his quill (which, I imagine, he did in much the same way that decorated cocksman Aaron Rowand brandishes his bat) then the print dailies of the world would not be in such a state of crisis.

Why do I say this? Please dig his lede from April 8, 1907, in which he mourns a San Francisco Seals loss to the Portland Beavers:

The Seals had enough of the left-over victorious spirit to put it on the Beavers when the teams made their bow to the Oakland fans yesterday morning, but the afternoon mixup before a house that was overflowing was a delusion, a snare, an imposition and a joke to the admirers of the native talent who were rooting for San Franciso. Never was the score a tie.

This “snare” was particularly surprising if you’d seen the mighty Seals go through their warm-up liturgies:

The Seals rushed on to the field with seemingly an overstock of real pepper when the bell rang. They whisked the ball around in practice like a flock of two-time pennant winners. There was confidence in the demeanor of each man; In fact, the entire team made the play so strong that the majority of the spectators conceded them the game before the first ball had been pitched.

And of the villain of this story, the poised Portland hurler by the name of Mr. Groom who vanquished the Seals despite the triumphalist vigor of their infield practice, Slattery writes:

It was his curves that kept the Seals off the bases in virtually every Inning, though the willing fans did the best they could to ruffle the youngster by saying things that only a baseball rooter can say when he feels like talking.

Indeed, the things a baseball rooter will say when he feels like talking.

Yours truly is a baseball rooter, and he happens to feel like talking: Mr. Slattery, we need your like and ilk among us today.

Remember the taut .gif tale of Adrian Beltre’s visceral hatred of having his head rubbed? If Beltre thought that getting the hell out of Boston would spare his dome from such vicious assaults, then he is gravely mistaken:

Third baseman Adrian Beltre’s torment has already begun and his smooth head is already under siege.

Not surprisingly, shortstop Elvis Andrus is spearheading the attack, but there are plenty of teammates who have caught the contagious compulsion to rub Beltre’s head.

“Oh yeah … a bunch of times,” Andrus said. “He better get used to it. He might kick my tail, but I’m going to do it.”

There’s a lesson in here for Andrus and other would-be assailants: Adrian Beltre does not forget. For instance, you’ll recall that Victor Martinez was the main offender in Boston. Beltre certainly recalls:

“Sometimes I thought about killing him,” Beltre said. “But I thought about it. … I have a family so I didn’t.”

You know how you make jokes and you’re half-kidding? One gets the chilling sense that Beltre is maybe 5% kidding when he says he’d like to murder Victor Martinez and leave his tortured corpse in a shallow grave. Or perhaps put his head on a pike outside the Rangers clubhouse to serve as a warning for all who would emulate his dark ways.

That’s a picture of Teddy Roosevelt putting some lead in Bigfoot.

And right now it’s the only thing that helps.

Why my long face? As you have no doubt heard, my team’s ace, the lovely and talented Adam Wainwright, is probably out for the season and facing Tommy John surgery. Needless to say, this likely dry-gulches our chances in the balanced (if unspectacular) NL Central. Given the subsequent pitching shortage and the lateness of this hour, I fully expect that an NRI will soon be extended to Charlie Brown or Scott Stapp or, worse, Jaime Navarro.

And here I am, left with nothing but beery regrets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mexicutioner no longer.

Let’s go straight to Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star:

It came as a request sent out on his Twitter account that asked – asked not demanded – that everyone stop referring to him as the Mexicutioner:

“How about we change my nickname to something positive? In support to Mexico to stop all the violence!!!”

Soria, 26, has always been proud of his Mexican heritage. It marked a proud moment in his career, which includes two All-Star selections, when he became the all-time leader in saves by a Mexican-born player.

Of course, I can totally understand where Soria is coming from here. One’s cultural heritage can be very close to one’s heart, and given the dark gang and drug related violence seen in Mexico recently, it’s clear why Soria would like separate the idea of an executioner from his own Mexican heritage.

On the other hand, the nickname “Mexicutioner” is really, really awesome.

So, there are two options. Maybe we could try and find a new nickname for Soria, but I can’t imagine anything can top Mexicutioner. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them, but I’m drawing blanks (I don’t think I watch the Royals enough to capture something that their fans would identify with).

The other option, as Soria suggests later in the above-linked Star article, is that we could just call him by his name. At this point, Soria has established himself as one of the best closers in the game, and maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t even need a nickname. Who else in baseball has earned the first-name Joakim as an identifying mark? I think Soria is more than good enough to warrant the first name treatment, and the Mexicutioner nickname can be honorably retired.

Padres fly-catcher Cameron Maybin recently enjoyed a leisurely, industrial-grade meal at Panda Express. He then tweeted about the, um, lasting residue of said meal:

Never eat panda express sh*ts had me feeling awful for 2 days back on my grind tomorrow,, We got action…

Nothing surprising so far. If you eat meal with a higher sodium content than the tears of the Dead Sea — chow that’s best left to the iron-gutted frequent flyers and Food Court loyalists among us — then you risk violating your non-aggression pact with the digestive system.

At this point, you might be wondering why I didn’t just post an image capture of Mr. Maybin’s rather unremarkable tweet. However, examination at its most cursory has led me to believe that Mr. Maybin deleted said tweet. Why would he have done that? Gaslamp Ball, presumably after filing a daisy chain of FOIA requests, has arrived at the answer:

At some point Panda Express has left us all feeling, lets say, not so fresh. But when Cameron Maybin, the Padres new Center Fielder, complains of its sickening after effects and warns his twitter followers never to eat it… hilarity ensues. That’s because Tom Davin, the CEO of Panda Restaurants, is a member of the Padres Ownership Group.

Well, that’s a shame. It’s one thing not to be able to trust flesh lovingly prepared outside the service entrance of a Hot Topic. It’s another thing entirely not to be able to complain about it on your Internet computer.

Anyhow, if any “Cameron Maybin is in the best shape of his life” articles come your way in the near future, please be skeptical. Is it the new Charles Atlas workout that left him lean and angular, or is it the case of Montezuma’s Revenge perpetrated upon him by his employer?

Last night, the baseball world was rocked by Texas Rangers second baseman shortstop third baseman designated hitter utility man team-leader-who-would-do-anything-to-help-the-team Michael Young’s revelation that he feels “misled and manipulated” by the Rangers’ front office. Young feels that the team has been trying to trade him throughout the off-season while telling him the opposite. Ever the consummate teammate, Young has declined to reveal specific details of exactly what went on behind closed doors. However, in a NotGraphs Exclusive (TM), we have obtained leaked video of what we believe to be Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels finally coming clean with the Face of the Franchise.

It’s hard to make out from the grainy video, but “Brenda” (they are using a bunch of clubhouse nicknames throughout) is obviously Michael Young. “Dylan” is Jon Daniels, even though in the footage he looks to be closer to Nolan Ryan in age. “Kelly” is Adrian Beltre (I’m telling you, you can’t complain about video quality when it’s as earth-shattering as this), although he seems to have gotten over his head thing; at least when “JD” is involved. “Brandon” must be Michael Young’s BFF Vernon Wells.

Despite the quality of the video, everything in the exchanged words and, above all, the evident emotions leave little doubt as to its authenticity. Look out for Michael, Vernon, he’s gonna need it.