Archive for Real Talk

When Lawrie met Kawasaki.

During the offseason, the Blue Jays acquired Jose Reyes, a four-time all-star with a batting title on his résumé; Mark Buehrle, who’s thrown a no-hitter and a perfect game, and 12 consecutive 200-innings seasons; Josh Johnson, a two-time all-star who’s struck out over 20 percent of the batters he’s ever faced; Melky Cabrera, an all-star game MVP with a, uh, checkered past; and R.A. Dickey, arguably the greatest human being alive, who with his magical knuckleball struck out 230 batters last year, and won the Cy Young.

Yet on Monday and Tuesday nights at the Dome, it was Munenori Kawasaki – signed to a minor-league contract in early March, and called up from Triple-A Buffalo to replace the injured Reyes – who was being feted by the crowd, with chants of “KA-WA-SA-KI! – Clap, Clap, ClapClapClap!”

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The author, who is moving in the wrong direction relative to blackest death, recently had his habits questioned and testicles fondled by his primary care physician*. He also, the following day, had what he (i.e. the author) considers to be “too much blood” removed from his body for the purposes of evaluating its cholesterol, and other sorts of, levels.

*In that same physician’s office, I mean. Not, like, out on the street.

Below are the results of the blood test in question — rendered both in raw form and also relative to national averages for adults.

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Quite some time ago, Robert J. Baumann, Carson X. Cistulli and myself engaged in a podcast entitled NotGraphs Staff Meeting. During said meeting the three of us touched on various subjects, but the topic that I found most interesting was a discussion on the literary craft.

As much as anyone can be terrible at anything, I am terrible at podcasting, my voice sharing at least a few properties with rusted screen doors. So, shamelessly ripping off a tool employed by Eric Nusbaum and Ted Walker at Pitchers & Poets, I asked Robert if he mightn’t like to engage in a kind of low-fi podcast, using actual written words to convey our thoughts and feelings. Herein lies said conversation.

Patrick: So let’s begin. Do you consider yourself a writer?

Robert: I probably don’t consider myself a writer. Part of that is because I’m not over hating myself yet — I don’t have confidence in anything I do. I don’t think of myself as “good enough” to call myself “a writer.” But that’s the more boring part of it.

The other part is maybe a bit more objective, and it stems from the fact that I have known a lot of writers, in different contexts. And the people that I take seriously as writers — whether they’ve had publishing success or not — they’re not people that I have a lot in common with in terms of writerly habits.

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As things ramp up here in the professional baseball world, sometimes folksy folks need a little refresher as to how best consume all of the baseball season. It’s no secret that technology plays a huge part in how we consume almost everything, baseball included.

Though I’m highly-regarded and extremely well-paid for my baseball writing, my background is actually in Information Technology, with years of experience in helping all kinds of users properly use a myriad of devices.  So, to help you kick off the season, I’ve put together some helpful tips and tricks for leveraging technology to expand your enjoyment of baseball this summer.

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I grew up an only child in a quiet neighborhood filled with evergreens and retired people. With few children my own age nearby, I devoted much of my time and energy into devising means of entertaining myself. There were swamps to explore and forts to build during those rocket summers, swings to be swung. But also, armed with an endless supply of thrift store equipment, I hurled myself at every sport imaginable. I played the part of athlete, broadcaster, general manager, statistician, and commissioner all at once, for both sides.

Not every sport was equally viable for one player. Basketball worked well enough, though football was a near disaster. (On a given play, I would hike the ball to myself, drop back, throw the ball into the air, run under it, make the catch, and then proceed to tackle myself.) I talked my parents into letting me dig one golf hole in the middle of our yard, and then set up a course by arranging eight tees around it in each compass direction. My parents even bought and set up a tetherball pole in the driveway in what I can only imagine was a cruel and well-executed joke.

But my favorite sport of all, as now, was baseball. Of course, my Graig Nettles-signed wood bat was still too heavy as a little kid, so I turned to the svelte yellow cylinder of the wifflebat. I spread out four Frisbees, which I assume my parents gave me to play with on days with exceptionally strong headwinds, and stood at the plate, bat in my right hand and ball in the left.

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Do not blame Greg Luzinski for being a killing machine: For he is but a hostage to his factory settings. The pits of his eyes are pellucid only at the moment of the kill. Stare into them — moments before he makes a deadly cudgel out of one of your de-socketed limbs — and you see nothing more than the clicks, clangs, grinds and clatters of an industrial sense of mission. It follows, then, that Greg Luzinski is a killing machine.

As you might imagine, he is amoral in the extreme. The sense of compunction he feels at the clinically detached slaying of, say, a grandmother who has finally come to believe that, insofar as Publisher’s Clearinghouse is concerned, the fix is in; or the child who witnesses the indiscretion of a diplomat; or the shareholder who is too promiscuous with grievances toward the board fails to register on even the most finely tuned instruments of detection. It follows, then, that Greg Luzinski is a killing machine.

Depending on circumstances and externalities, Greg Luzinski’s Boolean programming commands him to kill with a muzzle-loading firearm or the cutlass he wears on his hip or the nearest load-bearing beam. Failing those, he will use his barrel-hinge knuckles to choke the insurrectionist until his isthmus of a throat turns to blood and dust.

Do not blame Greg Luzinski for the warehoused pallets of the over-murdered. You’d just as soon blame the tempest for the ship’s wreckage. Greg Luzinski’s one and only locus presses him onward, and so he annihilates by rote.

The only reason Greg Luzinski isn’t taking back the streets at this moment is that he never surrendered those streets in the first place. Another reason is that he isn’t taking back the streets is that those who mind his switches haven’t yet received written orders — signed in triplicate — instructing them to command Greg Luzinski to take back the streets. But if they do, he will. And don’t you know the storm drains shall be choked with a thickset gumbo of human organs.

Greg Luzinski, you see, is a killing machine.

It is nothing new to suggest that the level of discourse on the internet — and perhaps off of it, too — lacks much in the way of civility. The precise reasons for this have surely been considered by people more qualified than the present author by methods more rigorous than the present author is likely or willing to employ. Given the ubiquity of internetting aspersion, though, and the frequency with which it’s cast, there is clearly some satisfaction being derived by the casters.

Nor is one free from verbal histrionics even within the otherwise friendly confines of WhatIfSports’ simulated baseball game Hardball Dynasty. Without dwelling upon the particulars of that game at length, it’s sufficient to note that, as part of said game, a human owner can attempt to sign free-agent players by means of a page that looks very much like this (click to embiggen):

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Sources tell me that soon, quite soon, Team USA will start playing games in the World Baseball Classic. This is all fine and dandy, but look at the projected “roster” for this “Team USA.”

No disrespect to manager Joe Torre, but he lacks foresight. This is Team USA. Why burden yourself with filling it with simple baseball players? Mr. Torre needs to make a statement, here. Team USA can be so much more than a simple list of the best players that agreed to play/were allowed to play by their respective MLB teams. Our country is in turmoil. We need to bring America back to its original glory. We need to shine this turd to resemble the great nation of times gone by. America needs a facelift. And a boob job. And certainly a tummy tuck. It starts with the WBC roster. It ends with unadulterated imperialism.

Allow me to punch this up a bit.

1. George Washington, C

2. Henry Ford, CF

3. Ernest Hemingway, 3B

4. George Patton, DH

5. Giancarlo Stanton, RF

6. Ted Nugent, 1B

7. Al Capone, LF

8. Thomas Edison, SS

9. John D. Rockefeller, 2B

THAT. That is an American roster. That is a roster that will propel this nation back to what it once was. Captains of Industry, former leaders, musicians, writers, inventors, professional skullbashers. Two live people and a bunch of corpses. I can smell that trophy already.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

We are standing at the precipice of a Cuban Missile-like conflict that could ruin the game of baseball as we know it. I’m talking about these old-school math-nerds clamoring about the RBI. RBI stands for “runs batted in,” but it should stand for “R.eally B.ad I.nformation” if you ask me. According to RBI, Kyle Seager was a better player than Joe Mauer last season. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard since someone try to tell me Dan Fogelberg deserved a Grammy. Check out this explanation of RBI in section 10.04 of baseball’s official rule book:

A run batted in is a statistic credited to a batter whose action at bat causes one or more runs to score, as set forth in this Rule 10.04.
(a) The official scorer shall credit the batter with a run batted in for every run that scores
(1) unaided by an error and as part of a play begun by the batter’s safe hit (including the batter’s home run), sacrifice bunt, sacrifice fly, infield out or fielder’s choice, unless Rule 10.04(b) applies;
(2) by reason of the batter becoming a runner with the bases full (because of a base on balls, an award of first base for being touched by a pitched ball or for interference or obstruction); or
(3) when, before two are out, an error is made on a play on which a runner from third base ordinarily would score.
(b) The official scorer shall not credit a run batted in
(1) when the batter grounds into a force double play or a reverse-force double play; or
(2) when a fielder is charged with an error because the fielder muffs a throw at first base that would have completed a force double play.
The official scorer’s judgment must determine whether a run batted in shall be credited for a run that scores when a fielder holds the ball or throws to a wrong base. Ordinarily, if the runner keeps going, the official scorer should credit a run batted in; if the runner stops and takes off again when the runner notices the misplay, the official scorer should credit the run as scored on a fielder’s choice.

Sounds like a real snooze-fest, am I right?

Does this stat even make sense? It appears that you don’t even need to “bat” in a runner in order to receive a run batted in. If a player draws a bases-loaded walk, they get credited with an RBI even though the bat never left their shoulder. And what about on a double-play? A hitter gets no RBI for driving in a run after “batting” the ball. This stat is more convoluted than Delta’s boarding policy.

Hey sportswriters, get your head out of the rule book and actually WATCH a game.

One of the biggest stories of this very young preseason is that Yankees’ outfielder Curtis Granderson will be sidelined for a while with an arm injury. This has led many to speculate who will be his replacement. Opinions have been opined about free agents, trades, and internal candidates. Allow me to offer three options no one has mentioned yet.

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