In just a short amount of time, NotGraphs has distinguished itself for its heady content and hard-hitting reportage.

Now’s your opportunity to participate in this phenomenon that no one in particular is describing as “the most important thing there is.”

“How?” you ask. Keep reading!

The advent of The Year 2011 in Baseball brings with it a litter of baseball annuals and other published materials of the print and electronic variety. We at NotGraphs are interested in reading and shamelessly promoting such items under the guise of a “review.” But before we do that, we need you to send us this stuff for free.

The ways of contacting us are manifold — and many are unrepeatable in mixed company — but the most efficient way is by emailing us at not+tips@fangraphs.com with information about you, your finely crafted product, and other relevant information. We will almost definitely reply without delay. We will almost definitely want your free stuff.

We’re very pleased to introduce our newest contributor, Bethany Heck. As Ms. Heck notes here, she’s the proprietor of the Eephus League, a site that Andy Warhol has posthumously described as “the best thing available on your futuristic technology screens.” In what follows, she promotes shamelessly a thing the she herself invented. Prepare to exchange American currency for it!

Greeting, NotGraphs community! I have been blessed enough to be asked to join this wonderful writing staff; certainly not an offer I could refuse. I will commence my tenure with a bit of shameless self promotion.

My foray into the baseball ethos is centered around the Eephus League, a site with a growing community centered around baseball minutiae. I built the site from the ground up with the goal of creating an oasis of random facts, photographs, scorekeeping insights, stories, verbiage and product patents related to baseball. I particularly enjoy making graphic illustrations and infographics related to baseball, and that’s the main reason I have ended up here. The other reason, of course, is to convince you to buy my baseball related stuff, most importantly my scorebook.

I love scorekeeping. I don’t consider myself an expert by any means, but I am fascinated by the development of the art of keeping score and how intensely personalized it is. You can look at 10 different scorecards from the same game and though they will all have the same information, they will all tell it in a different way. It is a travesty that so many people have fallen out of the habit, or never got started in the first place. I want to change that. I want to make scorekeeping fun, easy and a natural part of going to the ballpark. That’s where my scorebook comes in. Here are some photos to get you excited.

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THE EXTRA 2% – Sneak Peek

Though I’m not entirely sure “It was a dark and stormy night” is the most relevant opening line for a book that examines the meteoric rise of the Tampa Bay Rays, there’s little else to criticize about this excerpt from (FanGraphs author!) Jonah Keri’s forthcoming book, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First.

Just from this brief excerpt — which includes Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s foreward and Keri’s prologue — the reader can already feel himself not only being (a) seduced by the Rays’ David-and-Goliath narrative, but also (b) overcome with a strong desire to give exactly $15.44 to Keri and his handlers.

One also feels slightly sick to his stomach when he’s forced to remember that, after the 2002 season, the Rays traded literally their best player, Randy Winn, for Lou Piniella — i.e. a frigging coach.