This summer I picked up some 1971 Sports Illustrateds at a garage sale. After meticulously reading the issues while in the john, here are some of the ads I found intriguing.
Because cleats work better when they are sticking into your foot.
One thing that NotGraphs readers might not know about me is that I’m a huge fan of alternate history stories. This is one reason that I found this Bleacher Report article/slideshow so utterly enthralling.
So enthralling, indeed, that I felt compelled to take the premise and run with it. Please find my Jesus Montero “What Would Have Been” moment submissions below.
News broke on Thursday that star pitching man Zack Greinke will represent himself after dismissing his agent. It certainly seems like a bold move, but it’s not entirely unprecedented.
Remember ol’ Boots Poffenberger? The secret, unofficially anointed Hero of Notgraphs? Well not only is Poffenberger a straight-superior super such, but he also has a Wikipædia entry rife with delightful tales of debauchery, war, and regrettable decisions and heart-warming life-lessons.
What the entry lacks, however, is the details of Poffenberger’s self-representation, details which the Notgraphs Investigation Team unearthed and is presently sharing with world.
In Boots’s Wik entry, it notes: “After a strong rookie season, Boots held out for more money.” What it fails to point out is that Boots, who represented himself, also required several peculiar and highly specific clauses in his contract. They are as follows:
Read the rest of this entry »
Moneyball had a big day yesterday, garnering a surprise six Academy Award nominations, including nods in four of the bigger categories: Best Actor, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. It’s nice to see a baseball movie get this kind of recognition, but nobody should really expect the movie to actually win anything, because 1) the movie wasn’t really that good, and 2) baseball movies, when they get nominated (which is rare), tend to fare abysmally in the final voting. To whit:
– The Pride of the Yankees (1942) received 11 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It won only one, Daniel Mandell for Best Film Editing.
–The Natural (1984) received four nominations, including Glenn Close for Best Supporting Actress. It won none.
–Bull Durham (1988) received only one (!) nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It lost to Rain Man.
–Field of Dreams (1989) received three nominations, including Best Picture. It won none, losing best picture to Driving Miss Daisy.
-Vincent Gardenia earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Bang The Drum Slowly (1973). He lost to John Houseman in The Paper Chase.
The closest baseball has had to a major Oscar victory is when Robin Williams won Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting in 1997. “I just slid my ticket across the table and I said ‘Sorry guys, I gotta see about a girl.'”
There exists a modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi, and that analog is Yahoo! Answers, where wisdom is dispensed like rubbers from a truck-stop vending machine. So what were baseball fans wondering about four years ago? This, natch:
And what sayeth the Oracle? Many things, actually, all of them varying shades of inane. It turns out that the modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi is stupid and unhelpful. What else will disappoint on this hollow, purposeless day?
This is Vic Tayback’s grave:
1/14/2012
28-year-old catcher Kurt Suzuki to the Tampa Bay Rays for 20-year-old pitchers Enny Romero and Felipe Rivero.
7/3/2012
28-year-old pitcher Brandon McCarthy to the Miami Marlins for 21-year-old catcher J.T. Realmuto and 23-year-old OF/1B Mark Canha.
11/28/2013
29-year-old shortstop Cliff Pennington to the Los Vancouver Dodgers for 23-year-old pitcher Allen Webster. The Dodgers then trade Pennington to the Los Angeles Angels of The Entire Los Angeles Metropolitan Area for 30-year-old first baseman Kendrys Morales, who is looking forward to finally returning for the 2014 season after more than three years of rehab from his leg, ankle, foot, toe, toenail, and toenail lint injuries.
Ancient papyrus texts and the earliest cave etchings make unmistakable references to HVAC systems and their power to save humanity. As we learned in succeeding years, the world was at once saved, propelled forward and curated by dutiful monks in their scriptoria and the wholesome, restorative power of air conditioning, which was invented by Patrick Henry, Jaco Pastorius and Nipsey Russell in 850 B.C. Shortly thereafter, the same trio invented baseball and then combined the two on the streets of Houston, Texas, U.S.A., Earth:
There are many reasons we can’t have nice things, but only one reason we can. That reason is air conditioning and its sexy possibilities.
(Freon kiss: Reddit)
Let us delve once again into the rich mine of baseball’s greatest names and nick’d names. Though I am partial to the spectacular names of unspectacular careers, let us pause for a moment to consider the moderately impressive career of a one
Knickerbocker, as we all know, means “New Yorker.” Naturally, William Hart Knickerbocker was born and later died in California. Of course.
Ol’ Knickers played 10 seasons, got some MVP consideration, served in World War II, and finished his career with more caught stealings than steals — even once, in 1936, leading the league with 14 whoopsies and only 5 pilfers. He was basically David Eckstein 0.1.
Read the rest of this entry »
WHAT PARTY CAN YOU GO TO WHERE I AIN’T THERE
YOU BITCHES ACTING LIKE YOU DON’T CARE
Ol’ Dirty Bastard shows up in the strangest of places. Like when you’re trying to find a new statistic to evaluate the old, dirty bastard-ness of baseball players. That’s a place where he shows up.
Good thing we got the dudes at SabeanMetrics (tagline: When the Best of the Worst Combine) to resuscitate (bad choice of words?) the hip hop icon. They recently unveiled wODBPS — weighted Ol’ Dirty Bastard Plus Slugging. Apologies to Bobby Abreu, the AL champ in 2011, because the Carlos Lee photoshop just makes too much sense not to post.
Walter James Vincent “Rabbit” Maranville would have been 120 today. We here at NotGraphs would be remiss if we did not take a moment on this special day to pay our respects to a man who blazed a trail for the generations of David Ecksteins that followed him.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, Rabbit played shortstop and a bit of second base for 23 seasons from 1912 to 1935–the majority of them with the Boston Braves. He wasn’t a very good hitter (career .314 wOBA and 84 wRC+), but FanGraphs really likes his fielding (career 130 fielding runs above average). If he had retired after the 1924 season, his 42.5 WAR up to that point would have looked perfectly decent. The problem was that he played another ten seasons and finished his career with 50.5 WAR, which makes his career averages look rather Ecksteinian. Still, owing to the fact that he played for a long damn time, he made it into the Hall of Fame in 1954.
He was like Eckstein in two other important respects.
