So pleased was I two days prior when I beheld the glorious (and complex) visage of Rudy Pemberton on this webbed page, submitted for your approval by one Dayn Perry. Pemberton has been a favorite player of mine for the last two seasons based on his absolutely ridiculous 1996 season.

What happened in 1996 to Rudy Pemberton? you ask, predictably. I am glad that you, as I had anticipated, asked. First, he got released by the Tigers after hitting .315/.360/.580 at AAA and .300/.344/.467 in the Majors as a 25 year old in 1995. Then, he signed with Texas. The Rangers promptly traded him to Boston, who stashed him at Pawtucket (where he hit .326/.375/.616) until September.

On September 1, Pemberton was recalled from Pawtucket with Nomar Garciaparra. He played the next day and went 0-for-2, but Pemberton would finish the month at .512/.556/.780 with 21 hits in 41 at bats, 2 walks, 2 hit by pitch, 3 stolen bases, 8 doubles, 1 homer, 11 runs, and 10 RBI.  Garciaparra hit .241/.272/.471, the pansy.

What follows is a non-exhaustive and only partially untrue list of facts regarding Rudy Pemberton’s incredible September, which should give you great joy: Read the rest of this entry »

It was with a measure of confidence that today, in the break room, you attested: “That Rudy Pemberton. He was just a ballplayer.”

About this — in addition to your callow belief in a better tomorrow — you were horribly wrong …

Sure, the image above shows Rudy Pemberton in professional action, but what of the disembodied spectral presence, the one whose soft, Olan Mills edges suggest a man of a poet’s dimension and discontent? He hovers about our assumptions like a reproving moon.

You owe Rudy Pemberton an apology.

(Image taken from a GeoCities page called Boston.com)

This comes to us via Blue Jay Hunter’s perfectly lovely Twitter feed. Please enjoy:

This is from “Bring Your Kid to Work Day,” and I tell no tales when I say this contains multitudes. The younger Master Rauch looks excited, as he should be. “Bring Your Kid to Work Day” is always rousing for the tyke in question, and I imagine this is doubly so when your pops is a ballplayer or a dinosaur. The elder Rauch, however, wears quite a different countenance. While his boy can fittingly be described as “a happy young man,” Mr. Rauch, save for his sated girth, resembles one of the indigent defeated from a Walker Evans photograph.

This affirms what parents have long known: children are drought and famine.

Thinking man’s base ball-ist Eric Sogard is, natch, something of a local hero on these electric pages. So because of his heroism and because he is indubitably a Thing That Contains Multitudes, we are duty-bound to make a not a man out of him — I feel certain that Raquel Welch and Adrienne Barbeau have already attended to those refreshing matters — but rather make a meme out of him.

What follows is this Internetting Gentleman’s — this memesmith’s, this smither of memes’s — attempt to do just that …

Read the rest of this entry »

That cheering you heard yesterday afternoon was my enthusiastic endorsement of the offer that was bringing one James Tiberius Patrick Quirk from Houston to become the bench coach for the Chicago Cubs.  What follows is a non-exhaustive and only partially untrue list of facts regarding Jamie Quirk, which should give you great joy:

1) Jamie Quirk was drafted in the first round of the 1972 draft by the Kansas City Royals, a full 35 spots before Gary Carter.  Then again, Jamie Quirk was drafted as a shortstop.

2) Jamie Quirk once high-fived Steve Balboni and the resulting explosion killed 4/5 of Kansas City’s population, turning it into a small market city.

3) Jamie Quirk is 6’4″ tall, and is tied for the 5th tallest player to catch more than 500 games.

4) Jamie Quirk never caught a game as a professional baseball player until he was 24 years old, and had already been in the Major Leagues for four seasons.  He ended up playing roughly five times as many games there as any other position.

5) Jamie Quirk is his own wingman.

6) Jamie Quirk played for eighteen seasons, and was worth more than one win above replacement in exactly two of them.

7) Jamie Quirk sired many beautiful babies all across this great land, but mostly during a five-game series in Montreal in 1983. That the Expos moved to Washington in 2003 is the only reason he’s agreed to return to coach in the National League.

8) Until Carlos Quentin came along, Jamie Quirk was the all time leader in home runs by a person whose name started with the letter Q.  Do with that information what you will.

9) Jamie Quirk ate chicken and drank beer in the clubhouse all the time, and no one cared. It’s not like they were going to put him in the game.

10) Jamie Quirk was allowed exactly one at bat with the Cleveland Indians franchise. In that at bat, he hit a walk-off homerun off of the bespectacled and mustachioed Ron Davis.  Afraid that Quirk might prove to be too great a competitive advantage, the Indians released him after the season.

11) Jamie Quirk was traded to the Brewers after 1976 with two other players for Darrell Porter, who lasted four years with the Royals and fetched a compensation pick for the club when he left as a free agent after 1980.  The Royals used that pick on Mark Gubicza, who was eventually traded for one year of Chili Davis.  The Royals got 65.6 WAR out of that deal over the next twenty-one seasons AND re-signed Jamie Quirk to his second of three stints as a Royal when he became a Free Agent after the season.

12) Jamie Quirk played from when he was 20 years old to when he was 37. Eighteen seasons.  In which he played in an average of less than 54 games played per season.  I wish I was a backup catcher.  God bless you, Jamie Quirk.  You’re living the dream for all of us.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Here at NotGraphs, we’re taking it relatively easy today.  We have a ritual.  We gather together at the home of our beloved leader, Carson Cistulli, where we feast on the greatest creature that God has ever bestowed on the Earth, the Ken Turzimmoon:

Read the rest of this entry »

Reader, take a trip with me.  Back to the mid-1980s.  Ronald Reagan is running for reelection in between naps.  Prince is complicating heterosexuality by being at once sexually virile and a little pixy of a man.  Pastel is the new black.  And John Hughes rules the world with an iron fist.

Into this landscape saunters Steve Balboni, who blesses you with his divine image below:

Click, if thou wouldst dare embiggen Him.

Steve Balboni is more than a man. He is a legend. A muscle-bound, mustachioed misanthrope who raged against American League pitching in the mid-’80s, but who was ultimately doomed by his refusal to do anything but swing really really hard and hope he made contact, but not before hitting 181 home runs and inspiring the greatest opening line of any AP article ever: “If Steve Balboni knows Steve Balboni, American League pitchers had better take cover for a while.” 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.

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Michael Franks’s “Baseball,” from his album “One Bad Habit” (1980, Warner Brothers).

Today, we answer some important questions: Is baseball really that much like love? Did the Pittsburgh Pirates look awesome in 1970? How can I keep control of my nerves with the way you wind up when you throw me those curves?

Read the rest of this entry »

Rangers manager/America’s favorite cackling bedlamite Ron Washington is, as you are probably aware, bald. But he is not bald in the sense of merely being in possession of a hairless top floor, like, say, Lex Luthor. Rather, Wash’s baldness contains multitudes. This you shall soon see …

So multitudinous is his baldness that we now have a category called “Great Moments in Baldness.” If not for Ron Washington, there would be no such thing as a Great Moment in Baldness. The inverse formulation — if not for Great Moments in Baldness, there would be no Ron Washington — is obviously not true. But still.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.