Jumbo McGinnis — noun \d͡ʒəm-boʊ mɪk-gɪn-ɪs\

1. early baseball pitcher and catcher
2. a steamy, hearty Jumbo McGinnis, such as one might have after an evening of Indian fare

Jumbo McGinnis — verb \d͡ʒəm-boʊ mɪk-gɪn-ɪs\ [Jumbo McGinnis’ing, Jumbo McGinnis’d, Jumbo McGinnis’s]

1. to Jumbo McGinnis all up in a particular joint
2. to squat over a rectangle of well-manicured clay, with the breeze gently curling the fairground flags in the distance, the factories at rest for the day — progress must take a pause at times too — and pretend to Jumbo McGinnis, such as for a photograph, internet meme, or baseball card meme
3. to deposit a Jumbo McGinnis in a location of protest

example: “Ted’s proposal could not have gone any worse even if he had stamped onto the boardroom table, marched to Stevenson’s tablet, and Jumbo McGinnis’d a fat, mushy Jumbo McGinnis right on that shimmering touchscreen.”

John Paul II’s card from a 1988 Topps set released only in Europe.

The Topps Company has long made a practice of publishing notable facts about players on the reverse sides of their baseball cards. It’s by way of these brief, but revealing, sentences that collectors (ardent or otherwise) have been able to gain some insight into who their heroes are as men, and not merely as athletes — by learning, for example, how right-hander Jim Slaton spent most of his time (on a boat) and for whose construction firm, specifically, Rob Deer worked (his father’s).

With the revelation recently of long-forgotten video from 1987 of Pope John Paul II taking purposeful cuts at a California-area indoor batting cage, we are reminded that he was once among the Italian baseball league’s top players. As such, Topps issued cards for the Pope annually as part of Italian card sets aimed at European consumers.

The present author has located a number of such cards. Here are notable facts from five of them:

• John was influential in the production of Vatican II, the long-awaited sequel to the original Vatican.

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Owing to the generosity and/or oversight of the BBWAA, the present author — provided he doesn’t make a mess of everything, like his family’s always saying he makes a mess of everything — might very well have a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame 10 years thence. It will be a privilege, at that time, to have the opportunity not only to (a) help decide which players receive one of the game’s great honors, but also (b) receive pointed threats from every corner of the internet while so doing.

In the meantime, I’d like to share my ballot for a Hall of Fame by which I’ve already been granted voting privileges — namely, my own Personal Hall of Fame.

Here are my votes this year for same, with a focus on ages 7-11:

Sears Wish Book
Provided very strong reading material while staying at my grandparents’ house. Long length. Lots of beds shaped like cars, if I remember correctly.

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Yesterday, readers thrilled as Carson opened up what was seriously the worst pack of baseball cards of all-time. Though we each in turn smiled at the Phelpsness of life, the reader’s attention was inevitably drawn to the shattered dead-pink remains of the Topps Chewing Gum, that Proustian Madeline that instantly transports us back to our own childhoods. As is often true of the old and regretful, we tend to heap scorn upon the impetuousness of our youth and the gum that recalls it. This is in error.

We owe much to the gum of yesteryear. When Jonas Salk first tested the polio vaccine in 1952, he implemented it not through intravenous methods but through the distribution of an upstart baseball card company’s chewing gum. The success of the 1952 Topps set saved thousands of lives and paved the way for the elimination of the dread disease worldwide.

After this first success, Topps experimented with other beneficial effects in its chewing gum, and despite an unsuccessful 1956 issue partnered with Aldous Huxley to include mescaline in every piece, many of the results were positive. Topps fortified its gum ingredients with St. John’s Wort, riboflavin, and sawdust from a game-used Ted Williams bat. A scientific study in the mid 80s estimated that athletic performance of kids chewing Topps chewing gum was enhanced “at a level ranking somewhere between ingesting an orange M&M and a green one” (McCloskey, 1985). [Editor’s Note: The discovery of the home-run hitting effects and the general proliferation of green M&M’s, rather than steroids, proved to be the true cause of the inflated statistics of the past twenty years.]

Anyone still doubtful of the curative properties of Topps Chewing Gum need only look upon the following graph, and despair.

Clearly, there is a childhood obesity crisis in America, and we are in deep trouble. There is one solution. I beg you, dear readers, go find all the unopened 1987 Topps packs you can. Use a mortar and pestle, and stir the powder into your children’s milk or macaroni and cheese. Do it now, before it’s too late. This has been a NotGraphs Public Service Announcement.

Those who know know this: Every one of baseball’s nine commissioners was elevated to the office not because of his executive acumen or fealty to ownership. Rather, every one of baseball’s nine commissioners was elevated to the office because of his libidinous pizzazz. To say that each of baseball’s commissioners is sexy is to bury them in a shallow grave of understatement. They are not sexy; they are coitus made man …

Now go forth and begrime all that you survey.

Because he never made the majors and because he was out of affiliated baseball by 1990, Steve Sharts does not have a player page at FanGraphs. What he does have, though — by virtue of his amusing name, if nothing else — is a place in the heart of most every male in the coveted 18-34 demographic. Plus the author’s colleague Dayn Perry, one assumes, who’s not between the ages of 18 and 34 but who is contemptible and of low breeding.

Today is many things. It is Boxing day. It is the day after Christmas. It’s probably someone’s anniversary and an important date in history for some culture somewhere. It is a date of note for former baseball player Mario Mendoza, for today is his birthday.

Whenever I think of Mario Mendoza, I think – and stay with me here – of douche. I don’t bring this up to be crass, or to make a value comparison of Mr. Mendoza as a person. I am being truthful. It’s just what comes to mind.

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Greinke said “loved it” in Milwaukee.But money always talks. Always.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) December 11, 2012

As noted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Haudricourt on Tuesday in some number of characters fewer than 140, Zack Greinke’s decision to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers — despite whatever affections the right-hander might have had for Milwaukee — was likely influenced by the giant, giant contract available to him from the coffers of that West Coast team. “Money talks,” Haudricourt writes starkly.

“What does it say, though?” the present author wondered idly — and then, owing to how he’s contractually obligated to produce content on a daily basis, imagined (poorly) in the style of a David Foster Wallace story.

As a concept, mostly. Trying to locate the actual physical me would be pretty difficult. Impossible, maybe? I don’t know. There’s an idea of me, only. An idea corroborated by the Federal Reserve, foreign exchanges, etc. Not only is it complicated, but I also explain it poorly.

Q.

He only just signed, of course, so I haven’t been distributed into his accounts — nor the accounts of his employer, even, the Dodgers. Nor, so long as we’re following the chain of supply backwards, the account of the Dodgers’ contractual partner, News Corp., from whom the bulk of me will come — so far as I understand, I mean. Ticket sales and merchandising, of course. That, too. I’m all over the place, really.

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New Phillies third baseman Michael Young gets acquainted with his new hometown.

Shortly after trading a pair of minor-league pitchers to acquire Michael Young from Texas, Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro said of the club’s new starting third baseman that he (i.e. Young) has what the Phillies need.

“And what is that, precisely?” the present author was inclined to ask aloud, in the silence of his (i.e. the author’s) small Midwestern apartment. “What do, or did, the Phillies need?”

“These types of things,” the author presumed (by way of deduction) Ruben Amaro would answer, before continuing as follows.

A Human Person
“A robot, or some sort of half-man, half-machine situation — if not expressly banned by the rules of baseball — is at least frowned upon pretty hard. What the Phillies don’t need is to be frowned upon. Michael Young, as a human person, helps us achieve that goal.”

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My poor kid is sick and now it’s like a Madison Bumgarner start in here. #snotrockets

— Drew F (@DrewGROF) December 10, 2012

Baseball has offered to the English language a number of expressions with which to colorfully and compactly describe otherwise mundane or more complicated ideas. To say, for example, that something has “come out of left field” means that it’s surprising and unexpected. To “hit a home run” with a project means to do a great job with it. To “get to second base” with a special lady means — according to my wife, whom I trust implicitly — means to quietly read in the same room as her and not touch her or even look at her, if at all possible.

Most of these expressions, however, have lost their original vitality through repetition. In the face of this, however, the very kind and even more baritoned Drew Fairservice of Getting Blanked offers us the above-embedded message regarding the similarities between a Madison Bumgarner start and his own spawn’s ill health.

Now, NotGraphs is happy to release — in the same spirit as Fairservice’s missive — is happy to release today five (five!) new baseballing expressions for common use.

Five expressions like these five:

Expression: Delmon Young Career Arc
Meaning: Promise, followed by disappointment — also, then maybe followed by a very public display of anti-Semitism.
Example: “My college career was real Delmon Young career arc. I started with a scholarship, but flunked out by sophomore spring. Also: Jews, amirite?”

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