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STARTERS

Rick Portacello Mushroom Sliders   $9
Veggie option getting a crack at our permanent menu for the first time.

Carlos JalaPeña Poppers (15)     $7
Often, you’ll miss your mouth completely when you try to eat these delicious goat-cheese-stuffed and deep-fried peppers, but when they connect, they connect with big flavor. For the price, we think it’s worth a couple of swings and misses.

Cheese Cheese Sabathia     $13
Selection of artisanal cheeses from Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York. We coat each cheese in cream cheese and top it off with a lovably crooked ball cap made of cocoa frosting.

Miguel Olivo Tapenade     $10
Thick crostini, roasted capers.

The Prince Fielder    $32
All of the above.

The David Wells     $37
The Prince Fielder, beer battered and deep-fried. Served as a misshapen brick.

The Rod Beck     $55
The David Wells, served with a six-pack of Old Style cans and a “bump.”

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Young Curtis Granderson’s mustache has been described as “effortful.”

While others see in Young Curtis Granderson’s choice of collars faint hints of militarism or marchingbandism, Young Curtis Granderson wears this particular shirt because the menswear at Chess King is both affordable and stylish.

The chain around Young Curtis Granderson’s neck is not a fashion accoutrement; it is there in case Young Curtis Granderson wins a medal. Most likely this medal would be awarded for triumph in competitive pursuits known variously as “AP calculus” or “kissing” or “sports” or “life in general.”

Underneath Young Curtis Granderson’s shirt there is another chain, one choker-length in design and execution and one you cannot see. It is there because Young Curtis Granderson’s mighty heart needs a friend.

Young Curtis Granderson finds it difficult to listen to New Jack Swing because Young Curtis Granderson is New Jack Swing.

Young Curtis Granderson smiles not to ingratiate; Young Curtis Granderson smiles because Young Curtis Granderson is Young Curtis Granderson, which makes for happiness.

Sometimes, Young Curtis Granderson daydreams of having a catch with Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Tevin Campbell.

To Young Curtis Granderson, the future is a consenting adult. Young Curtis Granderson will first buy the future a nice dinner.

(HT: Snakkle and Todd’s championship Twitter feed)

Manny in his younger days.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently reprinted a nearly fifty year old piece about Manny the Noodle and a supposed conspiracy to get the Dodgers into the World Series by slipping a mickey into a certain Giant’s outfielder’s oatmeal. A notable quote from the bookie incredulously asked “So baseball is different from everything else? Honest or something? Money wins every time, kid. You ride with the money or you’re dead.”

If only to enjoy more elite-level wordsmithing, we caught up with Manny, now fast approaching the century mark and enjoying his lime rickeys in Vero Beach. He had a few more revelations for us.

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And today, a Thanksgiving post on what else: Everything I’m thankful for.

This list will vary wildly on things I’m very thankful for, and things I’m meh-thankful for. You get to figure out which are which!

BEGIN THE (horribly formatted) SLIDSHOW:

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Often, we wonder what might have happened if Napoleon or Hitler weren’t so dumb and had gone on to rule the world. Or, what if Custer didn’t die at Little Big Horn?

I’m excited that my homeboy Ryan Braun just won the NL MVP, but I had this Matt Kemp post pretty much ready to go (didn’t want to jinx Brauny, and am happy to take the credit for jinxing Kemp), so now I present this “acceptance speech” as an alternate reality. Speculative fiction, call it. Move over George Lucas.

Behold, your new king.

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… to former Blue Jays reliever Mark Eichhorn! (not to be confused with Einhorn, er Finkel – Einhorn is Finkel, Finkel is Einhorn, Einhorn is a man!), a natural NotGraphs favorite due to his swingin’ sidearm and even swingier mustache.

We gonna party like it’s my birthday.

His story is pretty cool – after damaging his arm during his first brief stint in the majors in ’82 he lost all his velocity and was forced to try out the uber-quirky submarine style.  It took him four years to master it, but when he got his next shot in ’86 he made the most of it, posting an outrageous 5.3 WAR campaign as a reliever – and he was only five innings away from qualifying for the ERA title with a 1.72 in 157 innings.  He bounced around to a few more teams before coming back to Toronto just in time to win two World Series Rings.

And with that: Happy 51st Birthday, Mark Eichhorn from all of NotGraphs!

(Other November 21st birthdays include Stan “The Man” Musial and Ken Griffey, Jr. aka “The Kid”, but who cares about them*)

*this is actually a funny coincidence because ‘”The Man” and “The Kid'” are the main characters of The Cincinnati Kid where Steve McQueen plays Eric “The Kid” Stoner and Edward G. Robinson plays Lancey “The Man” Howard.  Griffey is, essentially, the real-life Cincinnati Kid, and Stan Musial and Ann-Margret (who’s in The Cincinnati Kid!) both appeared in the same episode of CBS This Morning on October 21st, 1991.  Spooky, huh?

There’s power in your pine tar.

The newest bombshell in social science is actually the oldest story in any book: dude made up his results. It turns out we don’t know any more about the relationship of power to infidelity, or the link between chaos and prejudice, than we did last year. It turns out that Diederik Stapel made up all his results.

A more serious corollary to the baseball world might take note from the social scientists on the matter — we might start talking about the danger of massaging data in general. We could talk about the pressure to find salacious results, and how that changes the way we look at our numbers. We could talk about all the biases that get ignored, and so on.

But that’s no fun.

Let’s instead open up that drawer in my desk where I hastily stuffed all my research as soon as this scandal broke. As you can see, Mr. Stapel has scared me straight.

More Pine Tar Means More Power: A study of the relationship of pine tar levels on batting helmets to isolated slugging percentage.

Green Means Go: Do team colors impact team statistics?

Strippers For Losers: A look at the impact of the availability of professional women of the night on the local team’s winning percentage.

High Socks Rock: Do sock heights alter four-component speed scores?

Mustaches a Must-Have for Closers: A correlation between facial hair and saves totals in major league baseball.

Ritalin or Greenies: A subjective study of baseball uppers new and old and their effect on hand-eye coordination.

There is a chance I will have to tussle my own hair.

Your heart felt good:
it was drippin’ pitch and made of wood.
           –“3^rd Planet”, Modest Mouse

It is not half bad to swim
half naked with seniors
when you win the MVP.

Would I do it all over again? Read the rest of this entry »

In 2012 there will be a new mascot stomping around the Frontier Baseball League, and his name is not Jack the Ripper, despite the overwhelming evidence on the contrary. Yesterday Dave Martin, the team president and general manager of the newly announced London Rippers, unveiled the team’s name and logo. The protests immediately began pouring in.

I only kind of look like Jack the Ripper.

But here’s the thing dummies, even though the team name is the Rippers and the mascot looks exactly like a cartoon version of Jack the Ripper it’s actually not. “Ripping a ball is used in baseball all the time,” Dave Martin told the London Free Press in an effort to explain the team’s name. But what about the mascot Dave???

The mascot’s name is Jack, but as in Diamond Jack, not Jack the Ripper. Apparently, Diamond is a “frustrated hockey player who found he could “rip” the cover off baseballs. Despite his talent, teams grew weary of the expense of replacing balls so Diamond Jack decided to form his own team in London, Ontario.” Or, baseball’s creepy version of Happy Gilmore.

“It’s Phantom of the Opera meets baseball. He’s a mysterious character who is somewhat edgy,” said Martin. “I think this is going to help redefine baseball in Canada. We wanted to make it fun and make it Canadian.”

Mission accomplished.

Fist bump to Greg for the investigative reporting.

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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