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2020 Super Baseball is a very weird game.

Basically, take Baseball Stars (it has the same teams, like the Ninja Black Sox, and the same mechanics), add in some wacky rules (only a tiny portion of the field is foul territory and it’s only a home run if it goes in the “Home Run Area” in center field), and fast forward to a society in the far off year of 2020, and there you have Super Baseball 2020.

I decided to play as the “Battle Heroes,” because, why not, and the computer randomly picked the “Aussie Battlers”. Since the Heroes wear red and the Battlers wear blue (and, Australia is basically the Texas of continents), I guess I’m playing as the Cardinals this time. As much as that hurts me deep inside.

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In celebration of both the World Series and video games, I will be playing at least four and, if, necessary, five, six, or seven games of the World Series on various excellent Major League Baseball video games. We’ll start it out with an old standby: Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the Super Nintendo.

Remember kids, illegal emulation is wrong, except when it feels oh, so right.

Now, to the game:

As Player One, I decided to choose the lesser of two evils and pick the Texas Rangers. This means I, as the Rangers, am the home team. That’s not how the real World Series will go. Deal with it

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Let’s face it, reading a baseball site like FanGraphs (but not NotGraphs, of course!) is pretty nerdy. If you want to double down on being a baseball nerd, the best route is fantasy baseball. But what if you want to triple your nerdity?

To the Academy!

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“You’re out of your depth.”

Okay, so I may have called the Moneyball movie “boring.” Perhaps it could have been spiced-up a bit by adopting Bradley Woodrum’s excellent suggestions. But I may need to revise my opinion now that I have happened across one of the many revisions of the script. This particular reivision was done by noted directory Paul Thomas Anderson. One unfilmed scene from Anderson’s script between Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane and Anderson-favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman Art Howe really stood out to me.

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INT. A’s OFFICES – THAT MOMENT

BILLY BEANE and PETER BRAND emerge from Billy’s office and walk done the hallway…. PETER’s eyes widen and he ducks into the video room… BILLY keeps walking…. ARTIE H. approaches…

ARTIE H.: Hey, Billy.

BILLY: Artie, hey, what’s up, man?

ARTIE H.: Freaking lost again, y’know, right?

BILLY: Four in row.

ARTIE H.: Right. Hey, did you see my new lineup for tonight’s game?

BILLY: You have a new lineup?

ARTIE H.: Yeah, you wanna see?

BILLY: Sure.

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NotGraphs, of course, has a lengthy and proud history of using animal GIFs and or action-video footage as stand-ins for baseball happenings. Unbelievably enough, we have not yet decided to stop doing this. And so courtesy of the lovely and talented Crashburn Alley comes the forthcoming bit of wonderment. Please and thank you click!

Now that you have sufficiently absorbed the image in question, we are compelled to ask:

Thank you for voting, and may the ungovernable berserker-sheep among us grant you safe passage.

I think it was Hamlet who said that there’s nothing better than “grabbing a few brews with the bros.”*  That sentiment, surely, was true in 1603, and it is even truer today, as THIS JUST IN the Boston Globe reports that Josh Beckett and Jo(h)n’s Lester and Lackey drank beer (!), ate fried chicken (!!), and played video games (!!!) in the clubhouse, instead of supporting their teammates in the dugout, during the Bosox’s epic collapse.  How dare they?  What is this, an intramural softball game?**

*Maybe it was Polonius

** It’s a shame Josh Beckett didn’t go to college – I think he would have loved intramural softball.

Some people have taken them to task for their behavior, but, really, it could have been worse:

Ron Artest notoriously admitted to keeping a bottle of Hennessy in his locker, which he would swill during halftime of games he was playing in.  Also, yes, that’s him in his jersey after winning game 7 of the 2010 NBA finals – he forgoed changing clothes and went straight to partying.  Much later that night he finally took off his jersey – and gave it to Chris Brown.

Please do consider this the consummate and most important guide to Modern Baseball yet invented.

For fans of imbibing drank and consuming meat cylinders, Baseball has long been the sport of choice. The following infographic (after the jump) offers some of the single-most important tidbits of infotainment for the industrious and economical Baseballer.

Of course we all know:

Price * Quantity = Total Bill

And likewise:

(Price * Quantity) / ((Hot Dogs + Beer) * Condiments) = Baseball

Therefore, the following observations are naturally of the greatest criticalness:

1) The Rays lead the league in pricey hot dogs. Note: The Rays price their dogs at $5.11 — just 11 cents more than the more typical $5.00 charged by many other stadiums (i.e. an extra 2.2%).

2) One must wonder if there is a correlation between cheap beers and West Coastiness.

3) Cheap hot dogs in New York. Also expensive hot dogs.

4) The fans in Oakland have little to no reason to not attend an A’s game (wealthy fanbase, cheap baseball experience). Except, of course, the fact they have to watch the A’s.

5) Average attendance went up, but did stadium capacity also increase or something? I thought the league was supposed to be having a down year attendance-wise this year.

Behold the infographicness:
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Maddening.

Baseball, and life, can sometimes devolve into a spiral of sounds and colors. Drunken sailors on this choppy sea, we try to find one thing to hang on to before it slips away again and leaves us bewildered. In and out and up and down and yet we try to come back to that one, stable anchor in our vision. Your own hand at the bar. That woman’s foot. The gleaming brass doorknob. That white pillow. But it’s folly — you’ll eventually end up rolled up in a ball in the bathroom, screwed up and hurting, recounting the moments that led you down this path. How did this happen?

It’s time for another installment of “Shorter Baseball Columnists,” in which we read mainstream baseball columnists and marginalized bloggers like Murray Chass so you don’t have to! Let us begin!

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: How dare John Henry’s wife update us on his recent medical crisis when the Red Sox aren’t in the playoffs!

Shorter Rick Reilly: Yuk, yuk, yuk!

Shorter Gerry Callahan: The Red Sox faltered down the stretch because the players are bad people.

Shorter Rob Parker: Jose Reyes lacks the integrity and personal courage of, say, a Rob Parker.

Shorter Rico Brogna: I have some opinions on Jose Reyes’s contract status, and, boy, those opinions are weird.

Shorter Murray Chass: Beer is stupid.

The “Shorter” approach to Internetty commentary traces back, as best as one can tell, to Daniel Davies.

Observe, the Wikipedia page of one Eric Sogard:

(Click to embiggen. Like, a lot.)

Now, allow me to highlight some notable elements of said Wikipedia page.

1. I hadn’t heard this nickname for Sogard ever before, but in retrospect, it’s hilariously obvious. Check it out:

2. Said glasses:

3. Sogard. Home run. Record. Same sentence.

4. I have to be honest, that whole second round thing really dulls the allure of the story of that guy up there making it to the major leagues.

Eh. Still good.

5. I wonder how jean sales are in Oakland right now.

6. On that home run, the “# parks” according to Hit Tracker Online is zero. Not even one. Zero.

Yes, his second homer (against Koji Uehara, at that) went a respectable 374 feet and would’ve been out of 27 parks. No, I don’t care.

7. Of course. Of course he’s bunting. The two in-game shots are of him fielding a routine grounder… and bunting. This is his skillset.

Also,