I just read through 189 reader comments about the Braves moving from Turner Field to a new stadium in the suburbs. Why did I do this? So I could pick out my favorite one and post it. The winner:
U all R stupid 4 sayin this is a bad idea. Finaly we can go to a game and not worried abut my wife gettin rapped.
Oh, Internet, you have done such a great job of raising the level of literacy in this country.
A brief note: there is good news on the Back in the Game front. It has officially been cancelled by ABC, so our weekly torment will end. There is also bad news, and that’s that there are seven more episodes to burn off before this show disappears in its entirely. That’s actually one episode more than we’ve been forced to endure thusfar, so our torment will not end quickly. However, the show is off until November 20, meaning our torment shall be delayed. Thank heaven for small miracles. Now, how to torment you until then…?
In recent months, thanks to my six year old’s obsession with Transformers and Lego’s, I have become increasingly familiar with the deeply weird world of online toy reviews on YouTube. These reviews presumably help collectors decide whether they want to drop $125 for the new, two foot tall Metroplex at San Diego’s ComicCon, though they have also inspired The Boy to ask whether he can get the $400 Lego Death Star for his birthday or an original Shockwave off of Ebay for $120. Thanks, YouTube, for inventing new ways for me to disappoint my child.
These reviews, however, are available for damn near every kind of product, presented by presumably well-meaning people who have a webcam, a lot of extra time, and a generous spirit. You, perhaps, will benefit from their expertise. For instance, you might be asking yourself, “Self, how do I get my baby interested in baseball?” Have you considered the Playskool Swing ‘N Score Baseball Toy?
On Tuesday I asked you to recommend baseball-related media that I should consume, digest, and defecate into the port-o-john known as my brain. I received so many good recommendations that I will probably become overwhelmed trying to decide where to start, and instead re-watch MacGruber precisely one–thousand times. So way to go guys. (But seriously: way to go. I will consume so much of what you threw down in the comments)
However, I did notice that some of you bemoaned (or just kinda weren’t into) my desire to read certified masterpiece Juiced, by Jose Canseco. “What this book will lack in tact, insight, truth, and readable syntax, it will make up for in being written by Jose Canseco,” was my thought as I added it to the list.
It’s really, really, really, easy to make fun of Jose Canseco. I’m not so much above making fun of the man as I am too lazy to compile the relevant material. Given the wealth of quality material Jose generates, this should tell you something about how lazy I am. What this post definitively is not, then, is me making fun of Jose Canseco. What it is, is me letting Jose Canseco tell us two things:
Life holds a cruel ending for all of us.death
— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 8, 2013
Poop
— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 20, 2013
This has been Letting Jose Canseco Tell Us Two Things.
Some two years ago, a split-finger fastball thrown by pitcher Freddy Garcia stumped experts by seeming to defy the Magnus effect — the force that makes a curveball curve. Physicists eventually arrived at an acceptable explanation, and published their theory in a leading journal. The case, it seemed, was closed. But for Mr. Garcia, as it turns out, it was merely the beginning.
Reached at home on Tuesday, the 37-year-old free agent said that “things got really weird” during the spring of 2012. According to Mr. Garcia, it was around then that he noticed something odd while brushing his teeth one morning.
“The sink drained clockwise,” he said. “Everyone knows it’s supposed to go the other way around.”
Son*,
This may be hard for you to understand, but there was once a time when the BBWAA award winners were announced at 2:00 in the afternoon, and you heard about them on the evening news, or read about them in a newspaper the next day, or, in later years, saw the results on the Internet, and there was simply a list of the players who got votes, and a ranking of how many votes they got, and you read the list, and it was sort of exciting to see who won but also which players got one silly vote from a hometown writer, and then you went about the rest of your life, perfectly satisfied with how these award winners were revealed and never even contemplating that there might be a way to milk this nonsense for weeks and make it extra-stupid.
See, son, back then there was no MLB Network, with 24 hours a day that they needed to fill with programming, and there were no shows where they counted down the top 9 players to ever choke on a hot dog, running sixteen times a day, and there was no need to create some sort of fiction where there are three “finalists” for every award. Son, there are no “finalists.” The voting still happens exactly the way it used to happen, where the writers vote for whomever the heck they want to vote for, except now, in order to squeeze an extra hour of programming out of the awarding of awards, they announce the three top vote-getters a week in advance, call them “finalists,” and pretend it means something.
It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just stupid.
Like a lot of things. I mean, on balance I guess things are a lot better for you now than they were for me, when I was your age. You get instant box scores. Your fantasy team statistics are computed automatically, without you having to add up long columns of numbers with your TI-85 graphing calculator. There are more games on TV than you can possibly watch, and for the cost of, I don’t know, a couple months of diapers, you can watch pretty much any game you want all season (which is the deal I’ll be attempting to make with your mother — let me toilet train you a couple of months early, and, if I do, I get to buy MLB.TV in 2015, or 2016, or whenever it is you’ll eventually be toilet trained).
But some things were better in the old days. And not having to read nonsense articles about the fake “finalists” for the MVP award is one of them.
—-
*Born 10/8/13. Yay!
Look at the headline. Then look at the URL.
Oops.
Poor Astrodome.
The referendum had called for creating 350,000 square feet of exhibition space by removing the interior seats and raising the floor to street level. Other changes included creating 400,000 square feet of plaza and green space on the outside of the structure as part of the project, dubbed “The New Dome Experience.”
The New Dome Experience sounds like the name of a prog-rock band.
(Songs on The New Dome Experience’s debut album include “Cage Battin’,” “Spheres of Leather,” and “Another Ad On The Wall (Part II)”)
Almost two years ago, I made the mistake of empowering you, the reader, with the ability to create, from whole cloth, the Ron Swanson Hall of Fame, honoring the mustachioed dynamo equally skilled in woodworking, meat preparation, hoarding gold, saxamaphone, avoiding his job, and dispensing warm and sincere advice who elevates NBC’s criminally underwatched Parks and Recreation from sublime to divine comedy. I should have, like an enlightened, benevolent despot, made the decision for you, but it turns out I’m too lazy. You actually managed to do an ok job though, electing Old Hoss Radbourn, Ty Cobb, Nolan Ryan, Jeff Bagwell, and Lou Gehrig to be the inaugural class. To date, I’d say we have created the best fictional Hall of Fame based on a fictional character that has ever not actually existed.
With the offseason upon us, now we can turn our attention back to important things, such as choosing the second class of current or former baseballers to join this illustrious group. Thus will we stave off the creeping dread of winter for a short time and four months without baseball. Today, the floor is open for nominations in the comments section and in my Twitter feed, and will remain so until next Wednesday, when we will vote our consciences, because the only thing I respect more than a kindly king making the difficult decisions the rabble cannot is the stupid precedent I have already set. Repeat nominees from last time are allowed, so if your favorite wasn’t popular enough to make it before, you’re welcome to try again.
The established categories under which players, mangers, front office types, mascots, broadcasters, clubbies, groundskeepers, organists, and beer venders can be nominated include:
I played baseball for one season in 4th grade, maybe 3rd, and I had no idea how the game of baseball worked. My three primary memories from that season were: 1) Nearly crying after I struck out, 2) being genuinely surprised when I caught a fly ball in center field, and 3) hating baseball. My first experience was deeply off-putting, and so I “chose” football in the way children take sides because they think side-taking is important. The result of this being that I didn’t come around to baseball for a long time. Of course, I did come around eventually, otherwise why else would I waste 2-6 minutes of your life twice a week writing for NotGraphs.
I was visiting colleges in Boston during the 2004 ALCS/World Series and fell in love (juicily, tenderly, eternally) with that postseason. Shortly thereafter my friend David introduced me to Fire Joe Morgan, and my parents bought me Moneyball for Christmas. In maybe 4 months my opinion on baseball changed from “meh, I’d rather not” to “YES YES PLEASE MORE WHAT IS THIS GLORIOUS MYSTERY.”
The point of all this personal back-story bullshit, besides being my personal outlet for missing baseball and feeling nostalgic about the season and all that bullshit, is to explain to you that for most of my life I missed out on baseball as an American cultural experience. I’ve never seen Bull Durham or Bad News Bears. I’ve never read any baseball books besides Moneyball and some passages from The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Even though I’ve obviously had time to catch up since 2004, there’s always been a steady rush of other media to waste my life on, and I remain a woefully undereducated baseball lover.
This offseason it’s my goal to catch up. Below I’ve made a list of books, films, and other media that I haven’t seen/read/consumed, or that I have consumed but want to re-consume because it’s been too long. What this can be for you, hopefully, is a reminder of some baseball staples that you maybe haven’t munched on yourself. Selfishly, I hope to hear the books, movies, shows, documentaries, etc. that you recommend in the comments.
Ten Baseball Movies/Shows/Documentaries I Want to Watch this Offseason
Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (I’ve only watched Part 1)
Bull Durham
The Natural (I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember much)
Major League I & II (must rewatch)
Eight Men Out
Bad News Bears (1976)
Bang the Drum Slowly
42
The Pride of the Yankees
A League of Their Own
Ten Baseball Books I Want to Read and/or Attempt
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Game of Shadows by Mark Fainranu-Wada and Lance Williams
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri
The Book by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, Andrew Dolphin, and Pete Palmer
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It
Juiced by Jose Canseco
Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample
Drinking with Boileryard Clarke by Dayn Perry (duh)
The Art of Pitching by Tom Seaver
Any other compelling baseball biographies or autobiographies
Yes, I am horribly behind. And there are billions more! Of course there are. It is now your job to tell me what they are in the comments.
Sadly, some will have disappeared by the time this is published.
HINT: His dog’s name is Astro.
Okay, that is probably not a hint, since they would have to give up their entire team for him.
But still, John F. Kennedy’s dog’s name was Lincoln, and Lincoln’s dog’s name was Kennedy, so you never know.