Last week, CBS reported that tensions in the Angels’ clubhouse last season grew so high that Torii Hunter and Albert Pujols nearly ended up in a fight. Leading to this informative news illustration.
“Hunter Fights Pujols”
Readers are invited to improve on this.
ST. PETERSBURG — Matt Moore felt fine Sunday, a day after the 24-year-old left-hander threw a simulated game. “I feel good, just normal soreness,” Moore said. “You know, okay. Adequate. Better than bad. Not quite great.” “So you’d say you’re feeling acceptable?” asked this reporter. “Yeah, satisfactory. Decent. Tolerable. Bearable.” “And how have you been spending your time on the disabled list?” “Studying for the SAT.”
This is the newsiest news since one fan “attended” a recent “game.” Why did the quotation marks around “good” bother me enough to write a post about them? I don’t know! But they did!
Ryan Braun is in the news for all kinds of naughty things he did and put into himself in order to be a better, more productive, healthier baseball player. Ultimately, I’m glad that he’s being punished and I hope he learns a lesson from all of this.
That lesson, the one I hope he learns, is not one of the ones that the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers tried to instill in me and my son when we attended a game at Miller Park last year and provided us with self-improvement themed baseball cards, which I had totally forgotten about until my hetero-sexual life mate, Bill Parker, brought his kids to my house last weekend and found them. Perhaps Bill should have learned a valuable lesson about not snooping, but considering I’m getting an entire not-entirely-unamusing NotGraphs post out of it, I have decided to leave that lesson untaught. Instead, in retaliation, I plan to show Monday’s video to his children when they’re teenagers (note: someone remind me to do this in about 10 years).
Anyway, in the meantime, here is the first installment of Life Lessons with the 2012 Brewers, starring Ryan Braun:
“To those you meet, be sweet: Having good manners is important. Learn them now and use them forever.”
This is America, for God’s sake. I should not have to pronounce confusing foreign names like “Nelson Cruz,” and neither should you. Therefore, I propose that we refer to each foreign ballplayer by the closest English translation of his name. As a modest service to my fellow patriots, I have taken the liberty of producing some — in this case, for a sampling of Spanish names of particular relevance. Some interpretive license was involved, and you are welcome to question my translations. Just don’t question my right to call a man whatever I damn well please, no matter how embarrassing.
I am not a dishonest person, in general. I am a curious person. When I want to know how much interest a Kenneth Branagh signed Red Sox jersey would garner on Craigslist, I’m not dissuaded by simple facts like: I don’t have one, and: It doesn’t exist. I am far more curious than dishonest, especially if I might find a person who is both an avid Red Sox fan and admirer of Kenneth Branagh. So I did a bad thing. I lied and said I possess something I don’t. I did it just to know.
Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, Brian Cashman. It is a shame that your ex-mistress’s lawyer is partners with Alex Rodriguez’s lawyer, and that there’s now a conflict of interest requiring him to reveal that you told your mistress that you knew of steroid use on the Yankees and didn’t care. And about how you misled federal investigators during the Roger Clemens investigation.
It’s just like the time that I, Hopeless Joe, found out that my mistress’s lawyer was sleeping with my mistress, but really she wasn’t my mistress, just a woman I liked but who would never have noticed me, and her lawyer was indeed a lawyer but not really her lawyer, but rather her boyfriend. Because of course she had a boyfriend. And that’s just another reason she would never have noticed me. And then she was single, and still she didn’t notice me. And I passed her ex-boyfriend on the street once and he accidentally spilled coffee on my pants but I was too timid to say anything, and also he looked like he probably took steroids, but really I’m sure he just went to the gym a lot, and everyone looks like they take steroids compared to me, and also I’ve heard of Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens and that’s why my situation is very similar.
Or maybe it’s not.
Ryan Braun starts off his new children’s book series with the charming tale of the Anti-Semitic Urine Collector.
‘Twas the night before Purim
And all through the land
Not a toilet was flushing
Not a plunger in hand
Because out on the sidewalk
In the midst of patrol
Was a weird anti-Semite
Who had but one goal
Friends, we at NotGraphs have not been doing our jobs, in that one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, Thomas Charles Lasorda is not nearly as well represented in the pages of NotGraphs for his distinguished linguistic accomplishments as he should be. Today, I take the first steps in trying to rectify that oversight, as I present you with the following dramatic monologue, entitled “Tommy Lasorda: Master of the Slow Build.”
But first, let us set the scene. On June 30, 1982, Lasorda’s Dodgers were facing the Padres of San Diego, with the Padres up by a single run in the top of the 9th inning. Lasorda decides to stick with his young reliever, Tom Niedenfuer for a second inning, which proves costly as Broderick Perkins leads off with what will be the last of the eight home runs of his career. The next batter, Joe Lefebvre is hit by the pitch. Niedenfuer is allowed to keep pitching, and allows a double to Tim Flannery before he is removed in favor of Alejandro Pena.
Nevertheless, the reliever is fined $500 by the National League for throwing at Lefebvre, causing some consternation in Lefebvre’s teammate, Kurt Bevacqua, who told reporters, “The guy they should have fined was the guy who ordered Niedenfuer to throw at Joe, that fat little Italian.” What follows is Lasorda’s response:
Each of us has an MLB Twin: that player, active or retired, whose age most closely approximates our own. Carson Cistulli’s, for instance, is Joe Valentine. Though the two share little apart from appearing insane, being ill-equipped to face major league hitters, and being raised by lesbians in Las Vegas, Cistulli can take some vicarious pleasure in the accomplishments of a man of his exact vintage. Dayn Perry’s MLB Twin, as is well known, is Boileryard Clarke; both men were born on October 18, 1868.
Hello NotGraphs. I realize this is a break from your regularly scheduled dose of me. Please try not panic. I come to you today with an urgent purpose. And that is for you to see a video.
But before that happens, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a 13 year-old boy on the cusp of manhood who loved three things: Prodigy Communications Corporation, Baseball, and The Mickey Mouse Club. That young man wrote a letter (a proto-email) to one of the comely young lasses who graced said Mouse Club, virtually daring her to find him. And find him she did, in the most wonderful and awkward fashion possible.
That young man was and is lawyer, baseball writer, my dear friend, and hetero-sexual life partner, Bill Parker, of The Platoon Advantage and SBNation, amongst other fine places. And this, dear friends, is the video that I promised would remain unpublicized until the day he was ready to face that dark chapter of his life publicly. But with Bill finally baring his soul before God and his almost (but not quite) 3000 followers, today is, finally, the best day of my life. Also, of note, he wears a Cubs hat, so this is totally baseball-related.
Please, enjoy this as much as I have:
