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I have written previously about the perhaps unhealthy amount of love in my heart of hearts for one Benjamin J. Revere, formerly of the Twins of Minnesota, recently of the Phillies of Philadelphia. Truly, he is the most beautiful and lovely of the Philadelphia Benjamins, for never was there a better Benjamin than he within the limits of that great American city. He is also the most revered Revere to visit Boston.

And yet, did this morning I read something that gave me pause, penned by the great Jeff Sullivan, one of our betters over on FanGraphs, who suggested that, in hitting the first home run of his career in 1566 plate appearances, “Ben Revere has destroyed maybe the most interesting thing about himself as a player. If Revere is to remain widely known now, it will be for other things.”

We must not allow the memory of Ben Revere to fade, gentle readers. For, while he cannot be all things to all people, he is most assuredly some things to some people (namely me). Here, then, are a dozen important facts about Ben Revere upon which we can base our new understanding of his greatness and defy the Jeff Sullivans of this world who would deny us that opportunity:

1)      Ben Revere has never actually been photographed, because he moves too fast to be captured with conventional lenses. What you see is the layer of skin and fabric left behind when Revere dashes off, cartoon style.

2)      Ben Revere can turn off the light and get into bed before the room gets dark because Ben Revere’s smile lights up any room he’s in, and he’s always smiling.

3)      Ben Revere has a .331 career slugging percentage, which is pretty good for a man who often mistaken for a small woodland creature.

4)      Ben Revere was normal sized until Wonkavision happened.

5)      Consequently, Ben Revere is carried to the ballpark every day in his mother’s purse. She is just happy he found something someone so tiny can do with his life.

6)      Ben Revere is not a poor route runner. He’s a devout Family Circus reenactor. That Billy is a scamp.

7)      Ben Revere never steals second base. He borrows it.

8)      The only thing the morally upright Ben Revere ever stole was my heart.

9)      Ben Revere does not, in fact, possess the ability to hit a home run. He is, however, Nightcrawler, and can bamf the ball over the wall.

10)   Watching Ben Revere run is the closest we can get to knowing the mind of God.

11)   Puppies, LOLZ cats, and panda babies all watch Internet videos of Ben Revere.

12)  Citizens Bank Ballpark’s dimensions are ridiculous, so it probably shouldn’t count, and also the Phillies lost, so it didn’t matter. We can all pretend this never happened.

I beg you, do not consign Ben Revere to the dustbin of history simply because he mistakenly hit a ball beyond the fence which separates the civilized ballplayers from the unkempt masses. Do not forsake him like you forsook Al Newman before him. Be joyous that such a tiny, beautiful man walks among you, somewhere beneath the gaze and notice of aloof, giant humans like Jeff Sullivan. Let Ben Revere into your heart, for only through Ben Revere can you be saved.

After Giants right flailer Hunter Pence fell victim to the notorious scooter snatcher of San Francisco, he mentioned to reporters, “I can’t fathom driving for some reason.” The crack NotGraphs Investigative Team followed up and learned that, in fact, Pence suffers from a psychological condition that renders him literally unable to conceptualize the operation of a motor vehicle. The two-time All-Star’s difficulties do not apparently extend to other pieces of complex machinery, as he readily answered questions about steam engines, countertop blenders, personal computers, and the Large Hadron Collider. Experts, however, note that it remains debatable whether Pence can fathom the operation of his own person.

When last we left our friend, generally deplorable president of the Miami Marlins David Samson, he had been the very first contestant kicked off of this season of Survivor. Even though he missed out on 36 of the 39 days the eventual winners spent in the Philippines, his brief stay was eventful. Let’s recap his downfall:

1) David shows up wearing a sport coat, and is immediately acknowledged as the leader of the “brain” tribe.

2) David establishes his M.O. of speaking entirely in baseball metaphors.

3) David misreads a situation and targets one of his team’s strongest physical players for elimination, “thinking about Day 39” before the game is even 5 minutes old. That player winds up being given a significant advantage in the game.

4) David and the rest of his tribe fail spectacularly in the immunity challenge, meaning they will be forced to vote someone out.

5) David forges an alliance with Kass, who convinces him to focus instead on the incompetent J’Tia, but then Kass tells J’Tia they are gunning for her, allowing her to scramble together a counter-alliance.

6) David is voted out, blaming his tribe for being disorganized (when he was supposed to be their leader) and saying he had no regrets about the strategy that led to his immediate expulsion from the game he had trained so hard for.

On Wednesday, Survivor had it’s season finalé, which Samson did not win, obviously. Because he was the very first person eliminated. Indeed, he has had more time to think and reflect on where his game went wrong than anyone else who played the game this year, and whether by adopting a different approach and making different choices, he might have found even the smallest measure of success.

So during the half-hour reunion show, host Jeff Probst turned to the Marlins’ executive and asked him about his strategy: Read the rest of this entry »

Since you are a baseball fan, you probably have cheered for a home run before. You probably have been cheering for home runs for years. But you probably never have examined how you have cheered for all of those home runs. Maybe you never have asked yourself what the optimal way to cheer for a home run is; you never have fretted over cheering for home runs before a home run happens, nor have you felt dumb about the way you cheered for a home run after you did so.

Well, you should feel dumb. Because no matter what you have done to cheer after a home run, you have never done it correctly. You have been doing it all wrong for all these years.

Thankfully (and thanks especially to NotGraphs reader Eric Rood for his hot, GIF-able tip), former GOP presidential candidate and current senior US Senator of Arizona John McCain is here to show us the way — the only way — to properly cheer for a home run. He shall show us all.

First and foremost: tuck in your shirt. You don’t want to look like a slacker when cheering for a home run. The cheering of slackers doesn’t really count as cheering.

Next, if at all possible, try to stand in front of a guy in a Zac Brown Band t-shirt. This provides an awesome, patriotic backdrop for your cheering.

Then — here’s the really important stuff — do your best impression of an elated zombie by reaching out your arms, and keeping them stiff. Open your mouth in something that resembles a palsied yelp. Rotate 90-degrees away from your wife (so as to disassociate yourself with her pathetic clapping), and then back again — with stiff arms still outstretched, of course.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on yesterday’s post, I thought I’d look for the most unappealing pictures I could find on Twitter of the Rangers’ two-foot long, $26 hot dog. This was easy.

#Boomstick pic.twitter.com/lwDrn6Ih5u

— Cadillac Guillen (@OhShootItsChris) May 21, 2014

This happened…. #boomstick pic.twitter.com/13pA5GwkgK

— Pussy Willow Rose (@Manny0208) May 18, 2013

The "we don't negotiate with terrorists" brisket-loaded, nacho hot dog #AMERICA #boomstick finished @MattyLiite pic.twitter.com/dxuBwnyOn8

— Dustin Potter (@dustinpotter115) April 20, 2013

And the winner:

Too often, we use NotGraphs as a forum to satisfy our own whimsicality. We find things funny and silly and crack jokes and make everyone’s day a little brighter.

That’s stupid. Life is at once a long slag that is over too soon. Every one of us will get our hearts broken, will lose people we love, and feel like we’re a crushing disappointment to our families and friends. And if you don’t, you almost certainly should because you’re probably insufferable. We are, all of us, lucky if we make it to the end of this life with our wits relatively intact and we leave this world with as many holes in our bodies as we came in with.

It is in the spirit of reminding you that life is pain, Princess, and anyone who tells you any different is selling something, that I present to you the most existentially troubling and depressing statements about player injuries from the past week:

“I couldn’t feel my shoulder.” -Felix Doubront, Boston Red Sox starter, after being removed from a game against the Blue Jays yesterday with a dead arm.

It’s hard to feel anything these days, I know, given how numb we’ve all gotten to each other’s pain. How can you even know if your shoulder is there?

Read the rest of this entry »

…Joey Watto also possessed a datapad, on which he would maintain copious records of opposing pitchers and defensive shifts employed against him. Watto only used said inventory as an occasional refresher, however, as he had a great memory for previous plate appearances and game situations. Also in Watto’s arsenal were several loaded lucks chunks, which he would use to remind himself that “luck” happened when opportunity met with a prepared mind and body. As a diversion, Watto owned a shisha, which would, for him, replicate the climate of hi native Canadaria. Another of Watto’s personal effects was his swagger stick; he used it to hit line drives and, occassionally, homeruns. Although he had left family behind on Canadaria, he never cut off contact with them, and always sent money home to them. Within a standard year, he had earned enough to pay off his debts. Despite his initial success, however, he was not satisfied, and was convinced that pitchers were trying harder to get him out than they were with batters of other species….

In case you missed it, here’s the first member of the MLB All-Star Wars Team, Smeth Sith!

Following his brother’s complaints about the media in Toronto making him out to be a bad guy, J.Q. Arencibia had this to say about his firing as an accountant at a leading firm:

I didn’t expect going in that my numbers were going to be analyzed like that. You know, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that I was singled out as the villain of the office when all I did was botch everyone’s tax return. I showed up, I did my job, or at least I tried to, and then people in the “human resources department” start looking at you like you’re some kind of monster for doing an extremely poor job at calculating things, and then they start telling other people, and my secretary stopped following me on Twitter, and I did end up speaking to my boss about all of this, but he just said it came along with the territory of being an accountant. I thought I was going to be part of the future of this firm and not be made a scapegoat just because all of the clients left after they got audited, and demanded their money back. By describing the work I did as “shoddy” and “bad,” I really considered legal action. They defamed me. I tried to file a suit against them, but I messed that up too. But, you know what, it’s all in the past. Now I’m doing what I love to do, at home, and even though no one’s paying me to file these tax returns on behalf of imaginary people and businesses, it’s a lot of fun, the atmosphere is great, and at least there’s no more poutine. And that’s all I have to say.

Following Josh Reddick’s debut of “Careless Whisper” as his new walk-up song this week, the author made the startling discovery that Reddick has in fact been starring in a Wham! music video for his entire career.

We don’t often use it (because it’s expensive, and Cameron usually won’t let us NotGraphs idiots touch it), so it’s been a while since we’ve dusted off the old FanGraphs time machine. While he was distracted by Liberty’s incessant need to play with a squeaky thing, however, I managed to sneak it out of the storage closet next to his office and squirrel it away in the constantly flooding basement that serves as NotGraphs headquarters. Just for funsies, let’s try to send Sam Donnellson’s latest article in the Philadelphia Daily News all the way back to the halcyon days of  1998–when the Internet was brimming with promise, America was relatively free of foreign conflicts, and I was fully enmeshed in the terribly complex politics of competing collegiate a cappella groups–without electrocuting ourselves, and see what happens to it:

The hardest part about being a parent may be imparting wisdom. Your logic could be rock solid, your delivery empathetic and on point, but the words just don’t have the intended impact.

So when Tony Fossas took his 12-year-old son to meet his favorite player this spring, there was an ulterior motive.

“Did you do pushups when you were a kid?” he asked Alex Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »