They’re New York Mets, of course.
More importantly, though, those “educated fans,” we’re them. They’re us. From Pardon The Interruption, to cartoon’s in The New Yorker — I found this one in a piece, a rather good one by Lawrence Wright, I might add, about “The unintended consequences of American funding in Pakistan“) — we’re everywhere, man.
Cartoon by Michael Crawford. If you want to buy it, you can.
Today, Mat Kovach presented some fantastic research over at the Hardball Times: using Retrosheet data. he found just how every single game in the Retrosheet database ended. Check out the link for the whole results, but there were a few shockers in the data set.
Kovach highlights perhaps the most ridiculous: a catcher’s interference play which ended the Reds-Dodgers tilt on August 1st, 1971, in which Johnny Bench stepped in front of the plate to attempt to tag a stealing Manny Mota, interfering with the hitter.
Other interesting ones: 22 walk-off stolen bases (and one game ending for the losing team on a stolen base), 13 walk-off balks, 427 walk-off walks, 50 walk-off hit-by-pitches, and 64 game-ending pickoffs (including 16 which ended up winning it for the batting team!).
Pretty wild stuff. Make sure you read through the comments section, as the numbers in the original article include some games that were called due to rain, and the comments section cleans some of that out.
No. It’s not alcohol. A Cubs fan’s greatest ally is a shoulder on which to cry. Few better shoulders exist than Tim Souers’s, the artist behind the site Cubby-Blue.com.
The life of a Cubs fan meanders along a path of self-loathing and repeated punishment. For those of us who choose this way of life, it sure is nice to lighten the mood occasionally with some fancy art and bone-jostling funny-tales.
Taste the bitter wine of the Cubs life, and grow wiser on its drought of suffering.
I came across an article in The New York Times yesterday, by the esteemed Tyler Kepner, about 35-year-old Chicago White Sox slugger Paul Konerko. In it, I learned that Konerko doesn’t subscribe to the “See the ball, hit the ball” mantra so many baseball players have found salvation in. Konerko, as the article points out, is more of an intellectual; a thinking man. And it was Konerko’s final quote in the piece, discussing his future as a potential hitting coach, that in turn got me thinking.
Never say never. But I’m thinking the game might only get one crack at me.
As someone who’s only ever been a recreational athlete, and having watched baseball my entire life wondering what it might be like to play the game at the elite MLB level, I was a bit taken aback by the quote. Baseball might only get one crack at Paul Konerko. Not the other way around — i.e., Paul Konerko might not get a second crack at the game.
I have to admit, I never thought of it that way. I always figured someone who plays baseball for a living — someone like Konerko, who’s made millions upon millions of dollars while doing it, and doing it well — was taking a crack at baseball.
But perhaps Konerko’s right. Baseball, after all, is a game of failure. It beats men down. And as I grow older, and I hope a very little bit wiser, I realize more and more that it’s that very aspect of baseball — failure, and overcoming it — that I love most about the game.
Paul Konerko, like so many others, chose to try and make a living playing baseball. It’s a tough road, with no guarantees. So many don’t make it. Konerko did. Baseball took its best shot, a fastball, at Konerko; it’s “crack.” Konerko recognized what was on the way, squared up, and slammed it down the left field line for a stand-up double.
Image via Curved White.
I don’t play fantasy baseball in the traditional sense (I’m a Diamond Mind loyalist, and for that righteous cause I would lay down the lives of a number of acquaintances), but if I did …
I would spend a romantic evening or three at FantasyTeamNames.net, which is a series of related pages that have been fired through the Internet. There you can submit your fantasy team name to the teeming masses, which I refer to as “teeming” because they so often teem, and find out what they think of your squad’s name and, by extension, the value of your existence.
There’s also an Internet computer link that will reveal to you the highest-rated fantasy team names of all-time. Among the ones that give me chuckle and make me forget for a fugitive moment or two that we are all bound headlong for the abyss are: “Honey Nut Ichiros,” and, of course, “Black Sabathia.”
But then I remembered that all of us are going to die one day.
As you’ve surely heard by now, according to Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen is winning. At drugs, at life, at everything. And that fact is not lost on today’s baseball players. At least not the Kansas City Royals, according to Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra:
Mucho talk in the Royals clubhouse about Charlie Sheen. Guys daring each other to answer every media question with “winning.”
Ironic, considering the Royals know next to nothing about winning. Heyo! And, yes, I will be here all week. Tuesdays and Fridays, usually, but sometimes I pop in unscheduled.
Sports Illustrated’s trusty Vault also got in on the fun, tweeting a Scorecard article from April 1996, when Sheen was spending $6,537.50 on extracurricular activities other than cocaine:
What you see in this image here (which you should right click and open in a new window for intimate viewing) is a selection from Baseball-Reference’s draft database thing. Specifically, it’s a selection from the second round of the 1971 amateur draft — a round in which generational baseball talents George Brett (91.6 fWAR) and Mike Schmidt (110.6 fWAR) were drafted one after the other.
FanGraphs Contributor and Ace of Database Jeff Zimmerman sent this to me and asked the question, “Are there any other HOFers drafted back to back?” To which question I replied both “I don’t know” and “I have zero of the skills required to find out such a thing.”
Luckily, NotGraphs isn’t about “knowing” “facts.” It’s about embedding photos and then decorating them with spirited prose.
Last week, in these very electronic pages, in a post entitled Declarations of Loyalties and Disloyalties, the legendary Dayn Perry, among other questions, asked:
In your dreams, what position do you play?
Center field, yo. There’s no doubt.
Growing up, I was a portly young lad. As much as I wanted to play second base, and emulate my idol Roberto Alomar, I didn’t have the speed, or the range. And probably not the arm. I wouldn’t know; I never got to the ball. In the brief time I spent wheezing around the middle infield, my UZR was Jeter-esque. It wasn’t long before I found myself behind the plate and, finally, at first base.
Years later, having shed the excess poundage, I’m a beer league center fielder. I’m the captain of the outfield. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Is there a better view? The catcher’s, maybe. But that’s hell on your knees.
I live for the chase. That moment the baseball meets the bat; when the ball is launched into the air, and the center fielder is pressed into duty. There’s nothing quite like getting the perfect read on the ball, and making a catch in stride, at full speed. There’s nothing quite like making that split-second decision to dive, to get your uniform duty, and nothing quite like sliding on fresh grass, the baseball in your glove, another out made.
Watch, from the corner of your eye, a baserunner head back to third base on a fly ball to center field, readying to tag up. Beg him to test your arm. Make the perfect throw.
Climb a fence and bring back a baseball destined to leave the yard. Meet, in mid-air, for one fleeting moment, the Baseball Gods. It’s the height of defensive baseball consciousness.
Center field. It’s where I want to be, and want to remain. There’s no better position.
Image, of undoubtedly a future center fielder, courtesy Erica McDonald.
If you’ve never read the collected works of Great American™ Ralph Waldo Emerson — and, in particular, his essays “Self-Reliance” and “The Divinity School Address” — you should probably do that before you shuffle off this mortal coil.
However, if you’re busy for the minute, you can find much of Emerson’s thought condensed into this very brief quote from Manny Ramirez:
I’m just here to play the game and enjoy it… [I enjoy] my life. All the things that I do I enjoy. I’m not here to talk to [the media]. I’m here to play the game. That’s me, you know. The same. Everywhere I go is the same.
On the one hand, it might be important to note that this was Ramirez’s response when asked, in 2008, about his decision to sell a grill on eBay — itself a curious thing for a generational talent to be doing.
On the other hand, it’s also noteworthy that the above would be a perfectly reasonable answer to the question, “Manny: what, per chance, is your entire life philosophy?”
H/T: Reader T-pain.
This slice o’ genius over at DRaysBay is the best bit of Internetty-sportsy deconstruction I’ve run across since this … or maybe this.
Anyhow, this blessed little photo mash-up tells the story better than I can …
That, folks, is GomesRage, and despite what Reds fans might tell you, GomesRage is alive and well at the Trop. I don’t want to over-summarize and dull the wonders to be found within this featured link, but let’s just say the 2011 Rays, despite a talent exodus and budget so tight that a strategic default on a delivery pizza is a realistic possibility, can still throw the beefs. As you’ll see and savor, the post’s author, CBJones, proves it with fancy numbers, including Acronym of This and Any Other Millennium BRAWLFENSE. Even if it weren’t an acronym, BRAWLFENSE demands to be capitalized!
In a related matter, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has uncovered footage of the 2011 Rays at work and play in the mean streets of St. Pete:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXPiIuKBiVA
(Thanks to cherished reader Cooper Toledo and his awesome name for the heads-up. And, yes, it’s apparently On-Field Violence Day here at NotGraphs. Celebrate it with someone you loathe!)
