Update: As with most of my great ideas, it turns out that someone has had this one first. Last week, Scott Weber of the always excellent Lookout Landing did something incredibly similar . So similar our titles are pretty near identical. I was not aware of his work before writing this post because I am an idiot. My apologies to Scott. Please go check out his fine work.

Update #2: This is for commenter reillocity below:

Last night, Buzzfeed Sports took a short break from posting pictures of adorable animals in baseball uniforms to chide the Pittsburgh Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season, let alone won a playoff game, for more than 20 years, for celebrating their win over the Cincinnati Reds:

PIC: Team Gets Way Ahead Of Itself, Throws Party Because They Made The Quarterfinals Of A Tournament pic.twitter.com/WgmuwTETcl

— BuzzFeed Sports (@BuzzFeedSports) October 2, 2013

And, of course, they were right to do so. For who isn’t sick to death of the city of Pittsburgh and the Pirates and all their bullshit happiness at finally winning, and releasing the tension that has been building up for more than a generation. Fuck those guys.

Thankfully, as he always is whenever someone is being joyful or doing something remotely interesting, angry dad Brian McCann was there to tell them to tone it down and cut the fun short:

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Apropos of everything, what follows are three separate animated GIFs of split-changeups from Danny Salazar’s most recent start (box) — which GIFs the author made last week but, in lieu of publishing them immediately, just left them on his desktop for occasional inspection, which is normal, and not weird, according to the author’s therapist.

Here, for example, is Danny Salazar throwing his split-changeup to Alejandro De Aza for a strikeout looking in the first inning:

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Internet Gentleman and NotGraphs union member Dayn Perry alerted me to the above sequence he most likely captured from his Postseason.TV feed. Since I am a functioning member of society who pays for television, I was watching the glossy, HD-enhanced feed from the Turner Broadcasting System, and did not subject myself to this ugly peek behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the above footage is important in that it 1). Is entertaining and 2.) Allows us to do a good, old-fashioned caption contest. I’ve submitted three ideas below (links will open in new windows, so rest easy).

Idea #1
Idea #2
Idea #3

As I’m sure you have your own ideas, feel free to submit them below. If I really like one, I might even convert it to a GIF, though I do not advise you hold your breath on that.

Vine, for those of you who don’t waste your lives entirely, is the latest way phones and social media have ruined everything. In this case, they’ve ruined videos and/or all of visual storytelling by reducing it to six looped seconds of whatever regular people deem important enough to record, which is universally bullshit. A Vine is a GIF, but loud and shameful and horrible.

Billions of people have Vine, though, even Major League Baseball:

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PITTSBURGH — The teammate who distracted Andrew McCutchen during batting practice Monday, causing the star outfielder to be hit in the face by a ground ball, has been identified by sources as injured catcher Michael McKenry. One Pirate, who asked to remain nameless, referred to McKenry as “that insufferable attention whore” and said “He does his stupid little song and dance out there all the time during BP…it was only a matter of time before someone paid the price.”

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St. Louis Cardinals fans should be wary of postseason ticket scammers, the St. Louis office of the Better Business Bureau says…. The Internet has become the arena of choice for sports fans looking to buy or sell tickets…. Be careful buying tickets from someone on the street…. Don’t buy from sellers who try to lure buyers from a legitimate site to another site for a “private” transaction…. If you are buying tickets through an online classified ad site, don’t pay by wire transfer.
–“Be wary of bogus Cardinal playoff tickets, Better Business Bureau warns,” BND.com

Hey, you, with the wallet in your pocket. Are you looking for playoff tickets? I’ve got all of the playoff teams right here. The ones with the Red hats, ones with the Blue hats, even ones with the Green hats. The guys who are probably going to win the thing, and the guys who are probably going to lose the thing. Good places to watch the competition, too. Right near everything. And also near the important thing. Also on the other side of the place they play. And some seats higher in the air, in that other part of the place where things are happening. Are you rooting for the victory of one of the teams that are playing in the thing? Oh, good. You should get my special tickets for the people rooting for the team in the thing.

I have lots of tickets, all of them real and certified by the people who certify tickets. I have tickets for the time of the activity when the winning might happen. Also tickets for the other times and parts of the whole thing, whenever they are. Are you looking for the daytime tickets? I have the daytime tickets and the nighttime tickets. Also the most important tickets, but they are for costing more money.

The playoffs is for the baseball, yes? With the bats and the balls? The base balls? Yes, it is a wonderful sport event with very fun playoffs. And very hard to find tickets that you can find here, from me. I root, root, root for the hone team. Do you? With these tickets you can buy the peanuts and also to cracker the jacks. Do you need phone charger to cracker the jacks? I sell that item too, with real Apple logo glue on with real El-Mar Glue. If your phone is crackered with my phone cracker tool kit you can use any provider around the world for your phone service needs. How will you feel at the playoff competition with a phone that can use any provider for your needs? Good, right? Very good. So you should buy the tickets and also the cracker.

I actually am running out of the tickets, so you need to buy fast. It is one, two, three, four strikes and you are out of tickets to the balls game. I will even throw in a head bobble doll of the Joshua Hambilton. There was an overproduction of the doll so I have access to many of these. I will give you sixteen dolls if you buy one tickets to the playoff match. More if you buy more.

No tax if you pay cash. Also, I only accept cash. Also, I don’t know what tax is. Also, the tickets are invisible. Also, you should give me your phone so I can do magic to it. Also, I am going to make your phone disappear.

Goodbye. Enjoy the balls game.

I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of Mickey Kefauver’s forthcoming biography of Hack Wilson, The Aching Beauty of an American Sot. Kefauver’s work contains multitudes, and among those multitudes is a walking tour of Wilson’s gut. By “gut” I do not mean any sort of belt-straining protuberance, but rather the life and ultimately self-immolating work of Wilson’s innermost innards.

Let me share a couple of passages. First, this medical revelation upon Wilson’s being hospitalized in 1933, for drunkenness in general and suspected Catholicity in particular:

It turned out that those medical professionals were wrong: the man had “auto-brewery syndrome.” His stomach contained so much yeast that he was making his own in-house brew, literally.

Hack Wilson was a drunk, but he was a drunk not of his own volition, you see. A bounty of yeast had turned his belly parts into a craft brewery, and so the gut-beer flowed without ceasing, like the prayers of the already damned.

Second comes this, when Kefauver, in the service of a more soaring narrative, shifts momentarily to the second person and in doing so snatches the reader up by his tailored lapels:

But he was dying when he called you, from a progressive fibrosis of the lungs brought on not by smoking — he never smoked — but, 
apparently, by years inhaling the alcohol fumes that surged up from his gut.

It was indeed the gut-beer that killed Wilson, but not by daily sieges upon the liver or even the boozy crash of a motor-car. You see, Hack Wilson died because he was overtaken by stomach fumes without ceasing, like the damnations of a prayerful man.

As per usual, MLB.TV subscribers won’t have the access to network broadcasts for postseason games that they had for regular season games. What MLB.TV offers in place of said is “alternate angle companion coverage” to the more proprietary MLB Network and TBS broadcasts; of these angles, Postseason.TV subscribers can watch four simultaneously.

For those of you who don’t already have cable television subscriptions, Postseason.TV is a relatively cost-effective option for viewing hot postseason action — but it can also be frustrating. That is why NotGraphs, ever purveyors of fan-pleasures, has developed NotGraphs NotTechnologies™ to enhance your sensory enjoyment of the 2013 MLB Playoffs.

Simply by installing a few simple web browser plugins, you, dear NotGraphs readers, can turn an underwhelming Postseason.TV experience into an absurdist baseballing extravaganza! Behold your many options:

The Pedro Martinez HairCam™

Pedro has joined the TBS broadcast team for the 2013 postseason, but the Pedro Martinez HairCam™ is only available through NotGraphs NotTechnologies™.

Very jheri.

Obscure the Postseason.TV static camera angle of your choice with luxurious jheri curls by applying the Pedro Martinez HairCam™! Choose from several eras of Pedro coiffure!

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“Oh, man, I’m so sorry — I just saw something on the news about baseball, and the season, and it being over — and I realized — I totally missed our draft. My bad, completely. I see now that you left me 9, 10, 12, 50 voice mails about it back in March, and there have been some e-mails since then. I’ve been completely behind on e-mail though — swamped at work — so I’m just getting around to it. You said I could pick my team from the folks still on the free agent list, right? Again, I’m really sorry about it. I guess I’ll take Josh Donaldson if he’s still available. Matt Carpenter. Hisashi Iwakuma. Oh, they’re taken? How about Jose Fernandez? Michael Brantley and Henderson Alvarez just for September? No? All gone? Yasiel Puig — I’ve never even heard of him, but his stats look okay. No? He’s not available either? Who’s out there? Anyone I can grab just for the post-stretch run? B.J. Upton? Oh, he’s still available? Great. Thanks. I guess I’ll take him and, uh, Dan Uggla? Oh, Jeremy Hellickson is available? Cool. Cool. That’s a good core. I promise I’ll do my best to remember next year. I’ll even set an alarm. Oh, I’m not invited back in the league? Someone took my place when I didn’t respond to any e-mails or pick up any players or make any transactions? That’s not cool, man. You can’t just kick me out without a vote. Oh, there was a vote? Come on, you can’t just schedule a draft and not remind people and expect someone to remember it. How the heck am I supposed to remember which month the season starts? It changes all the time. Like Hanukkah. Okay, whatever, I guess we’re just not friends anymore. I have to go anyway, I’m in this Emmy Awards pool and I need to make my picks.”

Nick Swisher is not a bit tamed, Nick Swisher too is untranslatable.

While everyone, even illiterate people, certainly should read American and dead poet Walt Whitman’s master opus Song of Myself, it’s also the case that the idle moment often eludes us in these tough times: there are bills to pay and mouths to feed and season finales to watch and season finales upon which to comment via social media.

Nick Swisher, a self-described “man of the people” (probably), has done those same people what’s known in Swisher’s parlance (probably) as a “fucking solid” in this particular case, and condensed the spirit of Whitman’s work into one enduring and masculine pose — i.e. the pose captured in the image above.

“What do we want?” Nick Swisher seems to be asking.

“Multitudes,” he wants you to answer, probably.

“When do we want it?” Nick Swisher has now asked this time.

“Perpetually,” he’d like you to respond.