Halfpence is is plural of halfpenny.
Therefore, I am about to make a pointless joke that has been made a million times before, probably.
Also, remember the band Sixpence None the Richer? They existed.
Therefore,
Part of the NotGraphs Holiday Greeting Cards Series, coming this winter!
That question, the question in the title, is what everyone is wondering these days who doesn’t have anything important to do. “We haven’t seen him around these pages for a whole week, and that’s not like him. Is he drunk?” No, but I understand why you’d think that.
“Is he too poor to pay for Internet anymore?” Another likely answer, but not the correct one.
“Has he been fired?” Regrettably, no.
“Is he dead?” Possibly; I can’t verify this one way or the other.
Of course, the reason I can’t verify that is because Carson, or at least his graceless corpse, currently is residing in Paris, France, which is the greatest of the Parises, narrowly eking out a victory over Paris, Texas, Paris Hilton, Plaster of Paris, and Paris of Troy. There, he is allegedly staying with his inexplicably lovely wife and is immersing himself in the French tongue (that sounds dirtier than I meant it). And this has apparently also been the week for his new surroundings to acclimate themselves to him.
While there, in addition to reviving the thoroughly stupid FranceGraphs, Cistulli will serve as an ambassador of sorts, bringing the goodwill of American baseball and sportswriting to the City of Lights, as you can read in the letter below:
Merely a brief glance at the animated GIF embedded here might compel the reader to conclude that Texas right-hander Yu Darvish performed last (Thursday) night — in his start against Tampa Bay — rather a commonplace (if aborted) pick-off move towards second base against the Rays. In fact, further inspection reveals that the video footage is depicting Darvish, a fixture among baseball’s avant-garde always, literally pitching backwards.
“Dad, tell me one more.”
“No, sweetie. It’s time for bed.”
“Just one more! Please! Tell me the one about the White Sox on The Price is Right.”
“It’s already past your bed time.”
“Plllleeeeeeeease.”
“OK. But then it’s lights out.”
“I promise.”
Oh, Cleveland. You are fighting for a wild card spot. Even though you have been working your hardest to secure one of the two spots, you continue to provide fan entertainment.
Almost every day during the last three baseball seasons, I have been doing something that no other baseball fan does: I have been checking the box scores of Miami Marlins games.
I have been checking said scores with bated breath, even, hoping to see one thing: a Giancarlo Stanton home run.
The headlines for the highlight videos of Stanton’s dongs are seldom without descriptors such as “mammoth”, “moon shot”, “upper decker”, or “long potato.” Well, last night, Stanton outdid himself at Citizens Bank Park, placing one into orbit around a delicious planetoid, thereby delighting a powerful entertainment god and gaining for himself a third and gaudy monicker.
Suckle your eye-lips on this teat-treat:
Absurdism is best served GIF!
What even are numbers? I definitely don’t know! That’s why I write for Notgraphs. But luckily Lord Google exists, and I can pray/search for the percent-chance an AL contender makes the playoffs, and then see what other events have or have had a simliar chance of occurring. This way we can ground the shameful ambiguity of numbers in concrete real-world occurrences. Away with the wishy-washy insipidity of numbers, whatever they are.
Tampa Bay Rays
Playoff Chance: ~64%
– Time travel to last spring! There was a 64% chance of major flooding in North Dakota. Time travel to now! Guess what? There was tons of major flooding!
– Choose at random a human from the Rwandan Parliament. There is a 64% chance of that human being a woman. Good news for women and Rwanda!
– Hey Rays fans: Does your child have ADHD? Yes? Look a rabbit! If so, there’s a 64% chance it’s due to their diet. The Rays have the same chance of making–rabbit!?–the playoffs as you being a terrible parent who pumps your kids full of sulfites, salicylates, MSG, and omg a school bus!
– The percentage of people who read Notgraphs at work is probably about 64%. The rest read it at home, not wasting work time but instead neglecting their families.
The search for material to write about this week has led me to this New York Times piece from a few days ago, titled “A Drab and Cherished Relic of Shea.” No, it’s not about the home run apple in center field. It’s about a clipboard, given away to spectators at a game in 1977.
Yes, you may wonder, as I did, why you are reading an article about a clipboard.
But it’s a nice piece about being a fan.
Made me think about the Mets-related nonsense in my old bedroom closet in my mom’s house, collecting dust. Old yearbooks and programs, an inflatable bat, a bunch of hats and t-shirts, a few bobblehead dolls, some baseball card sets, towels and canvas bags…. I used to love when the schedule came out every spring and we’d think about which tickets to get, which 6 or 7 games we’d go see, chosen in large part because of the promotional giveaways.
And then you get older and… I don’t want a bobblehead doll. I don’t want a bat or a foam finger. I have a hockey puck on my bookshelf that I got at an Islanders game a couple of decades ago and I keep it only because three laptops ago, it was very good at propping up the back so that air could circulate underneath and the thing wouldn’t shut off whenever it got too warm. I come from a family that never threw things away and now I end up wanting to throw everything away, because stuff just becomes something you have to clean and store and move, and everything you actually need is available streaming on the Internet.
The point of this piece is… unclear, even to me, but I did want to point you to the fine New York Times article. The clipboard in the picture looks really dirty.
The Milwaukee Brewers are having a bad year. According to my father, they, depending on the day, fall somewhere between “terrible” and “at least better than the Cubs.” Their division looks to be competitive for a while, they have very few minor-league prospects, and their best player is a no-good lying cheater.
One of the few bright spots of Brewers baseball this year has come in the form of Carlos Gomez. He’s swinging the bat better than he ever has this year, and, of course, is still providing stellar defense. Gomez has 20 HRs this year, but I almost think he should be credited with five more, considering he stole them from opposing hitters. Since there is no song called Jumping in Center Field, I improvised with the toe-tapping tones of Count Basie and his Orchestra with Jumping at the Woodside. My apologies to those with slow Internet connections.
Watch:
Listen:
This has been a GIF and a Tune.
(h/t to Brewers announcer and NotGraphs reader Joe Block for the video links)
