If there’s one thing for which NotGraphs is known, it’s producing content designed specifically to court hot internet clicks. If there’s a second thing for which it’s known, however — besides that first thing involving hot internet clicks — it’s appealing to readers with the big, broad outlook. “There’s an entire world out there,” the editor of this site has often pronounced at company meetings, gesturing with his arms to the nearest window, so as to emphasize the point. “What our readers demand is that we cover it.”

It’s in fulfillment of that editorial mandate, then, that the author presents the animated GIF embedded here (from a longer video) of Doosan outfielder Byung-Hun Min both homering and then, with what the French may or may not call le grand geste, releasing his bat.

Credit to Dan of My KBO for bringing this footage to the public’s attention.

At no point during his life is the present author more content than when divesting a local pub of its principal commodity and slapping briskly the backs of bosom friends* deep into the night. As the sort of person who has tended rather towards the itinerant side of things, however — and one who also works from home — the author finds himself reveling arm-in-arm with likeminded companions less often than he would prefer.

*A different enterprise altogether, this, than slapping the bosoms of one’s back friends. That sort of thing is looked upon dimly, it would seem.

All is not darkness and brooding, however. By means of the present weblog, that same author is often able to facilitate impromptu celebrations of human potential, which everyone agrees is the best sort of celebration going these days not including the words bunga or bunga.

Of late, concerned reader Michael Spitznagel has suggested that perhaps it would be good and very good were the author to consider the virtues, once again, of Oakland right-hander A.J. Griffin’s curveball.

By way of slow-motion footage from Griffin’s most recent start against Tampa Bay (box) — of a curveball to strike out Matt Joyce — the author has consented. As an added service to the Public, that same author has placed the rather large animated GIF file of Griffin’s curve below the fold.

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Regarding the immanent return of Corey Kluber.

The return of Corey Kluber — and, presumably, the return of the Corey Kluber Society, as well — is only one of the many, many tons of “things” on the crazy, jam-packed, break-neck September calendar of the Cleveland Indians.

Like, what is one thing that is on said turkey-chasing, event-bloated, bottle-necked schedule of the Cleveland Indians, you might ask.

“A number of things, for one thing,” one Indians executive elucidated.

“Oh there’s just oodles of stuff that we have going on this month,” said Indians PR Intern and erstwhile Ohio State sophomore Pliny Smithson.

Like, promotions at the ballpark? Ramping up a PR campaign to create excitement for the stretch drive?

“There’s that, yeah. And so much other stuff, too. Personally, I have, like, at least a dozens different things on my calendar for every day in the month of September,” Smithson offered. “Even weekends. I’m constantly tweeting.”

Nick Swisher, what do you have going on in September?

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Screenshot taken from Mets.com yesterday evening at 6:40 PM, with a white box covering some information.

Can you guess what is happening in 25 days?

(a) The Mets’ “Murder Mike Piazza” contest will be over, and Piazza will be dead.

(b) Piazza is scheduled to give a press conference admitting to somewhere between one and three of the following things: (i) he used steroids; (ii) he is gay; (iii) he used gay steroids; (iv) he and Murray Chass are the same person; (v) he has evidence that Murray Chass uses steroids; (vi) he is a zombie.

(c) Piazza is returning to the Mets as their starting catcher.

(d) Piazza is returning to the Mets as a starting pitcher.

(e) Piazza will be taking over the Mets’ official Twitter feed for an hour.

(f) It’s Mike Piazza Gets Shot From a Cannon Day!

(g) Piazza will be opening up a “Piazza’s Pizza” concession stand at CitiField.

(h) Piazza will be inducted into the Mets’ Hall of Fame, as only the sixteenth catcher, after Choo Choo Coleman, Chris Cannizzaro, Yogi Berra, Jerry Grote, Duffy Dyer, Ron Hodges, John Stearns, Gary Carter, Barry Lyons, Mackey Sasser, Todd Hundley, Charlie O’Brien, Vance Wilson, Todd Pratt, and Omir Santos.

(i) Choice (h) except he’ll be the third catcher, not the sixteenth. Oops.

Belovéd,

Would that I had been able to address you sooner, but the Day of Labor proved too laborious, and yesterday was Tuesday, and Cistulli says I’m not allowed to address you on Tuesday.  Someday, that tyrant will get his.

So after three days, you are undoubtedly aware that Delmon Young has triumphantly returned to the Major Leagues, re-surfacing in Tampa to play for the Rays franchise which bore him and unleashed him upon the unsuspecting league. Since his debut on Sunday, he has collected three singles in eight plate appearances.

In celebration of his accomplishments, the royal We insert Delmon Young’s name into a shitty representation of the Western Canon, thus diminishing those works even further into the flammable morass of Lake Erie that is reality-TV-based popular culture.

Today, Delmon Young is a deeply troubled albino monk assassin in The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown’s abomination of a best seller.  We find him in Paris, France, basking in the afterglow of murder and fighting back his throbbing masthead:

The plaza before the great church was deserted at this hour, the only visible souls on the far side of Place Saint-Sulpice a couple of teenage hookers showing their wares to the late night tourist traffic. Their nubile bodies sent a familiar longing to Delmon Young’s loins. His thigh flexed instinctively, causing the barbed cilice belt to cut painfully into his flesh.

The lust evaporated instantly. For ten years now, Delmon Young had faithfully denied himself all sexual indulgence, even self-administered. It was The Way. He knew he had sacrificed much to follow Opus Dei, but he had received much more in return. A vow of celibacy and the relinquishment of all personal assets hardly seemed a sacrifice. Considering the poverty from which he had come and the sexual horrors he had endured in prison, celibacy was a welcome change.

Now, having returned to France for the first time since being arrested and shipped to prison in Andorra, Delmon Young could feel his homeland testing him, dragging violent memories from his redeemed soul. You have been reborn, he reminded himself. His service to God today had required the sin of murder, and it was a sacrifice Delmon Young knew he would have to hold silently in his heart for all eternity.

The measure of your faith is the measure of the pain you can endure, the Teacher had told him. Delmon Young was no stranger to pain and felt eager to prove himself to the Teacher, the one who had assured him his actions were ordained by a higher power.

“Hago la obra de Dios [I do the work of God],” Delmon Young whispered, moving now toward the church entrance.

Who is this mysterious teacher? What does he have to do with Opus Dei? Why does Delmon Young suspect this is all a Zionist conspiracy? Tell us more about these sexual horrors! Perhaps we’ll find out next time in Delmon Young’s romp through the filthy bowels Western Literature.

they tell us (josh donaldson)
to live in the moment,
each moment

never stopping to think
living a million lives of
blood-blind courage

to twerk like nobody’s watching
to toss out our receipts
to have another
cronut

they tell us, the old men
with the hang gliders and cocaine
who cried yolo before yolo

but you and I know
(josh donaldson)
these men are fools

because the moment in the air
means nothing
without the moment
afterwards

I am posting this not on Labor Day. It is because, in solidarity with the continuing American labor movement, I did not labor on American Labor Day. Instead, I was alternately sipping Crystal Light beside a plastic wading pool and lobbing some pitches to my niece, nephew, and fiancée.

In honor of said, below are some leaderboards that measure how much Major League Baseball players have labored so far this season.

QUALIFIED PITCHERS

*The FanGraphs custom leaderboard that I used to create the above customized custom leaderboard can be found here.

QUALIFIED HITTERS

Note: the “TB&” stat is Total Bases plus BB, HBP, and SB attempts — basically letting you know how much, more or less, a player has run around (or sauntered) of his own accord. It doesn’t include other base running, and when you start to look at TB&/PA, it’s pretty worthless (because SBA is added in), but that’s why this is on NotGraphs and not on FanGraphs — well, that and a number of other really good reasons.

*The FanGraphs custom leaderboard that I used to create the above customized custom leaderboard can be found here.

You know how this works. Fill out the list below, without peeking at the story. Fill in the blanks. Enjoy. Share.

1. High-altitude city
2. Exceptionally well-paid group of men
3. Derogatory term
4. Name of a well-known Cuban person
5. Type of minor injury
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Courtesy of Baseball Think Factory, an interesting article about catcher masks in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

In addition to the titanium mask, which Nike debuted in 2007 after consulting with former New York Yankees all-star catcher Jorge Posada, [Joe] Mauer switched his catcher’s helmet in recent years to a ventilated Rawlings prototype…. [Twins] Triple-A Rochester catcher Eric Fryer wears a hockey goalie-style mask, while Red Wings teammate Josmil Pinto wears a traditional steel mask.

When I own a major league team, my catcher will wear a Zombie mask. Maybe it won’t protect him against concussions, but I think it’ll strike fear in opposing hitters to come up to the plate and see a zombie waiting there for them. Plus, what home plate umpire wants to anger a zombie? And, yeah, it might distract some of the pitchers, but I can get around that problem if I only sign zombie pitchers. In fact, maybe the catcher should be a zombie too, and the mask is just to add an extra level of fear. Like, “aren’t you scared of my zombie mask?” he asks the hitter, and then he tears off the mask to reveal… that he’s actually a zombie. No one will be staying in the batter’s box for too long after that.

And this is one reason why I will never own a major league team.

SAN FRANCISCO — A joint research project conducted by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and Twitter, Inc. has concluded that there are no more original jokes to be made about Los Angeles Dodger Michael Young.

“Twitter is not only a fast, easy way to share ideas with one another,” said Lauren Fraser, a sports partnerships liaison for Twitter. “It’s a great tool for measuring and quantizing what certain communities are talking about. And the baseball community loves making jokes about Michael Young.”

The research project, which began in 2011, was put on hold for a spell during the 2013 season, a short time after Young was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies.

“After the Phillies signed Michael Young, jokes about him seemed to die down,” said SABR’s Executive Director, Marc Appleman. “We contemplated putting the project on the shelf, as it seemed we were going to fall short of witnessing every Michael Young joke being made. Then, he cleared waivers, and we saw an uptick. After that, he was traded to the Dodgers, and we started monitoring closely again.”

The tweet that completed the nearly-two year inquiry came from Twitter user @DodgerzGM, a parody account based loosely around Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti. It stated “Yasiel Puig removed in the 6th inning so he can sit in the dugout next to Michael Young.”

“We had seen some Michael Young/Yasiel Puig jokes, but never one about them sitting together on the bench,” said Fraser. ” Young getting traded to the Dodgers made that happen. It’s a very exciting time for us.”

Fraser and Appleman said they plan to use this research in an upcoming presentation for the yearly SABR convention. They are looking to project a scroll of every Michael Young joke made on Twiiter, that will play the entire duration of the event. As a result, the next SABR convention will be extended to last four and half months. Details are still being negotiated.