The above is an animation of Spiderman dancing. This has been a bit of an Internet meme, as many people have noticed that, at least in this particular animation, Spiderman will dance properly to almost any song played. The fine people over at the RadioLab radio program have pointed this out, and offer a scientific explanation. I advise reading the article, but essentially, our brain has a bias for things that are in sync, so we tend to focus on the times Spiderman’s dancing lines up with the music and block out the times it doesn’t. This is why it seems that Spiderman always has mad skilz.

I tasked myself with attempting to apply this logic to the music baseball players use whilst walking to the plate to bat. The following is Spiderman dancing to the at-bat music of the top ten batters in baseball, according to FanGraphs WAR.

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Unlike elusive proto-vigilante and 1930s radio star The Shadow, who took some pride, it seems, in acquainting himself with the sort of evils that lurk in the hearts of men, the present author takes pains expressly to avoid such intimate knowledge of the public and its constituent members. As such, that same author has no idea — doesn’t want to know — to what sordid ends the reader might use the audio below of former major-leaguer and current MLB Network personality Harold Reynolds saying aloud the name of FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron.

That said, the tenets of a free and open society necessarily dictate that this sort of information be made available, lest tyrants tyrannize the people tyrannically — which is what would happen were those same people not afforded access to the following audio of former major-leaguer and current MLB Network personality Harold Reynolds saying aloud the name of FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron.

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Culture is a fickle thing. As with tulips, as with visible ankles, as with Kardashians, the collective mores of society ebb and flow. We are cyclical and forgetful beasts, all of us. Today we sleep our children on their backs and encourage breastfeeding; tomorrow we gently spin them in electrical centrifuges and bottlefeed them a mixture of Four Loko and POG. There is nothing good or bad in this; it’s simply the way of the world.

Currently, physical possessions are on the out. The hippies and the yuppies, their battles, are long-forgotten; now, indelibly stained on our retinas are the reams of yellowing newspaper and molding beanie babies of the cable show Hoarders. Property binds us; noble, Spartan poverty reigns. We’re nearing the nadir, the point in which anyone who bothers to keep three of anything is treated as neglecting some deep-seated psychological issue, and the more useless the object, the deeper the person’s shame.

Pat Neshek, as is so often his wont, ignores the prevalent tendencies of the day. He has his own missions. And one of those missions, one I feel bound to support, is collecting an autographed copy of every single card in the 1985 Topps set.
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A tweet larded with hot facts:

At this point — and given that Mariano Rivera will absolutely have an Oregano Rumpus in his honor on Sept. 22 — we are left with no more, no fewer than two possibilities:

1 – Mariano Rivera so loves perennial herbs that he requested that an Oregano Rumpus occasion his retirement from baseball.

2 – That the Yankees’ procurement department wants to present Mariano Rivera with a righteous bag of sweet-ass weed; the Yankees’ promotions department, however, is aware that Floyd, who still uses a pager for Gods’s sake, merely dumped some McCormick’s in a plastic baggy and sold it to procurement at marked-up prices befitting the flawless Sonoma Coma strain. The Yankees’ promotions department is also aware that Mariano Rivera, being a gentleman who respects the rule of law, wants nothing to do with illegal street drugs. Knowing procurement’s insistence on giving Mariano Rivera some weed, though, the promotions department spread the word that it’s actually going to be oregano that he receives, which explains the above tweet. Trust me: That was easier than talking procurement out of giving Mariano Rivera a sack of doobage.

Everyone involved except for procurement is aware that it’s oregano in the Ziploc. This is the case even after procurement bong-smoked the entire bag and, in a panic, replaced what they thought was pot with oregano.

This has been Baseball Players Twerking.

Good night.

While decidedly less fast than a speeding bullet, sportscaster Brian Kenny absolutely graduated magna cum laude from New York Tech in 1985 and even maybe attended St. John’s, although Wikipedia would like a citation so far as that’s concerned.

Despite having considerably less power than a locomotive, sportscaster Brian Kenny has ably anchored several notable television baseball programs, including (most recently) Clubhouse Confidential and MLB Now.

Is Brian Kenny able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? No, it’s ridiculous to even think so. But he won an Emmy in 2003, which is more than most people are doing with their absurd, tiny lives.

Just as Aaron struggled to escape the corpulent shadow of Ruth, and Rose the wiry one of Cobb, it is often said (ad nauseam, really) of Michael Tucker that he played the game under the shadow of Marc Newfield. Now, for the first time, we have photographic documentation of the latter man’s umbral presence in Tucker’s life.

From the eBay listing:

I have not seen another one—1993 SP rookie foil cards with this anomaly/phenomenon in the past 20 years. I guess the only “scenario” that can top this card would be if the card is of Johnny Damon with ghost shadow of DEREK JETER from the same set (both potential HOF), but doesn’t exist!!!…This ghostly error card is truly a rare find on a monumental scale of all errors cards and could be the ONLY ONE that has slipped through rather than being destroyed at the factory! This GHOSTLY ERROR CARD is and should be the “KING OF ALL ERROR CARDS”!

As if JETER would ever permit his ghost shadow to be revealed! Note that this priceless piece of baseball history and irrefutable evidence of the paranormal can be yours for $10,000.

* PEDs in Pill Form: How They Travel Through The Small Intestine
* Swallowing steroids: a graphical journey
* The Post-Game Spread and How Much of it Gets Absorbed
* Chewing Tobacco: A View From the Esophagus
* Bartolo Colon or Someone Else’s Colon? You Be The Judge
* The Game I’ll Never Forget That Was Interrupted by Acid Reflux
* Sunflower Seeds: Should You Eat The Shell?
* Q&A: What happens when you swallow chewing gum?
* Are stadium hot dog calorie counts truly accurate?
* Photo Essay: What If Your Favorite Stars Had Gastric Bypass Surgery?
* Excrequial Carrera, and other players whose names can be tortured into digestive system puns
* Burping: Is it just for minor leaguers?
* Suspensions, and other ways to make medication easier to take
* This Day In Baseball-Related Vomiting

Today my mind’s butterfly briefly lighted on years prior. Strange, since I really don’t have any reason to acknowledge the past. I’m a millennial, apparently, and us millennials are always looking toward the next millennium. We are the voices of the year 3000! If I do look into the past, or even the present, really–if I ever engage my immediate reality for even one damn second–I do so with precise questions herding me forward like the mutant weasel and/or turtle that I am. Questions like: What can I destroy with words? Also, if possible, can I maim and sully the work of someone long dead? Can I misinterpret sociolinguistic context to defame and dog someone who probably worked hard to earn their living? Can I unduly amend someone’s creative property without reasonable justification? Can I make unusual and amusing if somewhat nonsensical lists? If yes to any of these then I will consider the past, albeit briefly and while drinking Svedka, the official vodka of 2033.

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Tonight, we use the internet as it was intended to be used: to elicit page views by means of as little work as possible — in this case, by means of publishing footage of Cleveland right-hander Danny Salazar’s split changeup.

Like this one to Prince Fielder in the second inning:

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