Via common sense, that precious gift from our god and creator (David Appelman), we know that there is a limit to which any elite athlete can push his or her body. Often, that is an abstract concept, some theoretical level that we could never hope to attain, but that people like Mike Trout, Michael Phelps, and Michelle Kwan can approach.

Like most people with a name derived from the archangel Michael, I have finally reached that plateau. Over the past weekend, which I spent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a willing, nay enthusiastic, participant at the annual conference for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), I put myself to the test and touched the face of Appelman (note: I am speaking figuratively; in the strictest legal sense, I did not violate the restraining order).  Under the watchful eye and painful lash of my NotGraphs “editor,” Carson Cistulli, I made it my mission to discover if a man could live almost exclusively on Yuengling Lager and cheesesteaks for an entire SABR convention.

I arrived on Thursday morning, and stayed until Sunday morning, so I was limited to three lunches and three dinners. As such, I did strive to have what I thought would be the breakfast equivalent of a cheesesteak on both Friday  and Saturday mornings. Most of this came from the amazing Reading Terminal Market, which was located directly across from our hotel in the heart of the city. I can’t recommend this conglomeration of quick restaurants, fresh produce, meat, and seafood, bakeries, coffee bars, and assorted deliciousness enough. And since I’m told that Power Rankings are SEO gold, here are the official rankings of the food I ate over the course of three days: Read the rest of this entry »

I think the headline writers had a little fun with that one.

And the line break is perfect there.

Frisco fans revolt. (Even more so if Sardinas was spelled Sardines instead.)

(Note: This is technically not a GIF, since it’s length prohibits it from GIFation. Please accept my repentance for duping you.)

This past Friday, Marlins starter Jose Fernandez had himself a day. A good day, to be more exact. A very good day, to be even more exact. He fanned 14 over eight innings whilst allowing three hits and a lone walk. He was, as Talking Heads would say, burning down the house. Luckily, said house was Marlins Park, so casualties were low.

Watch (and listen):

(h/t to Jonah Keri for pointing me to the link)

My mama jus said to me you had 3 strikeouts tonight.. Do you even see the ball?

— Desmond Jennings (@d_jennings8) August 3, 2013

Smh I love that woman

— Desmond Jennings (@d_jennings8) August 3, 2013

Many MLB players have ego problems. Something tells me — not “something”; I can be more specific — a close analysis of recent Desmond Jennings tweets informs me Desmond Jennings probably does not have an ego problem.

Frankly, I don’t think I’m daring enough to risk saying “Are you blind?” to a professional athlete — a lean 6-foot-2 athlete who swings a large stick for a living — when said athlete knows my home address.

See results.

Because the original didn’t do Rob Neyer’s veggie dog any justice. At all.

NotGraphs’ Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has confirmed that Neyer, upon receiving his veggie dog, was wished, “Bon appétit.” They really know how to make you feel at home in Philadelphia.

H/T: Rob Neyer, who is better than me, than you, than all of us.

This correspondence comes from the 43rd annual SABR convention in Philadelphia, PA. Earlier this morning, I watched a panel presentation titled “Imagining Baseball” which featured Eric Rolfe Greenberg, Steve Wulf, and Dr. Mark W. Cooper who are, at least in terms of baseball, famous for writing a baseball novel, being one of the original members of the Rotisserie League, and owning an expansive collection of baseball board games, respectively. The whole shebang was moderated by Baseball’s Grandpa, John Thorn. It was engaging to hear people discuss how baseball is played in their head, especially considering that so much of baseball is played in our heads. If we listen, we are creating the space. If we read a recap of some kind, even more so. Even watching a game, we may be predicting or wishing the next play, or perhaps recounting what could have happened. It’s just as much mental as it is visual or audible, perhaps even more so.

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How and/or why the author has acquired an edition of Expos Magazine from April of 1991 is beyond the scope of the current post. What’s entirely within its scope, however, is the following collection of French phrases found inside the aforementioned periodical — phrases of use in any occasion, as one can see!

One
Ivan Calderon: l’élevage des coqs son passe-tempe préféré.
Ivan Calderon: his hobby is raising roosters.

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I, along with NotGraphs’ Mike Bates and SB Nation’s Bill Parker, am attending this year’s SABR convention in Philadelphia, PA. Before the official festivities kicked off, we spent a day in Baltimore, MD to catch an Astros/Orioles game. While walking around the fine city of Baltimore, we noticed that the town had a certain penchant for Subway restaurants. In short, downtown Baltimore has a shit-ton of them. We were unable to eat at any, so I can not give you a review. However, I can assume the meals would have been fresh, fit, or perhaps both.

Later that night, the Astros’ Brett Oberholtzer pitched a bit of a gem en route to a 11-0 routing of the Orioles — 7 IP, 3 H, 6 K, 0 R (1.22 FIP). This was particularly notable considering this was his first appearance in the major leagues as a starter.

This lead me to wonder — due mostly to a couple Natty Ohs Bohs and a considerable lack of sleep — what Oberholtzer’s strike zone plot would look like superimposed over a map of Baltimore’s Subway restaurants. The following is the (embiggenable) product:

I take slight umbrage with the Google Map, as I saw way more Subway restaurants walking around downtown. Nevertheless, it does seem as if Oberholtzer’s strike zone plot does have some slight correlation to Subway locations, mainly the Lombardi St., Market Pl., Pratt St., and N Wolfe St. locations. I am unsure what the r² of this would be, as I would have no idea how to calculate that, and this is a stupid premise to begin with.

I wouldn’t work in the office, I would go to the office. And then I would sit down in front of my computer and challenge the internet not to bore me for one more day. It’s all I would do. “Okay, Mozilla Firefox, I dare you.” And within twenty minutes I’d be looking at a Google image search of the world’s largest omelette and I would say, “Good job. Fair enough.”

-Kyle Kinane, Death of the Party

Were the author to account for and make a record of every moment of his life, that would become unbearable almost immediately. It would likely also reveal that most of his day — and no little portion of his night, as well — is spent in a perpetual, unthinking quest for fleeting and minor amusements.

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Baseball is a pointless, aimless, unfair, repetitive, and endless display of unpredictable failure. But if there’s any readership that snuggles up to the teats of defeat and feeds on its malevolent draught, it’s this one. Even separate from baseball, awareness of our ultimate irrelevance and propensity to fail miraculously and fantastically at whatever we do brings this readership pleasure, right? Maybe it’s just me. I love a good failure. I brim with glee when I heckle Cubs fans about what they’ve been up to since 1908 (and love, perhaps more, when they heckle back), or when I see an Olympic runner crying on the track as she falls on the final lap. It is pleasure I’m feeling, distinctly, and for me there’s nothing more like a guilty pleasure than the pleasure I experience at witnessing a complete disaster. Guilty or not, I love it.

Which is why it brings me immense pleasure to present to you COOL Game Scores. This endeavor is perhaps the clearest example of failure any of you will ever witness. It is a paragon of dumb joy in the face of catastrophe. It’s a number that is horrendously constructed, and whose purpose itself is pointless. Not only does it miss the point, the point it misses doesn’t exist. It’s like having Tofurkey that neither looks like turkey nor is it constituted of tofu. COOL is a total sham. It is literally nothing but space on a server. But like so many human pursuits, we grunt forwards, hoping somehow that something means anything. COOL, though, definitely means nothing.

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