Dear NotGraphs,

Why does NotGraphs have to end?

Thanks,
#KeepNotGraphs

NotGraphs has to end because the world is evil.

As you may know already, my wife had been out of town for a week. This getaway was supposedly under the guise of “roller derby convention,” though her noticeable tan, freshly-plucked eyebrows, and faint smell of suntan lotion and Calvin Klein cologne say otherwise. There is also her icy demeanor toward me, but I think she already had that when she left. Or maybe she got it at the duty-free shop. I can’t remember. It’s been so long now.

Nevertheless, her absence has allowed me to do things that may otherwise annoy her in a two-person setting. This has mainly constituted of watching every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Roll those eyes all you want, this is a perfectly good use of my time. The star of the show, Larry David — or at least the character version of himself that he plays — purports to being a fairly big baseball fan. Throughout the series, he makes mention of many New York Yankees, and even seems to base a whole episode around the a revelation that he has taken a performance-enhancing drug (Viagra) keeping him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame (by the women he is seeing, who happens to be holding the tickets).

The thing that made me laugh the hardest, though — well, the thing that, in addition to two bourbons, made me laugh the hardest — was the following:

I’m not a terribly big fan of converting nouns into verbs, but in this case — this very specific and rarely-applicable case — I will stand down.

Aaron Sanchez: 1,3,5,9,10,maybe 7
Aaron Sanchez: 2,4,6,7,8,probably 9, maybe 10.

Just a stone’s throw north of the city of Seattle, on picturesque Aurora Avenue, dwells a little restaurant by the name of Maru. Inside the tables are made of inconspicuous marble, the free dish of mints are the chocolate-mint kind, and the beer is bottled and fulfills brand expectations. Earnest, weepy K-pop floods through invisible speakers while teenagers pretend to be pre-teens on flat-screen televisions overhead. The atmosphere is peaceful, because families eat in near-silence, bent prostrate over their phones.

I like this place. I order the same meal every time, dolsot bibimbap, which I then drown in hot sauce to hide the taste of the copious and healthy vegetables. I recall the candy they made from the flavor of the burnt rice at the bottom of the stone pots. I use my words of perfect Korean, which include hello, goodbye, thank you, and “where are you going” to my one-year old daughter as she marches laps around the seating area. I drink my Hite beer, crisp as a glass of seltzer water and nearly as flavorful, and feel homesick for the time, ten years ago, when I used to be homesick.

I think of the crowded streets of Busan, a maze of twisty passages, all alike. I think of the ajummas, sweeping the pavement with miniature brooms, or elbowing me in the ribs in subway stations. I think of a market with a plastic bucket full of overturned tiny turtles, some still pitifully waving their limbs in the seaside air. I think of street meat and cicadas and drunken businessmen on morning trains, testing out their English in uncertain terms. I think of a couple, late at night, playing go on the floor of their convenience store, the light behind their profiles spilling out into the midnight blackness, waiting for the last trickle of customers from the bars. I think of street children pointing at my voluntarily-bald head, crying bakbagi, and laughing in fits.

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“I am nothing if not an enormous, glittering fan of Munenori Kawasaki.”

-Albert Einstein

When last we caught up with Japan’s greatest export, Munenori was on pace to became the greatest hitter in MLB history by the 2018 season. The present update comes at a time — a blusterous, unforeseeable time — wherein Munenori Kawasaki is (still) an everyday starter for the playoff-hopeful Toronto Blue Jays. He also continues to add flexibility to his resume. Not only is he blapping a respectable 89 wRC+, he is playing more third base of late:

But most importantly, Mune — who, by the way, is the only play who will appear when you search FanGraphs for “Mune”; so that’s a time saving tip for your daily Mune stat-checks — Mune has offered a PSA, a Public Service Announcement or a Public Tell’em All Abouts (as they call it in Canada), concerning cramps:

A not infrequent topic within undergraduate literature classrooms — and within the books themselves, for whose existence those classrooms were constructed in the first place — concerns the dichotomy between free will and determinism. Speaking generally, advocates of the former claim that humans possess agency and are capable of altering the course of events; proponents of the latter, that events conspire in such a way as to produce certain, unalterable outcomes.

The present post — and the circumstances which have led to its composition — serves as evidence of that second position. Today, while organizing her parents’ attic, the author’s wife happened upon the April 1994 edition of Smithsonian magazine, which issue contains within it a droll and brief account of baseball in France. In a series of events that might be best described as “entirely predictable,” she passed said magazine along to the present author, who is a baseball weblogger concerned with trifling trifles. And because he is helpless against the tide of inevitability, what he has done is compose this post and published it.

Well, everything ends, eventually. Especially when I’m involved.

Remember Friendster? Yep, I killed it. That was me. Tried to make a few friends, people complained to the site — who would want to be friends with a guy like me? — and all the users left and there goes that.

The end of a short period of stability in the Middle East? My fault. Can’t remember what I did, but I’m sure it was terrible.

I read a book not that long ago called The End of Men. My fault too. Weak sperm. Low testosterone. Too many soy products, maybe. What can I say, I love tempeh.

Anyway, NotGraphs. Been a good run. As soon as Carson told me the news, I offered to take the reins– HopelessGraphs, anyone?– but a site focused primarily on Dan Uggla, B.J. Upton, and former Yankees prospect Brien Taylor probably wouldn’t be much of a hit with readers.

Okay, okay, there was a half-truth in that last paragraph. Offering to take over wasn’t the FIRST thing I did when I heard the news. First I tried to find whatever pills I had in my medicine cabinet to see if any of them could help dull the pain. Fourteen TUMS and a couple of Imodium later and, I tell you, my stomach felt a little funny but I was still pretty disappointed. A Sudafed helped get rid of my stuffy nose. But still sad.

Then I watched a couple of innings of the Mets game and realized this whole sport is kind of silly anyway.

#HopelessGraphs?

Where should I put this booger I have picked.
Shall I put it on my shirt?
Shall I put it on the seat in front of me?
Shall I contemplate it for a while?
Shall I eat it?
Shall I let it drop?
Where should I put this booger I have picked.

In the eighth inning of Thursday night’s contest between the Clevelands and the Kansas Citys, left fielder and modernist antihero Ryan Raburn did something extraordinary. Though it was difficult for the author to get an accurate count due to the storm of emotion clouding his sight, it might be suggested that Raburn accomplished at least four things.

1) In the immediate frame of reference, Raburn lowered the probability of his team winning the contest by something like thirty percent.

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If you’ve spent any length of time on the Internet, you’ve likely noticed three conspicuous things – actually, four, if you count No. 1 as two:

1) Breasts
2) One weird trick
3) The slide show

It will shock exactly none of you, provided that all of you attended the London School of Economics, that the motive behind this trio of ’Net essentials is something I like to call “money.” The way it works is this: Click on a breast, someone makes money. Click on the second breast, someone makes twice as much money.

Got that? The theme here is money.

One weird trick to making money, it turns out, is to produce what we in the Internet industry call a “slide show.” A slide show works like this: You find a slide, and then you “show” it. After that, you drive your Lambo to the bank.

And so, in the spirit of driving my Lambo to the bank, I give you this slide show. Please bear in mind that the slides used in this show have not given their expressed written consent, so, when I drive to the bank, I will probably take the back way.

Also, I will probably drive the blue Lambo, not the red one.
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