Breaking News — following Adam Wainwright’s comment that he grooved the pitch Derek Jeter hit for a double at this week’s All-Star Game, Jeremy Giambi revealed that he purposely slowed down back in the 2001 American League Division Series when Jeter made the “flip play” that has become one of his most iconic.

“…so I saw the ball land in right field, and Shane Spencer pick it up, and I was all set to score… but then Jeter comes out of nowhere, sets himself up to grab that relay throw– and certainly by 2001, Derek was already a huge legend in the game, and I figured, hey, what better way to pay tribute to the sport than to set him up for a defensive maneuver that could go down in history. I knew all about the arguments against his fielding– numbers, and all of that– and so I knew it would be even more valuable for him to have a play like this to buttress what was already a slam-dunk Hall of Fame case. I was running full speed, and didn’t want to hurt myself by suddenly coming to a complete stop, but I figured I could try my best to put on the brakes– and even if I was risking injury a little bit, it was worth it to help make Derek Jeter into a legend. I tried to catch his glance– and in a single, career-defining moment for me, Derek Jeter looked at me– actually looked at me, the way we all dream Derek Jeter will look at us, his eyes boring a hole deep into my soul– and I used my eyes to communicate a message. “Flip that ball,” my right eye said, “and you will get me out,” my left eye added. And I used all of the muscle power inside of me to put the brakes on as quickly as I could– and, just as I’d intended, Jorge’s tag got me.

“He never said thank you. I mean, he sent me a gift basket, but he sends that to all of his opponents after every game, so it was hard to feel special just from that. But I know he knew, and I know that deep down he must feel that same admiration for me as I felt for him. And I’m proud that even though my major league career did not go as well as I’d dreamed it would, I will always be part of history as the man who purposely slowed down so that Derek Jeter could make a career-defining play.

“I also threatened to have Byung-Hyun Kim’s visa revoked if he didn’t throw Jeter a batting practice fastball in the World Series that year, so I should get credit for that too.

“And in 2012, I invented a time machine and only let Derek Jeter use it.”

That hole you felt in your life last week?

A hole so vast that you might even describe it as a black hole?

Yeah, that was me. Better put, that was not me. That was my absence.

Let me explain: Once in a blue moon, the higher-ups here at FanGraphs allow the lower-downs here at FanGraphs to sweep the change from beneath the vending machine – it vends pithy quotations from Master Cistulli, if you’re curious – and put it toward a brief vacation from these the salt mines of jocular prose. Having collected a fair amount of the aforementioned coinage, I filled my tank and headed to the mountains of West Texas, careful to leave behind a pair of Paschalian NotGraphs posts in efforts to thwart any War of the Worlds-style panic that might result from my leave-taking.

Still, the emptiness you experienced – a vacancy, like dark energy, that you couldn’t quite explain – must have been terrible, and for that I apologize.

To the point: Upon one high mountain I visited the McDonald Observatory, whose various telescopes are directed at the celestial sphere that enfolds us, embraces us, connects us to its luminaries in ways that remind us that we too are stardust; we too are golden; we too are Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Who we are not, however, are Cabrera, Sale, Neshek & Yoenis.

Indeed, they are stars of a different magnitude, powered by the five-tool fusion that mocks our earthly restraints, and now during All-Star week I honor their glory by presenting a catalogue of eponymous constellations that the telescopes somehow missed.

Editor’s note: It’s best that you do this at night.

Editor’s other additional note: You might as well grab some beers.
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You first notice it during the top of the fifth inning. Don’t wanna break the seal. You wait. Then your buddy brings you another beer. Let’s say it’s, I dunno, something like a Mac & Jack African Amber. You continue to enjoy the game. It’s good to hang out, watch some baseball. The Mariners are in the lead. Félix is being Félix. You wonder if you should go. I’ll wait until the end of the fifth, you decide. It’s there in your thoughts, but you gotta wait. You don’t wanna go three or four times before the end of the game. Wait until the end of this inning.

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(via Rotoworld)

“No, man, I don’t feel it, I don’t touch it, I don’t rub it, I don’t do any of that stuff. Not anymore. I know all that used to be a problem for me, but now I keep my hands completely away from it, I don’t even think about it. I mean, that’s how I injured it, so I know it’s really important to leave it alone, put that whole area out of my head, and not aggravate the problem by going back in there and fooling around. It’s like, yeah, once it got injured, it totally hurt whenever I was doing anything with that, uh, region of my body, but it was the kind of pain that, I don’t know, made me keep going back in, like a good kind of pain, except it wasn’t good because then when I tried to play baseball with it, it was, like, really not good, really hard to swing and everything, even to bend over and pick up a bat, or a ball, or a video of people, uh, naked people, uh, no, like I said, I’m not even thinking about that anymore. So, like, I tried tying my hands behind my back, handcuffing them to my chair, all sorts of stuff. I thought maybe a stress ball would help, one of those little ones, squeeze that, get all of my energy out with that– obviously it wasn’t the same, and, I don’t know, I think in some ways it just made the urge to get back into that area even more powerful, it’s sort of an addiction I guess, but not something the Players Association has any testing for, you know? So, yes, I admit I was feeling the injury a little bit at the beginning, mostly late at night in front of the computer, but I promise, no more. Not since we got that child-safe filter or whatever it was that my wife said we had to get. I mean, I know I can afford to pay someone to figure out a way around it, one of those tech guys, maybe a blogger or something, but I’m being good. I’m not touching anything, poking at anything, not even looking at it, I am not feeling my groin injury anymore. I promise.”

You know, a lot has been made about the amount of attention Fox paid to Derek Jeter last night, particularly in relation to how much attention it paid to Tony Gwynn (none). All of which seems ridiculous to me. First, to my recollection, Major League Baseball has never used the All Star Game to pay tribute to recently deceased players, even important and beloved ones like Gwynn. So to complain that MLB and Fox are not doing something they have never done before seems silly.

Second, Fox didn’t even use all the footage it had of Jeter from yesterday’s game. For instance, after he was removed from the game, they made no mention about how he left the park:

Click if thou wouldst make bigger, as thy Lord commandeth thee.

And thus does the spirit of Jeter doth now rest on Trout.

There are a few things you can do in the shower — wash, sing, fondle, etc. Sometimes, showering helps me come up with ideas for this very blog site. My shower session this morning produced the following results.

From now on, I will stick to fondling.

A young pupil came to his master and asked for a koan to ponder.

Responded his master: “Show me the sound of Hall & Oates playing blue-eyed soul.”

The pupil played “Rich Girl” on a small stereo.

“Good,” said the master. “Now show me the sound of Max Scherzer playing blue-eyed soul.”

The pupil bowed and went to his room to consider this problem.

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5. Twinkie The Loon

According to Wikipedia, Twinkie The Loon was a mascot used by the Minnesota Twins during the 1980 and 1981 seasons. He has 47 likes on Facebook. Baseball Prospectus has called him, “a freak of a bird, with thin legs and goofy eyes.” ESPN named him the fourth worst mascot ever. He is unlikely to contribute this season.

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Last month, NotGraphs lost a piece of magic as Billy McCool, left-handed pitcher and actual person, passed away. Let us take a moment to adore the man, the lefty, the only fella who could make your grandfather’s socks as cool as cubed cumbers — Billy McCool.

Thanks to Paul Agnello for consummating Fate, for bringing the world’s inevitable route to NotGraphs’ front door, for telling us about Billy McCool.

It pains me to confess that as a member of the hallowed NotGraphs brand, I find the straight curation of baseball ephemera somewhat distasteful. Despite the fact that I am a spiritual vulture, picking off the scraps of other people’s lives and accomplishments for my own (extremely) limited fame, I find it difficult to subsume my ego and present, without illustration, something that I cannot in some way be lauded for. It’s a perpetual conflict.

Then, from nowhere, Lenny Randle emerges, and sweeps the I out of the I and Thou.

Lenny Randle once punched his manager in the face for calling him a punk. He tried to blow a ball foul. He went to Italy and hit .477 one season. He came back to America and attempted a comeback among the strikebreakers in 1995, at the age of 46. He created a sports academy and mentorship program.

All of these facets of Lenny Randle, past and future, are combined in a single glorious three minutes of what can only, by the necessary reduction of the English language, be described as music. It is music in the sense that the bloodstream is music. It is driving over traffic cones. It is a protest against death. It is the 1982 B-side, “I’m a Ballplayer”.

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