Tiger vs. Giant: Who Would Win???
October 24, 2012
It goes without saying that, at NotGraphs, we’re dedicated to those twin pursuits of the Western Tradition, art and science. Even more than that, though, what we’re dedicated to is driving the most possible traffic with the least possible content. In conclusion: polls.
Yesterday, in these same electronic pages, the author began his attempt to answer what is less of an age-old question and more of a starting-two-days-ago question — namely, if one were to pick the winner of the World Series based entirely on the fighting prowess of each team’s mascot, who would win? That query was problematized, naturally, by the fact that there are many types of giant things. Giant rabbits, for example. And giant, disembodied eyes, for other example, washed up on Floridian shores. And giant hill figures with impressive, giant phalluses (phalli?), also.
What the author has discovered even more recently — after ruminating on the matter for, like, five seconds — is that there are different types of tigers, too. And not just different species of tigers, I mean, but, like, other nouns in the vernacular that have the word tiger and then another word altogether.
Surely, then, what is needed is multiple polls to determine the winners of multiple Mortal Kombat-style battles to determine the winner of this one, determinative query — which, that’s what’s happening now.
Results will appear in a second, sparsely worded post — sure to drive its own share of traffic — minutes before the beginning of tonight’s World Series game at 8pm ET.
Tiger Mom vs. Giant Rabbit
One is a strict Chinese mother who teaches law at Yale. The other is a German breed of rabbit that weighs 20 or something pounds.
Angel Pagan Kickflip
by Eno Sarris
October 24, 2012
After the game seven win, Angel Pagan did a celebratory 360 flip at the local skatepark. It was fairly sick. You might have called it underrated.
Things That Are Giant Besides the Baseball Team
October 23, 2012
By means of his 2002 novel, author Chris Bachelder settled for once and all the very important debate over who, “given a relatively level playing field — i.e., water deep enough so that a shark could maneuver proficiently but shallow enough so that a bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity — who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark.”
Very much in the spirit of that question, the author asked himself another, similar one — just to himself, like — this morning: “given a relatively playing field, etc., who would win in a fight between a tiger and giant (i.e. the mascots of the teams in the forthcoming World Series)?”
One begins, of course, by wondering, “Carson, do you really use parentheses in your own thoughts?” To which I respond: “Sometimes almost exclusively.”
After that, one continues wondering: “Indeed, who actually would win in a fight between a tiger and giant?”
To answer this second question (i.e. regarding a tiger versus a giant and who would win in a Mortal Kombat-type scnenario) the author was required to settle what, precisely, one might mean by giant — and was required, therefore, to conduct a Google image search.
Shocking, awful, on the computer: the aforementioned Google search produced results that were all three. And more. Like harrowing, for one. And shocking again, for another — because it’s not like the author is a human fucking thesaurus for chrissakes.
Retroactive LCS Gippers
This is a post that I should have made over a week ago, but I didn’t really think of it until Marco Scutaro emerged as the Gipper of the San Francisco Giants.
Scooter-Gipper
And Scutaro is certainly worthy of the Gipper role, just as much as he’s worthy of the NLCS MVP. He’s 36, has logged nearly 5000 regular season plate appearances for six different teams, and has never made it to the World Series. He’s been a part of just one other post-season as part of the 2006 Oakland Athletics team that was swept in the ALCS by the Detroit Tigers. This postseason, he’s batting .500, and has come up with several big hits. We don’t need to chronicle the illegal slide by Matt Holliday that Scutaro bore the brunt of in Game 2 of this past NLCS.
The thing is, the Cardinals had an equally (if not more) worthy Gipper in Carlos Beltran. Beltran is 35 years old, has logged 8349 regular season plate appearances with five different teams, and has never appeared in a World Series. (Fun fact: he’s been in the NLCS twice, in 2004 with the Astros and in 2006 with the Mets, both of whom were defeated by the Cardinals.)
A History of Dumb Baseball Cards, Vol. 2
The youth are a continual problem in society. They listen to music created by autonomous computers and Canadians, eat cereal comprised entirely of marshmallow, and are occasionally sulky about the incomprehensibly massive national debt they will inherit without representation. They giggle uncontrollably upon hearing the word “fart” and play card games with rules based on statistics far more complicated than anything found on this fair site. Surely, any attempt to understand such creatures is tantamount to madness.
Woe betide, then, the baseball card company whose profits are linked directly to these whimsical beasts. At least, they were until the early 1990s, when the price of a pack of baseball cards tripled in three years and children were crowded out of the market by “investors” and post-philatelists. Sensing a demographic issue, the marketing gurus at Topps and other baseball card companies found a solution: “Kids Cards”, which would appeal to the young soul of the consumer and bring them back into the collectible fold.
Best Marco Scutaro Tweets (From Fans of His Former Teams and/or Phil Collins)
Man, the Blue Jays could really use a guy like Marco Scutaro. *douses self in gasoline*
— Steve Dangle Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) October 23, 2012
Marco Scutaro… why don’t the Red Sox get guys like that? Doh!
— Andy Moore (@moorezilla) October 23, 2012
Inserting Matt Cain into Works of Literature
October 22, 2012
Matt Cain is starting tonight for the Giants in their elimination game against the Cardinals in San Francisco. He is also having his name inserted into works of literature — or, at least, extant texts — by the author.
Book of Genesis
Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Matt Cain.
Matt Cain said to his brother, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Matt Cain attacked his brother and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Matt Cain, “Where is your brother?”
“I don’t know,” Matt Cain replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Matt Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch.
Adam made love to his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Matt Cain’s brother, since Matt Cain killed him.”
Raul Ibañez Is for Paul Thomas Anderson…
As the off-season approaches, we’re sure to resume casting for our nascent baseballing epic, MLB: The Movie. For now, a couple of images of New York Tankees have me pondering who should direct this myth.
If you like the composition of this recent image of Raul Ibañez, you might like Paul Thomas Anderson to direct.
Raul said that’s that, mattress man.
Consider these images from Anderson’s 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love:
The Only Nerd in the Iliad
October 22, 2012
That’s Ulysses on the left, Thersites on the right.
When FanGraphs CEO and maker of love David Appelman announced the launch of NotGraphs almost two years ago now, he noted that it would give us, the authorship, “a place to put things that would otherwise not have a place on FanGraphs, that we find interesting and we think you would also find interesting.”
Frequently and violently are the ways in which that original statement of purpose has been abused — and that’s accounting for the work of Dayn Perry alone. Nothing, not even all of the chickens at your local Whole Foods, have been given freer range by the relevant handlers than the contributors to the present weblog.
Still, that’s not to suggest that Appelman’s original and abiding directive is without merit. Indeed, like everything else he touches, it ought to be dipped in gold or stuffed or both. And, in most ways, the work that’s appeared here has reflected the concerns of the modern baseball nerd, purveyor of reason and wearer of spectacles.
It’s apropos both that original statement of purpose, then — and also a recent sojourn by the author into the Great Books section of his home library — that I’d like to introduce (or, as the case might be, to re-introduce) the reader to the only nerd in the Iliad: Thersites.