Moments before this picture was taken, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has confirmed, Buck Showalter asked Dan Duquette, “Now do you believe in magic?”
Dan Duquette said, “I do, Buck. I do. Now come here.”
Image credit: Tony Gutierrez, of The Associated Press.
Here are Yu Darvish’s three slowest curves that were also strikes from Friday night’s wild-card play-in game (box).
Here’s a 68.0-mph curve from Darvish to Chris Davis in the third:
Posed as a question, but of course, the answer can only be “yes.”
Tweeted by Matt Ufford.
Buck Showalter = every one of us.
Mark Reynolds = every pretty girl or boy that ever walked right past you, every song we never quite mastered on the guitar, every day that you accidentally wasted, every cake that never rose, every cat that never let you pet it, every needle that missed a vein, every beer you didn’t finish before last call, every movie you forgot to see in the theater, every ending that got spoiled before you were done, every party you heard about later, and every baseball game you didn’t watch that turned out to be history. You go, Mark. Good job.
Having no personal attachment to the Atlanta Braves or the St. Louis Cardinals, I watched the bottom of the eighth inning of the Wild Card Game with mingled amusement and helplessness. As the furor grew and people displayed their frustration through ballistics, the announcers grew increasingly disdainful, warning about forfeits and then simply shaming the fans for their behavior.
For those wounded Braves fans, I have nothing to offer except a shrug of the shoulders, a note about the fickle cruelty of life, and this related but comfortless tale about a meaningless baseball game from long ago. I hope it evokes some brief flicker of merriment.
It was the summer of 2003. I was, at that time, living in the tiny municipality of Busan, South Korea, teaching small children to say the word “fish” and having painful barstool conversations with drunken expatriates. One July afternoon, my friend and I thought it would be pleasant to watch the hometown Lotte Giants face off against the Hyundai Unicorns.
It was a contest between the two worst teams in the league, played on a charmless, unending summer afternoon. The crowds filtered through the rusted turnstiles like zombies, circling the concrete skeleton that was the Sajik Baseball Stadium. These days, Lotte boasts the most popular team in the KBO, setting attendance records. But in 2003, the Giants were on their way to the worst record in the league for the third straight season, and it showed:
People who search for Detroit Tigers right-hander Max Scherzer on Google also search for great intellectuals and artists of the Western Tradition, thorough research conducted by the author reveals. And Justin Verlander, also.
Click image to embiggen.
It’s an art, isn’t it, hitting a baseball. It’s poetry. See the ball, hit the ball, yeah, sure, but it’s so much more than that. Not that I’d know, or anything, but to the trained baseball observer, which, clearly, I am, it’s obvious. In order to send a baseball 400-plus feet, you’ve got to put your entire body into it.
That’s where the leg kick comes in. The leg kick is crucial. Essential. And Straw’s was beautiful.
H/T: Crack Attack!: “Visual Crack to feed all your addiction needs,” indeed.
Jeff Karstens knows many things. He knows how to throw a fastball. He knows how to operate a door to a hotel room. And Jeff Karstens certainly knows how to conquer women. His sexual exploits are things of yet-to-be-discovered lore. When it comes to the realm of the opposite sex, and the subsequent mounting there-of, Jeff Karstens prefers quantity to quality. You don’t stare at the hearth when you’re poking at the fire, you know?
Now, you too can possess the same prowess once only known to Jeff Karstens. Introducing DERP: A new fragrance for men. (The next section requires, nay, DEMANDS, that you read the italicized words with an internal whisper.)
A fragrance by and for known gallivanters and fornicators.
DERP.
Also works well as a hair tonic.
DERP.
Featuring the essence of animals unknown to our civilization.
DERP.
Can be used to unclog pipes and as emergency lawn mower fuel.
DERP.
May cause internal bleeding.
DERP.
Do not use near open flame or mammals.
DERP.
Creating a scent that is somehow audible.
DERP.
Ladies will come running, though they may not stop when they reach you.
DERP.
DERP is can be found at all major truck stops across greater western Pennsylvania, and wherever fine taxidermy is sold.
Despite what was clearly an impressive — and perhaps best ever all-around — age-19 season from Bryce Harper, it remains the case that no qualified teenage player since the beginning of the 20th century has produced an offensive line better relative to league average than noted Italian-American Tony Conigliaro did in 1964, when he posted a 137 wRC+ for the Boston Red Sox as a 19-year-old.
This video, narrated (I believe) by former Boston broadcaster Ken Coleman, depicts Conigliaro using the sort of powerful power for which Italian-Americans have become famous to hit his first major-league home run, which came in his first-ever plate appearance at Fenway Park. Italy, the end.
Mike Greenberg, purveyor of Hot Sports Opinions, has, early this morning, purveyed the hottest of them all. As the totally-not-altered or -edited image above (which the reader is free to click, for purposes of embiggening) clearly demonstrates, however, there is at least some precedent for baseball being played on spreadsheet.
In a clever ploy to ingratiate himself to all those namby-pamby, metric-spouting, pizza-faced milquetoasts who make up the MVP electorate, thrice-coronated man’s man Miguel Cabrera has produced his own telenovela. We here at Notgraphs recognize that his rival, Mike Trout, probably needs no such gimmickry given that voters have already spent the last five months fondling his UZR like a Diablo III preorder receipt. But we here at Notgraphs also believe in a fair shake, and so we’ve set aside our distaste and put something together for Mr. Trout.
Trout Creek follows four close friends in the picturesque mill town of Millville, New Jersey, as they struggle through the trials of adolescence. The show centers on Mike, a precocious fast-talker with wide-ranging interests, who finds his security challenged when brash, brawny Miggy moves to town. As Miggy captures the hearts of Mike’s friends with his good looks and old-fashioned charm, Mike begins to wonder if beauty is really only skin-deep — and if there’s any place in his hometown for an oddball with a unique skill set.
