I was trying to listen to the game, but turned to the station and heard only silence. “Must be a rain delay,” I told my wife, except — and, please note, this is where events skew decidedly fantastic — except it wasn’t my wife in the next room, but radio voice of baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers, Bob Uecker, instead.

“This is clearly absurd,” I said. “You’re supposed to be in Milwaukee, not in my affordable apartment in Madison.” To which sentiment he responded: “Supposed to? I’m 77 years old, man. My only obligation now is to greet the abyss with something not unlike dignity.”

That was a great moment between us — probably one of my top-five as an adult so far, were I to make a list.

In conclusion:

“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.”
– James Michener, advice to aspiring writers

You may have noticed, dear readers, that nowhere in the previous quotation does our historical novelist friend mention statistics. Indeed, it’s a well-known rite of passage for each intrepid, young baseball writer to craft his or her own statistic, much as the children of olden times smithed silver goblets or shot bears.

My quest began, as all sources of intellectual thought and debate in our modern times, with the AL MVP debate. My target was neither the loathsome RBI-proponents who back Miguel Cabrera nor the equally loathsome trigonometry professors who support Mike Trout. Instead, my target was those lofty journalists and philosophers who preferred to stay above the fray by positing that the AL MVP race didn’t really matter anyway. It’s not cool to care about awards, after all. Winning and process reign supreme; nationwide validation for one’s achievements is meaningless if not conceited.

But it does mean something. Look at Detroit’s own Alan Trammell: if he had won the 1987 AL MVP over RBI-machine George Bell, it would have changed the face of his Hall of Fame candidacy. He wouldn’t have been plagued by the consistent, good-but-not-great label that wore the creases into his face and killed his chance at immortality. Not even learning that Wade Boggs took the WAR crown in ’87 could quench my newfound thirst for justice.

And so it is with both pleasure and light self-satisfaction that I present, with my colleague Joel (twitter: @CajoleJuiceEsq), FanGraphs’ newest statistic: FAME, or the Fanfare and Acclaim Metric Extraordinaire.

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I decided to type in “Manny Acta” followed by each letter of the alphabet (“Manny Acta a,” “Manny Acta b,” etc.) to see what Google Autocomplete thinks about the recently-fired Indians skipper. Here are the results. (I’ve bolded some highlights.)

Manny Acta all star coach
Manny Acta all star game
Manny Acta all star
Manny Acta and wife
Manny Acta bio
Manny Acta bowling
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I don’t know what you just did, reader — like, wear white after Labor Day, maybe, or make a comment in defense of that inveterate plagiarist Jonah Lehrer. What’s obvious, though, from the footage embedded here is that Glen Perkins does not care for it. Not even a little, really.

GIF courtesy @BlueJayHunter via Greg Wisniewski.

Click, with a view to embiggening.

According to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is “a free, collaboratively edited, and multilingual Internet encyclopedia.”

Also according to Wikipedia, Wins Above Replacement (or, WAR) is — among other things — both “a bunch of crap” and “differnet [sic] from source to source.”

Truth is what has been spoken here, America.

Credit to He of the Terrific Cheekbones, the internet’s Matt Hunter.

You know this player: it’s Chipper Jones, the shoe-in Hall-of-Famer who’s about to play the final regular season series of his career.

It was a different time, you understand — 1992, or ’93.

You also know this couch: it was in your parents’ basement when you were growing up. It stinks of something sticky, of Doritos, of sex. Or, in spite of the sticky puffed, the Doritos crumbled, the sex had upon it, it still smells of something older, from long before you.

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Reader DShep of SB Nation Rangers blog Lone Star Ball not only edited together a single video of all 221 of Yu Darvish’s strikeouts this season, he also set said montage to the hottest jams of the author’s childhood.

Lost in the commotion over Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown candidacy is the fact that another player is in contention for an equally historic accomplishment. I’m referring to the remarkable Jemile Weeks of Oakland, who — although it’s a very long shot — could theoretically still join the very short list of Triple Dunce Cap winners. To win the Triple Dunce Cap, of course, one must finish last in one’s league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. This feat, and Mr. Weeks’ run at it, has not gone entirely unnoticed, although it’s been treated somewhat more prosaically elsewhere. In any case, nowhere to my knowledge has the proud history of the Triple Dunce Cap been properly historiographed. I’ll just come right out and say it: it’s my intention to do so right now.

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Three weeks ago, the New York Times ran an incredibly important article about Keith Hernandez’s mustache that, of course, we here at NotGraphs had to cover.

This past weekend, the crucial follow-up story.

Keith Hernandez shaved his mustache.

He might grow it back.

The Earth is still spinning on its axis.

Here is a video of the Phantom Grand Slam, and here is the Phantom Grand Slam enGIF’d:

Base-rounding footage truncated for your loading pleasure.

If this is the first you are seeing of this grand salami, then I envy you. If that is not enough to sate you intellectual desires, watch the full clip (above linked) and that should both explain this oddity and remove a thin sheening of fun and mystery from the GIF.

After the jump, enjoy a fast-motion, more accurate rendering of the Phantom Grand Slam:
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