What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.

So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Dave Parker? For the ladies!

You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, Carl Everett talked his drinking buddies into crucifying him to the front door of a brothel and thus claimed the nickname “Man vs. Bible.” So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:

“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
“America’s Step-Dad” – John Olerud
“Man vs. Bible” – Carl Everett

And now … “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Implications and Intimations

Internet Hot Links teach us that the phrase “like a brick shithouse” was, understandably enough, originally concocted to indicate a lady of pleasing physicality. Time and tide, however, have altered the phrase to mean a gentleman of sturdy build, capable of beating up a nation. It is this latter connotation that informs this particular exercise.

The former player, then, should not only be built like a brick shithouse, but should also be actually be, in the most literal of senses, a stink lodge constructed of bricks and mortar and-or impregnable concrete structure filled with big shit. Here’s a helpful artist’s rendering:

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”?

“@zombeels: @mrlecure you suck.” couldn’t agree more, tonight was not my finest, cost us the game. I’ll do better the next time

— Sam LeCure (@mrLeCure) August 19, 2012

Bob Ross.

Who is he?

Major player in the PBS golden years and landscape painter extraordinaire? Freunde to all who would have him via the tele-waves? Creator of happy little trees, happy little clouds?

Or, Major League Baseball player, pitcher for the Washington Senators in 1950, ’51, and the Philadelphia Phillies in ’56? Purveyor, it seems, of sad little fastballs, sad little curves, plenty many walks, sad few strikeouts?

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One might detect, if one somehow had the inclination, a certain level of melancholy in some of my baseball writing. I assure you that this is in no way reflected in my love for the game in question, but rather a defect in my upbringing wherein my parents lamentably provided me no real tragedy with which to ground my craft. I am a Mariners fan, and this has done its best to to counter my unfortunate life of fortune, but I doubt it’s enough.

Perhaps this is why I took to baseball, rather than football or basketball; in football the offense and defense of a game is seen as a net zero sum, with only occasional flashes of unstoppable brilliance from either side. In basketball, where defense is still treated by the media with uncomfortable derision, offensive performance is quantified as varying levels of heroism, on a scale from zero to one. Only baseball, as Ted Williams remarked, is littered with failure. The best batters get out six times out of ten, and the onus of this is still placed on the shoulders of the hitter, rather than the will of the defense. We are not yet writing poems about the man who struck out Mighty Casey.

The purpose of this long-winded introduction, as you may have surmised, is to reflect on some of the writings of nineteenth-century philosopher and general malcontent Arthur Schopenhauer, specifically his unshakable opinion that the world is full of suffering. His best line: “A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating with those of the animal being eaten.” Misery is everywhere, and it’s unavaoidable.

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The author, a high school senior in 1998, was one of the few second basemen consistently DH’d for in the Greater Boston area’s Independent School League.

Image largely stolen from ESPN’s Mark Simon.

Colon Leaves a Black Mark on the Sport

Oakland Gets Mandatory Colonostomy

Roids Found in Swollen Colon

Colon Blown Out in Oakland

Is 50 Games Enough Punishment for A’s Colon?

Dirty Colon Not Fooling Anybody

A’s get caught with a Colon Full of PEDs

and the winner:

Colon Busted by MLB Probe

What does a saber-savvy organization look like on the field?

The questions oscillates from easy to difficult as you appraise it. Obviously, sabermetrics have made certain advances in research that could easily be played out on the field, though, and if we could answer the question, we might be able to look at how a team actually plays on the field and compare that to our Saber Checklist. So, what does a saber-savvy team look like on the field?

I have some suggestions, and I’d love to see yours. Most of mine concern the precious nature of outs and the platoon advantage, but there are other ways to see a saber mindset impacting the game on the field directly. And feel free to question the ones I have up there — it’s hard enough to sum up sabermetric research as a monolith, and even harder to draw a straight line from that research to the play on the field.

–

Between Colby Rasmus’ new ‘do, back-to-back losses — in which the Blue Jays were outscored 14-6 — to the Orioles, Jose Bautista again landing on the disabled list, and Kevin frigging Gregg striking out the side — Rasmus, Edwin Encarnacion, and Kelly Johnson — in the 9th inning Saturday night, I’ve hit bottom as a Toronto supporter. There’s only so much bullshit one man can take.

But, seriously, what the hell was Rasmus thinking? I know he’s struggling, but there had to have been another option. Other options. Somewhere, Tony La Russa — like the rest of us — is laughing.

What can I say. I preferred the long hair; the sick flow. I preferred Colbylocks.

Image credit: The Twitter feed of Mr. Ricky Romero.

Inspired by the work of my colleague Patrick Dubuque last Friday, especially by the phrase “cognizant that our identities are really just a collection of our obligations,” I myself would like to much less subtly suggest that our identities are really just a collection of pop cultural associations.

Based on that premise, my identity is probably comprised of equal parts Mrs. Doubtfire and The Diabolical Biz Markie. Here at NotGraphs, we hope that within a generation our readers’ identities will be dictated solely by the sad carnival of GIFs and other art works, memes, “research,” jokes, writing styles, and the alternatively crude/gentlepersonly/apocalyptic sensibility contained here at the site.

With all these things in mind, I would like to present Brandon Phillips doing the “Mudd Foot,” a dance created by the Diabolical Biz himself, in reference to the homophonic Fat Albert character, Mudfoot.

“It’s an animated dance for my employment.”

The GIF will make you ill or send you into seizure, as many things on NotGraphs might do (e.g. many of Carson’s posts). The Bizzy stylings will make you nostalgic for simpler times, when one could get on tha mic and be genuinely weird — as many things at NotGraphs might do. Finally, the image of ol’ Mudfoot will help replace your memories of grandparents’ faces with the image of the Colonel getting served, the memory of their voices with the sound of Bob Uecker’s, the memory of their elderly smells with the imagined smell of Dick Allen’s cigarette smoke wafting up from a dugout.

So, play the YouTube video that’s embedded after the jump, watch Brandon Phillips do the Mudfoot. When you need a break, gaze upon ol’ Mudfoot telling a tale. Let your identity be one with NotGraphs…

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