Perhaps I am alone in my undue affinity of batting stances (I am not), but allow me to indulge in one of my favorite baseball minstrels, that Batting Stance Guy.

Regard, nerds, not only his flair for the follow-through, but his utter disregard of the whiffed whiffle ball from the Marco Scutaro at bat:

Other assorted notes:

• The Ichiro Suzuki follow-through: Hahaha!
• The Kevin Youkilis follow-through: Hahaha!
• The Jim Thome follow-through: Hahaha!

Hat tip: Rob Neyer.

According to Bob Lemon, “Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.”

In these dog days of the MLB season, I imagine it might be difficult for players — whether they are under the stress of a pennant race, or whether their team has already conceded to a losing season — to find the inner child and have fun both with baseball and in their lives outside of baseball.

A few players, namely those players featured in the images below, are trying to rekindle their love of the game and resurrect their wonder at being alive by acting like kids again. Hooray!!!

Num-num, I love all the flavors.

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Ian Preuth, a writer for Cincinnati-based ABC affiliate WCPO, has fallen victim to the cacophony that is the ML B trade deadline, fair readers.

The MLB trade deadline rumor mill is a dark place. It is a cavern filled with lies, half-truths, and skullduggery. It is a stone crypt, its cold walls sweating with the acidic juices of misrepresentations and distortions. Ian Preuth has been voted resident dullard of this chasm.

You see, readers, Mr. Prueth was burdened with the simple task of reporting a fairly harmless trade between the Royals of Kansas City and the Reds of Cincinnati. Jonathan Broxton, the slapdash relief pitcher for the aforementioned Royals, was traded to the also-aforementioned Reds.

Mr. Prueth, he of likely poor breeding and undoubtedly a state-school education, was charged with the duty of composing a simple write-up about the transaction. He did an admirable job filling in the necessary details, but he felt something was missing. He wanted to dig deeper into this transaction, to scrape some frost of humanity from the chilling side of baseball we call business. Into the cavern he went.

In what appears to be an endeavor to get the player’s reaction, Mr. Prueth did a search for Mr. Broxton’s Twitter account. He did not find such an account. What he did find was an account for the handle @Brox4AllStarz, an account I know – for a fact, actually – is not Mr. Broxton’s Twitter account. It is a hoax, a ruse, a satirical attempt at humor. One would – and one has, in this case – assume that anyone with a third-grade education could discern that the ramblings in this account do not belong to an actual baseballer, regardless of the steamy inside knowledge possessed by yours truly. Mr. Ian Prueth, a man paid to report on baseball, has no time for such reasoning. Reason is for pussies.

Mr. Preuth, the dunce, chose two excerpts from this account to reference in his article. Behold (full screen-capture available here):

The quotes have since been removed on wcpo.com, presumably by an editor with a non-syphilitic brain.

(h/t to the smart and lovely Cee Angi)

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! Pete Rose? Asshole!

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: “Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, Matt Stairs made love astride trash and claimed the nickname “A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning.” 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

And now … “Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy”!

Implications and Intimations

Colonel Sanders dressed like landed gentry, wore his whiskers like Cardinal Richelieu and otherwise had the mien of a huge-ass racist. He carried a rapier-tipped walking cane and 11 herbs and spices with him everywhere. One assumes he enjoyed surveying his holdings from the breezy wrap-around porch with a vast bourbon toddy in hand. Sometimes, lonesome from drink, he would invite this ballplayer over to sit on the breezy wrap-around porch and wassail, most of the while encased in the silence of men.

“You’ve done well for yourself, Colonel,” the ballplayer would say.

The colonel would take a sip. “Reckon so.”

“Welp,” the ballplayer would begin. “Best be getting on. Got a ballgame.”

“Reckon you do.”

“Thanks for the hooch, Colonel.”

“God almighty damn.”

Who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy”?

The Prospect Not Sheet is not a ranking of prospects. I don’t know what it is, but it is definitely not a ranking of prospects.

No. 1 / Taijuan Walker, RHP / Mariners

What he’s eating: Walker enjoyed three bowls of Special K this week, which gave him almost as many nutrients as a third of a bowl of Total.

Why he’s here: In December of 1991, Mr. and Mrs. Walker decided it had been far too long since the two of them had enjoyed… well, you can imagine the rest.

Last week: Walker, the youngest pitcher in the Southern League, finally had the training wheels removed from his bicycle.

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In his very exciting debut, Matt Harvey threw only six changeups — and, per Texas Leaguers’ PITCHf/x data, received zero swings and misses on same.

Through one inning in San Francisco tonight, Matt Harvey had recorded at least two whiffs on his change — against a hitter, in San Francisco’s Melky Cabrera, who has posted just a 5.5% swinging-strike rate and the sixth-most linear-weight runs above average against changeups.

Regard, with an 0-1 count:

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Oh hi. I didn’t see you there. I’m Ruben Amaro, Jr. and I was just leaning on this railing, thinking about a couple of things that I really enjoy: the color green, and trading major league outfielders.

Hehehehe. Hi.

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“Take your glasses off to truly see,” Carl Jung never said or wrote or even thought.

The present author has made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm regarding Mets right-hander Matt Harvey’s excellent debut this past Thursday (box).

A brief inspection of the internet reveals the present author isn’t the only one to have noted the profundity of Harvey’s start, though. What follows, for example, is a first-hand account of influential Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s own personal experience of Harvey’s 11-strikeout performance.

It was as if I were in an ecstasy. I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe — in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness. “This is eternal bliss,” I thought. “This cannot be described; it is far too wonderful!”

It’s not a big deal or anything, but last Friday marked my thirty-fourth birthday. I’ve never really been big on birthdays; the cake is fine, but the singing and the attention and the sincere well-wishing of acquaintances I can do without. Even-numbered birthdays are even worse, because you can look back at where your halfway mark was, and watch how it steadily increases. Half my life ago, I was a high school senior, playing four-chord songs on the guitar and sweeping up a hardware store on the weekends. With each passing year, the number of baseball players older than me is dwindling in logarithmic fashion toward Moyerdom.

D’Angelo Jimenez is still older than me. He is a thirty-four year old baseball player. Half his life ago, he was a seventeen year-old baseball player. Between those two endpoints, this happened:

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Jason Schwartz of Boston Magazine has written an incredible article about Curt Schilling and the demise of 38 Studios, his video-game company that fell into bankruptcy last month. I don’t know that I’ve read a better magazine piece this year. You should absolutely read the whole thing, but a few highlights:

By 2006, Curt Schilling had earned more than $90 million playing baseball, not including endorsements. But what he really aspired to was being “Bill Gates rich.”

Once, after an IT guy’s rottweiler died, Schilling presented him with a brand-new pup during an all-staff meeting.

“He really needed Company 101,” [former CEO] Close told them. “For example, the whole concept of vacation was foreign to Curt. He actually said, ‘People get weekends off, right?’” Schilling at one point suggested that people work 14 straight days and then take five days off. It jibed with his baseball experience.

Schilling comes off in the piece as naive but not evil. He thought he could create a successful software company with the same willpower that had him pitching through injury. But software, alas, is not about physical ability.

I recommend avoiding any future investment in Bryce Harper’s new Internet startup or Mike Trout’s food services distribution company. (Trout Trout, perhaps?)