Last night, Red Sox OF Darnell McDonald made a great catch on a fly ball hit by Blue Jays 2B Kelly Johnson.
It was so good, that it made seven of ten Red Sox fans very happy — if this photo is to be extrapolated from, that is:
Or, there, now it’s ten of ten:
I’ve never seen such a happy fan base. Good job, Darnell.
Having recently read an uncorrected proof of my colleague Dayn Perry’s forthcoming book, Business and Fucking: Secrets to Dominating the Competition in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, I am now filled with (a) a profound sense of shame, which no amount of therapy or SSRI or deep knee bends could ever truly purge and (b) wisdom concerning business.
My first step after reading Perry’s book? To cry in the shower, naturally.
My second step, though? To design and purchase business cards, with a view to announcing to the world that I’m a gentleman who knows a thing or two about a thing or two.
Here is the front of said card (which is actually the MiniCard sold by MOO):
And, in full technicolor, the reverse side:
The ’89 Indians turned out pretty well, for a team that was expressly built for failure. They turned out a lot better than the ’03 Tigers, a team that was presumably designed to win games, but only managed to do so 43 times (oddly enough, right at replacement level — meaning Detroit could have stripped payroll to $10M, rounded up a bunch of scrubs, and given themselves a good chance at a better year). Even the ’03 Tigers, though, were a terrifying baseball juggernaut compared to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, whose season reads like a screenplay for Major League 4, only without any semblance of a happy ending. The Spiders’ owners shipped all their best players to their other team in St. Louis, replaced them with a bunch of dudes named Crazy Schmit and Highball Wilson and Harry Colliflower, publicly stated their intention to run the club as “a sideshow,” and scheduled 112 games on the road after the rest of the league decided they’d rather put hot coals in their jockstraps than come to Cleveland. Somehow they still managed to win more than a tenth of their games, a testament to the randomness of baseball.
Dearest NotGraphs,
What does the launch of FanGraphs Q&A mean for Ask NotGraphs? Do you feel that Dark Overlord Appelman is abusing his powers and encroaching on your territory? If so, I am certain the unwashed, besexed readers of NotGraphs will stand by your side in the fight against against Appelman and his exquisite abs.
Best,
A Young Revolutionary
So this is how it ends. Will McDonald (now ExRoyalsReview on Twitter), longtime mainstay of Royals Review, has decided to call it a day after eight years of blogging about the Royals. During that time, Royals Review grew from just some guy’s blog to a team site on the fledgling SB Nation network to perhaps the most popular Royals blog around.
With the management formerly of Royals Authority taking the helm, things should be in good hands. Still, it is hard for many of us to imagine following the Royals without the incentive of knowing the referents for Will’s next brilliantly-written combination of anger and comedy. How will we get through the season without more Royals Bibliomancy or Mitch Maier’s Letters Home From Baseball Camp, or expressions of irritation over Royals prospect Wil Myers spelling his first name incorrectly.
Will has been a huge inspiration. Don’t hold it against him, but, while I never “worked” at Royals Review, I probably would not be blogging today if it were not for reading Will’s stuff. Will’s posts garnered attention far beyond Royals fandom — I think the first “big break” his blog received was when Keith Law linked to it in one of his ESPN chats. I cannot summarize Will’s work, but that is the nature of all good art. So as a tribute to Will (or “Freneau,” a moniker he adopted in recent times in tribute to a poet from the era of the Revolutionary War) and as a public service, I will briefly go through just a few of McDonald’s best moments of the last few years.
Think of anything that challenges your moderating instincts, any signifier of the good life lived. Whatever that thing is, Dick Allen was through with it before you knew what to do with it.
Now shut up, sit down, genuflect, and watch as your better heaves a ceremonial first pitch for a strike as effortlessly as he once flicked aside mewling baby racists during the Hale, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hale Administrations …
And now a relevant excerpt from Philip Kaufman’s screenplay “The Right Stuff,” adapted from the Tom Wolfe opus of the same name:
Unknown: Is that a man?
Jack Ridley: You damn right it is.
Wampum.
The well-seasoned NotGraphs aesthete is no doubt aware of Craig Robinson’s site flipflopflyball.com. Mr. Robinson is known (and should be even more well-known) for his insightful and beautiful infographics about our beloved game, amongst other things.
Some time ago, I was looking at the “First and Last” section of the site, which visually represents several players’ initial and final plate appearance in the Major Leagues; I was taken with how perfectly some of them seemed to encapsulate the careers of the players involved. Below are a few of my favorites, with brief commentary:
Read the rest of this entry »
H/T to Bryce Harper.
Q: How does one become a circus clown?
A: Clown school.
Q: Why are so many people afraid of clowns?
A: Coulrophobes are quite common, but there isn’t any clear data. Several theories exist, including: the childhood trauma of first seeing/meeting a clown and not knowing what is going on, the fact that their human emotions are obscured and impossible to read, and/or the “scary clown” theme in movies and fiction.
Q: Who are some famous people who are afraid of clowns?
A: P. Diddy has a no-clown clause in his contracts. Other famous coulrophobes include: Johnny Depp, Carol Burnett, and Anthony Bourdain.
Q: How does the “clown car” trick work?
A: There is no trick.
Q: How much money do clowns make?
A: Circus clowns make an average of 38,000 according to the internets in 2010.
Q: Why arn’t you allowed to incinerate clowns?
A: They burn funny.
Like all great correspondences — the famous one between John and Abigail Adams, for example, and the other famous one between noted 20th century pop sensations Milli and Vanilli — my own correspondence with my friend Ross will someday become the object of much literary interest in this country and abroad.
While the frenzied masses will have to wait for its publication (i.e. the aforementioned correspondence’s) until just after my own death, an excerpt from one of Ross’s recent electronic letters is suitable for blockquoting in these pages.
Ross writes (or wrote, seven days ago, I should say):
On another note, hunt down recent highlights of Edwin Encarnacion stroking a dongpiece (he did so in today’s matinee game at Milwaukee, so you can see fresh evidence on mlb.com). Notice that every time he’s shown rounding 1st, he is carrying his right arm in what might be described as a palsied t-rex pose. He seems to do this invariably.
Like any gentleman of taste, I need only hear the phrase “palsied t-rex pose” once to have my curiosity piqued duly.
Abiding by said curiosity, I not only sought out some representative clips of Edwin Encarnacion, but then proceeded to render those clips into GIF form for the enjoyment of at least 10 or 12 people, as follows.
From June 20th, at Milwaukee:
Diamondbacks: Willie Bloomquist (who actually has a higher OPS, so, really, it’s a steal).
Braves: Julio Q. Teheran, cousin of prospect Julio A. Teheran.
Cubs: Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and PLEASE CAN WE COME BACK TO THE RED SOX? PLEASE?
