My daughter is not impressed by you, Jack Daugherty.
She creases the cardboard in her clumsy hands
While you gaze upward at a future, long since past.
To her, we are all undrafted free agents.
She doesn’t understand how it feels to have a baseball card.
She doesn’t understand how it feels to be young.

A million photographs of you languish in plastic tubs,
In garages and attics, wedged between Weedles and basic lands
Protesting to an uncaring, amnesiac world
That you made it, when so many failed, when so many
Assumed you’d fail. You drew 10 walks in 1989.
You, a propaganda poster for the Protestant ethic, a piece of history.

But history is a tyranny of the old upon the young
Of implicit values, adages and limitations,
The insipid morality of sugarless breakfast cereals
Strained carrots, quiet lies, living for tomorrow.
There is no American Dream for the children
Who cry through their naptimes.

My daughter rejects your truths, Jack Daugherty.
She cannot read your name and would not care to.
The accomplishments summed on the back of the card
Are not even numbers, betray no intelligence
A feral, flimsy, and fleeting cuneiform
Good only for being eaten.

As my daughter gnaws apart your effigy,
Destroys one small fraction
Of your existence in this world
She coos to herself, softly.

After beginning the latter’s first-inning at-bat with very much an inside fastball, Corey Kluber proceeded to strike out Miguel Cabrera on three breaking pitches to the outer half of the plate — the last of which pitch is depicted in the animated GIF embedded here.

Also depicted within the aforementioned GIF is a series of speech acts performed by the Detroit hitter. While no audio is available of Cabrera’s message to Kluber, NotGraphs’ Forensic Speechreading Expert Panel of Experts confirms the following dialogue:

“Falafels are never fun… Fun.”

A cryptic message, one notes — but terribly rich and even more compelling.

Because he is afraid both of answers and the truth, the author has not endeavored to confirm that the word Ydhwxactx — very clearly tweeted by former major-league left-hander Jamie Moyer — actually belongs to any of the Oto-Manguean languages. It seems to, however, and that — as America’s celebrities teach us — is what’s most important.

Following his brother’s complaints about the media in Toronto making him out to be a bad guy, J.Q. Arencibia had this to say about his firing as an accountant at a leading firm:

I didn’t expect going in that my numbers were going to be analyzed like that. You know, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that I was singled out as the villain of the office when all I did was botch everyone’s tax return. I showed up, I did my job, or at least I tried to, and then people in the “human resources department” start looking at you like you’re some kind of monster for doing an extremely poor job at calculating things, and then they start telling other people, and my secretary stopped following me on Twitter, and I did end up speaking to my boss about all of this, but he just said it came along with the territory of being an accountant. I thought I was going to be part of the future of this firm and not be made a scapegoat just because all of the clients left after they got audited, and demanded their money back. By describing the work I did as “shoddy” and “bad,” I really considered legal action. They defamed me. I tried to file a suit against them, but I messed that up too. But, you know what, it’s all in the past. Now I’m doing what I love to do, at home, and even though no one’s paying me to file these tax returns on behalf of imaginary people and businesses, it’s a lot of fun, the atmosphere is great, and at least there’s no more poutine. And that’s all I have to say.

This happens tomorrow.

It's official! Local HERO CAT will be throwing out a first pitch on Tuesday, May 20th! @TheHeroCat

— Bakersfield Blaze (@BakoBlaze) May 15, 2014

You, you’re here with me, on the internet. So doubtless you’ve seen this:

I know, right?

But you may not realize this brings about the final age of baseball. Writers know the best stories have inevitable endings — those stories that can end only one way — Juliet, Romeo, they must die — Yossarian must never leave the island but by desertion — and Finnegan’s Wake must, um, riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs… James Joyce is a helluva drug.

I diverged. This brings baseball to its final, most golden age. The Cat-Baseball Era.
Read the rest of this entry »

David Ortiz: trendsetter, world changer, wizard.

First, he turned a no-hitter into a one-hitter.

Then, he turned an infamous error into an infamous hit.

Next, he turned a pop-up into a scorching line drive (in the box score!).

In the process, he turned a one-hitter into a two-hitter … and a two-hitter into just another shutout. Now, emboldened by his mystical success, Big Papi is transforming the very world we live in – the very world we thought we knew! – by altering our most cozy definitions and familiar designations, a Merlinesque achievement in a land where magic was believed extinct.

What follows is a list of what things were and, per Ortiz, what things are.

What follows, indeed, is The World According to Papi.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the author introduced a nearly reasonable methodology for identifying the most impressive baseball pitches over any given interval of games. What follows is that same methodology applied to every relevant pitch since last Friday. Go here for more information on the definition of break.

Fastball
Pitcher: Brandon League, RHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Batter: Giancarlo Stanton   Date: Tuesday, May 13th
Velocity: 94.1 mph   Break: 8.1 in.

Footage:

Read the rest of this entry »

Following Josh Reddick’s debut of “Careless Whisper” as his new walk-up song this week, the author made the startling discovery that Reddick has in fact been starring in a Wham! music video for his entire career.

Click for a larger version.

Hey, Hopeless Joe here. I am writing this from sunny Orlando, Florida, where I have come for a little spring training getaway. It’s spring, it’s warm, everything’s going great (except for my pesky ragweed allergy)… except there doesn’t seem to be any baseball here right now, so I’m not really sure what I’ve done wrong.

I mean, I intended to check the schedule, but my Internet’s been down ever since 9/11, so I don’t really have any access to information. I just figured I was pretty safely in that “spring” window, and since I hadn’t heard anything about the regular season starting (I haven’t gotten a newspaper since the New York Sun folded its print edition, and my cable package only gives me access to Spanish-language children’s cartoons and Dog TV — which I love, by the way), I figured I’d be fine.

And then some kid on line for Space Mountain (too scary for me, I tell ya — I don’t do anything that involves space OR mountains) tells me that the season’s been going on for six weeks, and the BREWERS are in first place. Clearly he was kidding about the Brewers, so I didn’t know whether to believe him about the season… but why would they call it spring training if pretty much all the games happen in winter? That’s like when I thought I was invited to a “winter holiday party” but no one ever told me where or when it was, and so every day from December until March I waited for a call from my “friend” who was hosting the party, and he never called, and then he said we were never really friends, and my therapist says I should get over it, and– you see how it’s sort of the same thing, right?

So I don’t know what to do in Orlando without spring training games. I just wanted to do the tomahawk chop with Mickey Mouse, but I guess that isn’t going to happen. I tried to find something to eat but all they sell here are mouse droppings, and that same kid on line for Space Mountain just finished the ride and came back over here and vomited on my shoes.

This isn’t even the first time someone has vomited on these shoes.