What follows is not poorly conceived so much as it is barely conceived. Lo, in the interest of improving the author’s workflow and with a nod to This, Our Lassitude, I opposite-of-proudly present the first episode of “Animal GIFs as Baseball Metaphors.” Let us begin with an animal rendering of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series and the smith-forged absurdities therein.

You’ll recall that the Rangers in the course of Game 6 against the Cardinals managed to fritter away a ninth-inning WE of 96 percent or so and then contrived to do the same to a 10-inning WE of 93 percent or so. For the Rangers toiler and or rooter such events were presumably unpleasant in the extreme.

In essence, bliss became undignified agony in an instant …

Sheep-assed. In Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, the Rangers were unsuspectingly sheep-assed by the Cardinals.

This has been “Animal GIFs as Baseball Metaphors.” This has been Appointment Internet.

The great drummer Art Blakey has been quoted as saying “jazz washes away the dust of every day life.” If you have an ear for the most American of music, you might be inclined to agree.

If, instead, you have a penchant for the most American of sport, then perhaps Astros prospect George Springer can use his line-drive homer and casual bat-flip to help you out with that dust situation.

Feel cleaner now, yes?

It’s a matter of historical record that, while the technology to manufacture animated GIFs existed in 1949, it was the province only of select government agencies and utilized primarily to produce short videos of J. Edgar Hoover doing sex to the Articles of Confederation.

Had said technology been more widely available to the public, however — and had personal computers existed and also the internet — then an enterprising weblogger would almost certainly have captured the footage above of Satchel Paige’s marvelous windup and dispersed it to the people.

Last night, in the immediate aftermath of a major league baseball game, a major league baseball player joined Woodward and/or Bernstein to talk about his game-winning hit. Standing on the field as the crowd left the stadium, the player leaned toward the mic and said, “I was just looking…”

Nodding, Woodward and/or Bernstein glanced at the camera and then at the player. “Go ahead,” he and/or they intoned. “Tell me and/or us what you were looking for. And please, consider your responsibility to both the social contract and your own conscience. Be honest.”

The player nodded, as if to concur with the need for candor, and went on. “I was just looking for a pitch…”

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Drawing is something I enjoy a lot. Sometimes it can be a real ballache, but most of the time, it’s the thing I enjoy to do the most. Apart from the few seconds when I have an idea, when my brain fizzes like Pop Rocks, the best part of drawing is when I’m happily going along the same path I’m used to, and then something simple happens, something different, and you see a whole new direction opening up. This happened with the drawing you see above these words. So, I figured it may be interesting for a handful of you to have a look behind the curtain, at the stages of the process that ended up with this picture.

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ESPN’s David Schoenfield investigates Mike Trout’s increased strikeout rate:

Something is going on here besides just a random fluctuation in the numbers, whether it’s tied to Trout’s spring training assertion that he was going to be more aggressive or pitchers finally finding a hole in his swing or a bad case of allergies clouding his vision.

Which begs the question… what is Mike Trout allergic to?

1. Monkeys. One theory, posited by no one, is that Trout is allergic to monkeys, like the Rally Monkey. However, Trout’s strikeout rate is higher on the road than at home, so that theory makes no sense. Also, the rally monkey is a stuffed animal, not a real animal. (Or is he?) Also, I’m not sure the Rally Monkey is even used by the Angels anymore. Also, I’m not sure they’re still called the Angels or if the rest of the team name has swallowed that part up and they’re just the Los Anaheims of Angeles Los Anaheim Anaheims Los Losses.

2. The ball. Except he’s not striking out 72.4% of the time, and 72.4% is more than 27.6%, I think (number alert: can someone from real FanGraphs please check my math?). So even this increased strikeout rate is still less than what it would be if he truly needed to avoid the ball entirely or risk death by sneezing.

3. Ragweed. I’m not saying I’m anything like Mike Trout, or that he’s anything like me, or that we’re secretly brothers, or that I’m also going to earn however many gajillion dollars he’s set to earn in his career, or that I should be playing for the Angels, or that he could write a NotGraphs post, but I’ll just say that I’m allergic to ragweed, and so if Mike Trout is allergic to ragweed too, then it’s sort of like we’re brothers in an allergic way, and that would make me feel super special. Also, can someone recommend an effective antihistamine?

We don’t often use it (because it’s expensive, and Cameron usually won’t let us NotGraphs idiots touch it), so it’s been a while since we’ve dusted off the old FanGraphs time machine. While he was distracted by Liberty’s incessant need to play with a squeaky thing, however, I managed to sneak it out of the storage closet next to his office and squirrel it away in the constantly flooding basement that serves as NotGraphs headquarters. Just for funsies, let’s try to send Sam Donnellson’s latest article in the Philadelphia Daily News all the way back to the halcyon days of  1998–when the Internet was brimming with promise, America was relatively free of foreign conflicts, and I was fully enmeshed in the terribly complex politics of competing collegiate a cappella groups–without electrocuting ourselves, and see what happens to it:

The hardest part about being a parent may be imparting wisdom. Your logic could be rock solid, your delivery empathetic and on point, but the words just don’t have the intended impact.

So when Tony Fossas took his 12-year-old son to meet his favorite player this spring, there was an ulterior motive.

“Did you do pushups when you were a kid?” he asked Alex Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »

“All tucked in sport? Did you brush your teeth? Good. OK, good night. See you in the morning.”

“Daddy, wait.”

“What is it?”

“I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“I’m scared … I’m scared about my UCL.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Allen — smoker, All-Star, activist, eternal bon vivant. If you’re reading (or writing) these electronic pages, you either secretly wish that you were Dick Allen, or you publicly wish that you were Dick Allen. Well. Good news for all of us: this summer, NotGraphs Press will release its first publication, Be Your Own Dick Allen, designed to help even the most Cistullian among us to access our inner Dicks.

Inside the above very handsome volume, readers will find fashion advice, hot takes on tobacco products, a sleeve of pine-tar paper, best practices for loins-bearing and all-star hitting, and inspirational quotes designed to help you achieve maximum Dick Allen-ness in everyday life, just to name a few treats.

To whet your appetites for this groundbreaking publication — as if your appetites for things Dick Allen were in need of whetting — we share below a few of those quotes from the aura (if not from the actual mouth) of Dick Allen himself.

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April 22, 1890: Emile Kinst (pictured below) files for patent on certain new and useful Improvements in Ball-Bats. The profundity of this breakthrough, which changed the sport forever, is best appreciated by reading Kinst’s own words.

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