Because my wife’s parents’ home is equipped only with the dial-up variety of modem, I do much of my internetting (while visiting and enjoying greatly the company of my in-laws) at the local library.
This is a photo of all the library books at same.
It was a different time, you understand — 1987, or ’88. A time when men like Billy Jo Robidoux and Mark Funderburk were the flying buttresses in the architecture of baseball — beautiful appendages that distract from the innermost works of the structure. Or something.
It was also a time when baseball cards like this were possible:
They gaze on, each to no great end.
The random pairing of players, the dissimilar orientation of the photos, the misspelling of Billy Jo’s name, the prospect emblem in Johnny Rocket’s font — all of these were only possible in the 1980s, when anything went up one’s nose.
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A few paragraphs into this New York Times article about the Mets owners seeking minority investors and I lost track of whether I was reading an actual news piece or something that was trying to be funny. Apparently the Mets think rich people want to give them $20 million without getting anything in return. How is “access to Mr. Met” not a joke? Mr. Met is a guy in a costume. And it’s lovely that they want to give their investors a weekend’s stay at spring training and discounts — discounts! — on MLB.com merchandise. These people have $20 million to spare on a meaningless fraction of a terrible baseball team, that comes with no control over what the team does. I think they can afford to pay full price for a hat, if they even want one. David Brown has already written a piece for Yahoo about ten things someone can do with their “access” to Mr. Met — a more family-friendly list than the one that first came to mind for me — so I’ll skip that angle and try something slightly different.
Eight More Meaningless Perks To Mets Minority Ownership that the Times article inadvertently left out:
1. Free mustard on every full-price Citi Field hot dog you purchase.
I don’t mean to depress you. I don’t want to bring you down. I don’t want to ruin your holiday season.
But no matter what you do… No matter what happens to you… No matter what you receive under the tree or in your stocking…
You will never be as happy as Carson Cistulli was in 1989 to receive VCR Baseball.
This is not a failing on your part. It’s simply a fact. No one has ever been this truly, perfectly, unadulteratedly happy before. Read the rest of this entry »
The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation team has confirmed, through highly placed sources, that the following is a Thing That Actually Happened. At this time, we know little else about this thing, but it happened and elicited in onlookers emotions ranging from “happy-lucky” to “no more of this; leave me the hell be.” Again, we know it happened:
True, there is no baseball here. But there once was. And there shall be again.
If my colleague Dayn Perry has taught us anything — besides that drinking in the AM isn’t a crime or anything so shut up everyone I’m not an alcoholic — it’s that everything we love will die.
Confirming that notion is this image, courtesy Google Earth and entirely embiggenable should it have been clicked, of Detroit’s Tiger Stadium as it looks today.
1. April 29, 1978. Three Rivers Stadium. Pittsburgh Pirates vs. San Francisco Giants. Bottom of the 5th. Pirates: 3; Giants: 0. 1 out. No one on base. Jim Barr pitching. 0.048 WPA. 1 RBI. Pirates win the game, 6-2.
What is not but could be if.
We could be crossing this abridged abyss
into beginning.
-Silver Jews
Mendoza, in the fourth year of his career, hits his first major league dinger. It’s worth noting here that in his four years in the Pirates’ farm system, Mendoza hit 18 homers. But still: three years in the majors have passed and Mendoza hasn’t seen that ball fly over the fences. One has to imagine that he’s been trying. It’s easy to imagine Mendoza, during his youth, Chihuahua, Mexico, swinging for the fences and watching his friends watch his home runs sail over their heads. He was almost certainly the best player on his block. Probably the neighborhood. Maybe the city. I’m not the first person to point out that the worst major league baseball player is still a very good baseball player, but have you really thought about how that must feel? To be the best at something your entire life and then suddenly, at the highest level, to have your name become synonymous with failure?
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Wherein I skip the Rangers and the Angels because there don’t seem to be any rappers willing to wear their chain, not because I don’t like them. I couldn’t find anything sweet enough from either team to grace the hallowed cyber-pages of NotGraphs, and I’m betting you, dear reader, can’t either. Prove me wrong, preferably in the form of a cordial comment below. 🙂
Two things worth talking about when talking about Rap in the AL West. 1, that MC Hammer was a bat boy for the Oakland A’s, and 2, that there’s this rapper from Seattle going by the moniker Macklemore and he’s pretty damn fresh.
The Part About MC Hammer
It goes like this – when Stanley Burrell (the kid on the left) was a kid growing up in Oakland he would hang around the A’s parking lot, doing his thing. He eventually caught the eye of A’s owner Charlie Finley, who made him a batboy. Reggie Jackson started calling the kid ‘Hammer’, because he looked so much like Hank Aaron, and the rest is rap history.
The Part About Macklemore
Macklemore, a rapper named Ben Haggerty from Seattle, knows what he’s doing. And the dude loves baseball. Last year he released a track called “My Oh My” in memory of longtime Mariners radio announcer Dave Niehaus. It may be the best rap song about baseball, and the video honestly brings chills. I just found it today, and I’ve probably watched it at least five times.
Every year XXL magazine compiles a list of rappers to watch called the Freshmen list. This year they’ve released a list of 50 finalists, and have opened it up to the public. Macklemore made the cut. He’s got my vote.
The child doesn’t want to sleep because of the wonderment about him. Why would one enter, of one’s own volition, that state of soft death when there is so much to absorb? The adult, in contrast, embraces the coward’s sojourn known as sleep because he realizes a consciousness-less existence — a numb, unfeeling life on ice — is in so many ways preferable to the waking one. These little tastes of the abyss ready us for the unending, unswerving one to come.
So it follows that when the human animal begins taking naps, begins looking forward to the captive embrace of suspended animation, the slide toward the grave has begun. Sleep is for those who are in on the joke and have figured out it is not funny but rather horrifying down to our decomposing bones.
And then there is Tug McGraw, who, in the face of all evidence, seemed … happy.
Tug McGraw almost certainly did not nap. Tug McGraw was like a kid out there. We miss you, Tug Damn McGraw.
So pleased was I two days prior when I beheld the glorious (and complex) visage of Rudy Pemberton on this webbed page, submitted for your approval by one Dayn Perry. Pemberton has been a favorite player of mine for the last two seasons based on his absolutely ridiculous 1996 season.
What happened in 1996 to Rudy Pemberton? you ask, predictably. I am glad that you, as I had anticipated, asked. First, he got released by the Tigers after hitting .315/.360/.580 at AAA and .300/.344/.467 in the Majors as a 25 year old in 1995. Then, he signed with Texas. The Rangers promptly traded him to Boston, who stashed him at Pawtucket (where he hit .326/.375/.616) until September.
On September 1, Pemberton was recalled from Pawtucket with Nomar Garciaparra. He played the next day and went 0-for-2, but Pemberton would finish the month at .512/.556/.780 with 21 hits in 41 at bats, 2 walks, 2 hit by pitch, 3 stolen bases, 8 doubles, 1 homer, 11 runs, and 10 RBI. Garciaparra hit .241/.272/.471, the pansy.
What follows is a non-exhaustive and only partially untrue list of facts regarding Rudy Pemberton’s incredible September, which should give you great joy: Read the rest of this entry »
