When the internet’s Aaron Gleeman talks, people listen. And when that same Aaron Gleeman tweets, about 9,000 people read those tweets.

One of those people is the present author, who, seeking the approval of someone both more important and wealthier than himself, has endeavored in this post to begin the meme that Aaron Gleeman believes should exist.

Specifically, Mr. Gleeman is referring to the following quote, which comes to our eyes courtesy of Vernon Wells (and also courtesy of Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register) with regard to the opt-out clause that Wells will absolutely, in-no-way be exercising:

Why would you waive your no-trade clause [to accept a trade to the Angels] and then opt out one year later? I never really thought about using it. You do a contract and you ask for certain things. That happened to be one I asked for and got. To be honest with you, I think about it as often as I think about the money.

Maybe it’s just society, but people put too much on struggling. All of a sudden, everything is negative — you’re a bad guy; you’re unhappy. It’s a struggle, yeah. But that’s all it is. I’ve struggled before. Baseball is such a different game. You can be an All-Star one year, struggle the next year and become an All-Star again. It is what it is. This is a great place to live, a great place to play. I’ve got a lot of good years left and I look forward to having them there.

The author would be remiss not to announce sans haste that Wells should certainly take the money. Wells and another party — in this instance, the Toronto Blue Jays — entered into the agreement entirely of sound minds and bodies. The Blue Jays and a third party — in this instance, the Los Angeles Angels — entered into a separate agreement, theoretically of sound minds and bodies (although one wonders, certainly).

Having said that, invoking society is a practice better left to college undergraduates in their respective Intro to Composition courses — and to those same undergraduates, later on that evening, in their respective dorm rooms after smoking marijuana cigarettes.

More to the point, Aaron Gleeman has asked for, and is now receiving, the beginnings of the aforementioned meme.

Below, please find five images — all precisely 420 pixels in width — including the words “Maybe it’s just society” and:

1. The saddest possible ice cream cone.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the zenith of human folly to assume that mankind has reached perfection. This is especially true of baseball, which could be described from a perspective divorced of context as being a rather silly activity. Personally, I can’t think of a better forum for evaluating the various elements of baseball than at NotGraphs, where such discussions can be undertaken seriously and inconsequentially. But first, an aside:

This week, and I allow the reader to conduct their own amateur psychological analysis of the fact, I attended a Seattle Mariners game. I arrived early and found a spot in left field to watch the Yankees take batting practice. Rather than the hitters, though, my attention trained on a clutch of players, including C.C. Sabathia, Bartolo Colon, and Nick Swisher, shagging flies out in left-center. They began humbly enough, but soon they were throwing their gloves up to deflect the ball, and then at each other in order to distract them. It’s a boyishness buried deep in the genetic code of baseball, something every little leaguer does in practice, and it never really goes away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s instance of baseball-related found poetry comes to us courtesy of a Reddit thread on the subject of whether a wooden bat or an aluminum bat is preferable for purposes of defense of self, home, God, and country. So, with editorial discretion and copy-and-paste functionality, let us begin …

I like the wooden bat. It feels more manly.
Bonk!
Break wooden bat over head, now stabbing weapon.
Don’t put nails in it. That will raise a lot of questions and ill will in court.
But … A spiked wooden bat is better …

Slamming someone in the head with an aluminum bat …
An aluminum baseball bat is a good back up in case your gun misfires.
Makes a better clang when you brain someone with it.
Bonk!

The wooden and the aluminum bat would fit up an intruder’s ass just the same.
Slamming someone in the head with an aluminium bat …
Trick r Treat. Yes.
Bonk!

The body …
Do you chop it up or incinerate? Bury it?
Where?

Thank you for helping keep poetry alive.

Enclosed, one will find a photograph of Chewbacca, the gentle, hairy first mate of the Milennium Falcon with R.A. Dickey, the gentle, hairy knuckleballing pitcher for the New York Mets.

Does anybody else smell a spin-off? Or is that just Chewie’s fur?

(Shamelessly grabbed from Eric Nusbaum’s tumblr, where he declared he had “no words” to describe this picture, which is only slightly fewer words than I had.

Mike Greenwell certainly could have saved this unnamed Yankee from gruesome death by alligatór (Mr. Greenwell pronounces “alligatór” with the accent on the final, definitive syllable), but restraint of power is a power unto itself …

It is said that a young Bertrand Russell refrained from killing himself because of his love of math. Somewhere in America, Mike Greenwell, the subject of your Daguerreotype of the Evening, has just saved a philosopher’s life.

Even with his team leading the AL Wild Card race by a mere three games — and winning by only a single run in the fifth inning — Terry Francona isn’t the sort of person to pass up an opportunity to make solid-gold comedy, here capitalizing on the double-meaning of the word climate during Boston’s 4-3 win over Tampa Bay on Friday night.

Not captured as part of this footage is Francona saying, just seconds later, “Your move, Carrot Top.”

You should know two things about tonight’s Daguerreotype of the Evening. First, it moves. Second, it contains magic. Click and witness:

We already knew of A.J. Pierzynski’s dark ways, and now we know he treats the opposing catcher’s mask like a grinder’s wheel. As such, we can safely christen him “The Blacksmith.” Which has a slightly better flow to it than “Widely Disliked Spark-Maker.”

In which I shamelessly stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before me by inserting Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

Today’s episode: Dick Allen awakes one morning from uneasy dreams and finds himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

Hardly was he well inside his room when the door was hastily pushed shut, bolted, and locked. The sudden noise in his rear startled him so much that his little legs gave beneath him. It was his sister who had shown such haste. She had been standing ready waiting and had made a light spring forward, Dick Allen had not even heard her coming, and she cried “At last!” to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.

“And what now?” said Dick Allen to himself, looking around in the darkness. Soon he made the discovery that he was now unable to stir a limb. This did not surprise him, rather it seemed unnatural that he should ever actually have been able to move on these feeble little legs. Otherwise he felt relatively comfortable. True, his whole body was aching, but it seemed that the pain was gradually growing less and would finally pass away. The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, all covered with soft dust, already hardly troubled him. He thought of his family with tenderness and love. The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more strongly than his sister, if that were possible. In this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he remained until the tower clock struck three in the morning. The first broadening of light in the world outside the window entered his consciousness once more. Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath.

This has been the latest installment of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

I dare you to look at the aged — yet oddly handsome — face of Dusty Baker, and not be impressed. I don’t know about you, but I see wisdom.

I see a mix of young and old: A pair of stylish frames I’d most certainly rock; a Phiten Tornado necklace; and some gray, some years, both in the mustache and soul patch that Baseball Lifer Baker wears so well.

I see a reflective man, one who ponders his place in the universe, who contemplates when he will be freed from the shackles of Bronson Arroyo.

I see a leader’s mustache; a manager’s mustache. Respect, Dusty Baker.

Image courtesy Reuters, via Daylife.

As you may have noticed, here at NotGraphs we occasionally rely upon the kindness of readers to lead us by the clammy hand to content worthy of our revered imprimatur. Usually, this entails sending us a link or even vague hints at search terms. As you are about to learn, however, this writer is not averse to wholesale plundering of the reader’s innermost thoughts.

Cherished reader Reillocity, who maintains a philosophic calm despite his triumphs in Muay Thai, regaled us in the Busy Businessman thread with tales and examples of a thing that does things to things (URGENT UPDATE: Noble reader glassSheets also played an extra-vital role in doing my work for me). It is my belief that the Internetting Gentleman will appreciate what happens next …

Read the rest of this entry »