So from time to time teams do cool events for fans. And I must give it to the Dodgers for their 7th annual State Farm Dodgers Dream Foundation Bowling Extravaganza. Most of the team (the big names) roll with families benefitting from the foundation as well as some incredible B-List celebrities. B-List is very generous, with the exception of James Denton. Hoobastank band member…not celebrities, sorry event planners, they just aren’t.
But here are some photos…
Double Secret Suspension! The worst of all suspensions!
Well, needless to say, Chicago’s northside has entered full-on circus mode — an annual tradition for the Cubs. Their one-time ace (though not a real ace by any non-Cubs standards) has essentially left the team after getting blown up by Chipper Jones and the Atlanta Braves.
The Cubs management, ever-eager to dump his contract, have done their darnedest to accommodate his brief flirtations with retirement while the Chicago media does its bestest efforts to paint the portrait of an irate, insane, ungrateful Venezuelan. Well, amidst this fine display of hatchetry, let us delve into the archives of a one Steve Rosenbloom, a lumberjack among woodpeckers, and enjoy a brief UETAMEJ of his piece entitled: “Can the Cubs out-stupid Zambrano?”
What is UETAMEJ? Inventor Dayn Perry defines it as, “Using Ellipses Toward A More Evil Journalism,” and thief Bradley Woodrum pronounces you-da-mage, like a gangsta complimenting a wizard.
In the following article, Rosenbloom chastises Zambrano for flying to Guatemala to adopt his son, but the UETAMEJ helps tell the real story. Engage the ellipses!
Steve Rosenbloom … can make … Zambrano … seem to have a body of stupidity …
It’s a close battle, I’m … a bad … neutered … goof … as tone deaf as the Fanboy Owner … reaching new and difference [sic] levels of stupidity.
Zambrano … pantsed … the big goof … on an airplane. This spasm of lucidity could impact the Cubs’ chances reaching first place in the Frickin’ Idiot League.
Now get a load of this: Zambrano plans to … say “…Dopes all around, it looks like.[“] …
[To which] his manager … says, “Thank you, sir, … I … hasn’t seemed sharp mentally or physically … Stinking it up is certainly a way to guarantee a lifetime in a Cubs uniform.[“]
… [I]t has been … time … for stupidity at Wrigley …
Anyway, back to lesson [sic] here: … Zambrano … was … [t]he only reason … fans … didn’t .. like [the] Cubs … the best baseball organization …
[Now the] Cubs … [will] try to con everybody into thinking … this ought to be exciting …
Seriously, how can a man working for a proper newspaper have 2 very real typos in a column that’s less than 600 words? I have 1 typo between 3 posts of 1000 words, and commenters send me anthrax-laced envelopes!
Kudos to Carlos Zambrano for putting in ten years at the most backward baseball organization outside of Kansas City. I would’ve gone nuts in four.
When is a foul ball something more than a foul ball? When it’s off the thunderstick of “America Brawn” Mike Laga, and it is propelled, with certainty but not vengeance, out of Busch Stadium and into the undeserving firmament.
The Mike Laga Foul Ball from JoeSportsFan.com on Vimeo.
When this happens, you stand, applaud, weep, tremble, genuflect, sign over your first born, and hope that King Laga I shows mercy upon you.
(Laga Love: Joe Sports Fan)
With an excellent performance in his second rehab start Friday night — one that gives him nine strikeouts and zero walks in 4.2 innings in his return from Tommy John surgery — Stephen Strasburg has re-entered the public baseballing consciousness.
Because his brilliant debut occurred before NotGraphs was even a thing — and because MLB video has become embeddable in the meantime — it’s fully within all of our rights to re-live his 14 strikeout, no walk performance together in these electronic pages.
Below, I’ve made note of some extraordinary moments from the first two minutes or so of the above video. The bespectacled reader is invited, however, to add his own commentary where relevant.
0:11 — Records first major-league strikeout against Lastings Milledge on a pitch that was spotted later that night at an area club drinking vodka tonics with no fewer than seven Naomi Campbells.
0:34 — Delwyn Young strikes out on a curveball that removes whatever was left of his (i.e. Young’s) virginity.
0:41 — A 91 mph changeup. The phrase “God is dead” is subsequently removed from all English versions of Nietzsche’s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.
1:24 — Jeff Karstens strikes out looking on 101 mph fastball, calls therapist on way back to dugout.
1:40 — Announcer Bob Carpenter incorrectly, but also sorta correctly, identifies Strasburg’s changeup as a fastball.
1:49 — The entire television audience goes through a second puberty. Prepubescent children experience consecutive puberties.
Woody Allen says in 1977’s Annie Hall that we’re “always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s real difficult in life.”
In the relevant scene of that film, we’ve just witnessed Allen’s character Alvy Singer directing a play in which Singer has rewritten a breakup between himself and the titular Hall (played by Diane Keaton), such that she rushes after, and professes her love for, him.
For Allen’s Singer, the potential outcomes are binary in nature: either Annie does or doesn’t leave him. The former is what happens; the latter is what happens — what is perfected — in art.
The sort of perfect we find in the three drawings above, courtesy of (male man) Erin Wong, is different. Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax are, by most accounts, the closest thing that baseball has seen to perfect. There are details that could be edited — maybe DiMaggio’s personal life could’ve been less turbulent, maybe Mays wouldn’t’ve had an age-42 season, maybe Koufax’s brilliance could’ve lasted a couple-few more years — but one could also make the argument that these imperfections actually make each player’s respective resume even more striking.
But achieving — or, at least, gesturing towards — perfection isn’t always a case of choosing one of two outcomes in a binary relationship. Rather, Wong’s pictures are a product of a desire to re-see players whose respective mythologies are well known to the point of being tired.
Wong’s drawings — like a batter totally at ease with his own weaknesses — don’t try to do too much. Rather, they seem to ask simple questions. “What would Joe DiMaggio look like were he crossed with an older Ed Sullivan?” “What would Sandy Koufax look like were he thinking the words ‘I know something you don’t know’?” “What if gravity had only a minimal effect on Willie Mays’ hat?”
It’s not unusual to hear people say art is dead because everything has been done. What sort of conceit does it require to imagine that one’s age would be the one to kill an immortal thing? In its own, small way, Wong’s drawings make it clear that art isn’t dead, won’t die. All it requires is the desire to ask small questions and the technical skill to answer those questions in the relevant medium.
1. Why do baseball players spit so much? I understand that players who dip need to spit lest they ingest tobacco juice and vomit all over the place. And I understand that this was likely the origin of the spitting pandemic in baseball. Players who didn’t dip wanted to fit in with their teammates nevertheless. But why do players who don’t dip continue to spit all of the time? Do they not even realize it? Is it at this point a Pavlovian response to standing on a baseball field? Is it one of those things, like kneeling for prayer, the meaning and origins of which are entirely lost on those who keep the practice alive? It must be, because if the people who spit profusely for no functional reason whatsoever thought carefully about how little sense this behavior made, they would probably stop doing it.
2. Why do fielders get the benefit of the doubt at second base but not runners? By this I mean: often when turning double plays, the shortstop or second baseman may never actually touch second base with control of the baseball. Almost always, though, the runner is called out. Why aren’t baserunners granted the same amount of leeway when, say, legging out a triple? Could you imagine if baserunners just had to come within a “few inches” of touching second base? It would be madness. Why not make the bases bigger as a compromise?
3. Why do TV networks assume that former players are any better positioned to be analysts of the game than someone who, you know, studies the game? The answer is simple: they don’t. Networks hire former players to be analysts because viewers recognize the former players and thus feel more comfortable watching and listening to them. The networks don’t give a shit whether what is being passed of as “analysis” is actually anything of the sort. The real problem is that in having this sort of faux legitimacy as analysts conferred on them by networks, former players actually begin to believe that simply by virtue of being a former player, their opinion that Jacoby Ellsbury is a stronger AL MVP candidate than Jose Bautista, for example, is valid. And thus, the idea that former players’ status as former players means any nonsense that comes out of their mouths should be accepted as analysis becomes widely agreed among former players and fans alike. This is not to say that there aren’t aspects of the game former players are better positioned to comment on, but far too often they are expected to comment on exactly the things they aren’t qualified to comment on.
You’ve heard the news by now, surely, the cat having been let out of its proverbial bag. As reported by ESPN on Wednesday, the Toronto Blue Jays are sign stealers; the Toronto Blue Jays are cheaters.
I found the report deeply disturbing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not troubled by the undeniable facts that prove the Blue Jays are cheating. Not at all. What’s most troublesome about the revelations, to me, a proud Blue Jays supporter, is that Toronto, the sign stealers, can’t even get cheating right. They’re obviously not very good at it, as evidenced by their 30-29 record at the Rogers Centre this season. In 2010, Toronto’s .569 home winning percentage was good for third in the AL East. In 2009, that number was .543, good for — you guessed it — fourth in the division. It’s always third or fourth place, man, and I’m sick of it. If the Jays are going to go to the trouble to cheat, I mean really cheat, allegedly going as far as to put someone — a spy — in the stands to steal signs, I’d much rather they be successful. Cheat, but cheat well, my beloved Blue Jays! I can only hope that general manager Alex Anthopoulos, in his retooling of the franchise, is pouring resources into the Cheating Department as well as the Scouting Department.
But this isn’t about me, and my fandom. It’s about the Blue Jays stealing signs, and where we go from here. The analysis, reactions and rebuttals to the ESPN piece are out there, have been written in spades. And what’s important, here and now, at this moment in time, is that the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has scored, as you were probably expecting, an exclusive interview with Toronto’s Rogers Centre’s mysterious Man In White. Actually, our bold investigative reporter was honest: He stumbled upon the Man In White by chance, running into him outside the ballpark after Thursday’s matinee between Oakland and Toronto, the Man In White smoking a cigarette outside Rogers Centre’s gate eight. Dressed in immaculately white Adidas runners, black pants, and a tight, white, Anderson Cooper-esque v-neck t-shirt, when asked whether he was actually the now-infamous Man In White, the man responded, “I am he,” blew five cigarette smoke rings, “And he is I.”
The Man In White agreed to sit down with our one man NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team at St. Louis Bar and Grill — if we were buying, and we were — across the street from the Rogers Centre. Below is a transcript of the exclusive, bombshell interview:
Well, that was a trouncing. Gorman Thomas and his flowing locks cared not for the young upstart mustache of Moose Haas, especially with the kid’s lack of a hat. Thomas moves on to the next round. Up is up and down is down in the Brewers world. Time to move along.
Now it’s time for our final #2/#7 pairing. We’ll reach across decades this time, and though the visual contrast is jarring, this might be the most mild-mannered matchup of the tournament. Which way do you hang? It’s time for another edition of Baseball Card Tourney!
#2 1981 Topps Sparky Lyle
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It has recently come to the author’s attention that, rather than producing actual content, it might be preferable to pass judgment on other people’s content, and then to assemble those judgments into one easily digestible rankings list. It’s what is commonly referred to as a “win-win” situation, on account of said rankings require minimal labor and drive traffic more effectively than other articles that deal in things like “nuance” and “subtlety.”
In this edition of Lists and Rankings, we cast our judge-y eye towards today’s most most well-written headlines. Note how the author has included one or two lines’ worth of pithy commentary, lest you find yourself under the impression that absolutely zero effort was expended in the creation of this bloggiest of blog posts.
5. Consider the Bullpen Hole Filled, Disciples of Uecker
It seems like it’s about sex. But it’s not about sex. But maybe it is about sex. Or not. (It is… not.)
An anonymous reader provides the above image — from a recent Brewers-Astros game — of two or more fans who probably had a heart attack immediately after said image was captured.
Per the National Lung, Heart, and Blood Institute, the signs and symptoms of a heart attack include:
• Upper body discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or upper part of the stomach.
• Shortness of breath, which may occur with or before chest discomfort.
• No shirt.
• Nausea (feeling sick to your stomach), vomiting, light-headedness or sudden dizziness, or breaking out in a cold sweat.
• Comically undersized fireman’s helmet.
• Sleep problems, fatigue (tiredness), or lack of energy.
• Pervy vibe.
• Loss of consciousness.
• Accidentally at Astros game.
Check, check, double-check.