The author and his wife are currently visiting a home that is populated by, among other sorts of people, a young girl who has invested heavily in coloring books of princesses. This is entirely acceptable for other families; however, at such a time as Carson Cistulli reproduces — an act which admittedly would necessitate a sort of intimacy which my wife attempts to avoid at all costs — his children will have at their disposal only educational sorts of coloring books. Like one depicting great fights from baseball history, for example — samples of which hypothetical coloring book one can find below. (Click, embiggen.)

Coco Crisp and James Shields:

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The usually-excellent Jonah Keri has a fine-looking piece I haven’t read yet over on Grantland making the case that the low batting averages and high strikeout rates this season are making 2014 feel like 1968.

I think he’s wrong. I think this season feels like 1794. Here’s why:

In 1794, the first session of the United States Senate was open to the public. In 2014, Astros games are also open to the public, although fewer people have noticed.

In 1794, Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin. In 2014, baseball uniforms are made out of cotton.

In 1794, the Polish people overthrew the Russians in Warsaw. In 2014, Jeff Samardzija. Is he Polish? Czech?

In 1794, chemist Antoine Lavoisier was executed by guillotine. In 2014, Carlos Santana will be executed by guillotine IF HE DOESN’T START HITTING AGAIN WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM HE IS THE CORNERSTONE OF MY SCORESHEET TEAM WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY IS HE BATTING .132?

In 1794, British troops captured Port-au-Prince in Haiti. In 2014, Sandy Alderson captured Bobby Abreu and Kyle Farnsworth and put them on a baseball field for the first time since 1946.

In 1794, Horatio Nelson lost the sight in his right eye in a British military operation at Calvi in Corsica. In 2014, Brian McCann lost his batting eye and stopped walking.

In 1794, the United States and Great Britain concluded the Jay Treaty, the basis for ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations. In 2014, the Mariners traded Hector Noesi to the Rangers, leading to Noesi pitching a horrible seven-run inning for the Rangers and peace between no one at all.

In 1794, coffee was forbidden by royal decree in Sweden. I think baseball is going to ban it soon too.

In 1794, the French Republic abolished slavery. In 2014, only Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales are slaves.

My case has been made.

If the Population Reference Bureau is right, 108 billion people have lived lives on earth, and of those, about 296 million were born on April 24th. I reached that figure by dividing 108 billion by 365.25 and then rounding up. Math! Point is: Birthdays aren’t so special if scarcity is the only criterion for specialness.

However, of those 296 million people, only one of them is named Francis Arthur “Pug” Griffin. He was born in 1896 on April 24th. Pug Griffin is a special name, if only because no name better combines mythical majesty with unhelpful genetic skull mutations. Personally, those are my top two criteria for specialness.

To honor Pug Griffin NotGraphs will do as NotGraphs does, and  surround him with Pug Griffins. Or Pug Gryphons. Whatever.

This has been Pug Griffin Surrounded by Pug Griffins. Happy Birthday, Pug Griffin.

I believe it was Winston Churchill — or Oprah — that said “Some dreams live on in time forever. Those dreams, you want with all your heart.”

It is true — a tale as old as the game itself, really — that young boys and girls have shared dreams of growing big and tomahawking pitchouts four feet outside the zone in order to distract the catcher into horking the throw to second base. Texas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus had such dreams as a child. And for this dream, Andrus will reach. Some days are meant to be remembered, indeed.

Watch:

Listen:

(h/t to Grant Brisbee)

Once again, a series of on-field shenanigans – bat flips! finger pointings! voice raisings! fights! – have put us in mind of those principles and prohibitions known throughout the galaxy as Baseball’s Tacit Commandments, or, in layman’s terms, its “Unwritten Rules.” To wit: A’s infielder Jed Lowrie bunts while his team is up by seven, and Bo Porter’s head explodes so spectacularly that Michael Bay turns the ka-blooey into the whole of a three-hour film. Bryce Harper fails to run out a tapper, and Matt Williams is so managerially butt-hurt that he yanks his young star from the contest while tarring and/or feathering his very good name.

Now batting: Brycetar Harperfeather. For real!

Lastly but not leastly, Carlos Gomez admires his 400-foot piece of Expressionist art, an arc of deeply personal grandeur, and what happens? Well, what happens is that a hockey game breaks out. All of which shenanigania should convince the logical conclusion-maker of one logical conclusion: Write down the rules!

Before we take pen to paper or chisel to stone, however, let us examine the ways by which these Tacit Commandments managed to avoid writing systems in the first place … the ways, indeed, by which they evaded pictographs, hieroglyphs and morphemes, forerunners of the symbols I am using to convey this very message.

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When given the choice, I’ve never chosen an aisle seat.

Clickin’ it bigs it.

Dr. Seuss presents…

There’s A Snatcherblot In My Catcherslot

Did you ever have the feeling there’s a Flitcher playing pitcher?
Or a Blortcrop playing shortstop?
Or a Groutpeeled in the outfield?
In certain sometimes cases there’s a Yasis stealing bases.
When I set my weekly lineup there’s a Grench stuck on my bench.
And that Flomer hit a homer! Eleven less than one Tripp Cromer.
There’s Moustakas in a fracas, and a Hamels with some camels.
And a Gee there by that tree. He’s been mostly nice to me.
And Nolasco, in a mask– no, Bobby Valentine I see.

My last saver was Joe Boever.
My last Blarza ate Matt Garza.
I saw four excited Spardja over there by Jeff Samardzija.
I am last in runs and ribbies.
‘Coz of all my Gluns and Glibbies.
If I only had a Trout my team could think of breaking out.
But since I only have a Freese, my team is off to rest in peace.

I think I’ve been reading too many children’s books.

Friends, I am sorry to have been absent from you for so long. There was a death in my family and a kidney stone trying to exit my body. My own emotional and physical pain on brief hiatus, I’m happy to be back, on Wrigley Field’s 100^th birthday, to recount the 10 most historically important things that ever happened at the storied ballpark:

10) 1931 – Hack Wilson gets in a fight with reporters, and is suspended for the final 17 games of the 1931 season, narrowly avoiding leading the National League in strikeouts for six consecutive seasons.

9) 1953 – Rookie Ernie Banks incenses the veterans on the team when he suggests that he wants to play two baseball games in one day. Everyone else just wants to get home in time to spend an hour or two with the kids and fall asleep in front of the TV watching I Love Lucy, or go out on the town, get liquored up and meet a dame.

8) 1945 – A man brings a pet goat to the World Series, somehow believing this to be appropriate. When his fellow fans object and he is ejected from the ballpark. Somehow, this becomes the team’s fault, and the goat owner, rather than admitting his own failings as a patron of the sport, or show any loyalty to his favorite team, predicts “they ain’t gonna win no more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Feelin’/lookin’ fine.

In the summertime — and when it’s baseball season, it’s summertime — Dale prefers to keep a good sweat-lather about him at all times. Keeps ‘im fresh. That’s where Dale’s moustache comes in. Well, Dale’s moustache comes into play a lot of places, if you catch Dale’s drift, which, it’s probably impossible not to.

Well, too, you can’t really call Dale’s moustache a moustache; it’s more’n that. Gatekeeper of Dale’s Face, call it. Sigourney effin’ Weaver in Ghostbusters, call it. Keeper of every secret you ever wanted to know; every phone number, too. Alyssa Milano? If you reached far enough inside Dale’s ‘stache, there’s a direct line to Alyssa Milano’s bedside phone. But that’s fer Dale’s use only.

Anyways, that’s not the only thing Dale’s got stashed up in the ol’ Gatekeeper. Got about a dozen tiny Icers in there, chillin’ in a tiny ice bed. If you see Dale sniff real hard on the mound? That’s Dale snortin’ a much needed Icer, from down in the chops, up through the lip-tickler, an’ straight to his brain. Whoo-boy, Dale! Got it goin’!

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[Don Giancarlo] has exercised the influence of a revelation upon my whole life…I regard [him] as a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection…

– Charles Gounod

[He] ascends with ease to the highest plane of revealed truth, the threshold of the world beyond…

– Pierre Jouve

One marvels again and again how everything comes to expression in him: heaven and earth, nature and man, comedy and tragedy, passion in all its forms and the most profound inner peace, the Virgin Mary and the demons, the church mass, the curious solemnity of the Freemasons and the dance hall, ignorant and sophisticated people, cowards and heroes (genuine or bogus), the faithful and the faithless, aristocrats and peasants…

– Karl Barth