This image is presented to the world courtesy British gentleman and graphic wunderkind Craig Robinson, whose every post at Flip Flop Fly Ballin’ we would steal if it weren’t for our commitment to Utmost Decency.
Behold, fathom and regard …
No, contrary to appearances, that’s not the bassist for Grand Funk backstage in a Cards jersey. That’s Randy Poffo, vastly better known by his nom de guerre, Randy “Macho Man” Savage. As you can plainly see, even as a fresh-faced youth the Macho Man was fond of buccaneering sojourns at the gun show, albeit a gun show less enhanced than in later, more famous years.
The image comes to us via this thoroughly adequate SI piece on the Macho Man’s minor-league baseball career. Said baseball career was rather forgettable — inasmuch as quality time with Tito Landrum can ever be “forgettable” — but the recently departed Poffo’s legend within the squared circle is secure and will remain so until the mountains crumble into the sea.
And speaking of the mountains crumbling into the sea, any ideas as to what spared us from the tentatively scheduled rapture last Saturday? Yeah, that’s right, a certain former minor-league catcher spared us from the tentatively scheduled rapture last Saturday …
Oooh. Yeah.
It’s hard to imagine Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Hugo Award winning graphic novel Watchmen, being much of a fan of sabermetrics. He quit the hooded justice industry in order to become a mechanic, and he always did have a soft spot for the traditional values of Montana, where his grandfather learned the values he instilled into the young Mason.
Although the second Nite Owl, Daniel Dreiberg, exhibits a fair amount of similarities to his predecessor, he is less of a fighter and more of a thinker. Nite Owl II relies more on technology and gadgets than on toughness and physical prowess compared to the rest of his masked colleagues. His love for ornithology (the study of birds) is obvious given his bird-themed alter ego — not only is his costume designed to look like an owl, but so is Archimedes, his ship, named for Merlin’s pet owl in The Sword and the Stone.
To that end, Dreiberg contributed a piece called “Blood From The Shoulder of Pallas” to the Journal of the American Ornithological Society. In it, he discusses how scrutinizing over the details of birds can make us miss the beauty of it all.
Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail, that it becomes invisible? Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of its wings or the length of its tarsus, we somehow lose sight of its poetry? That in our pedestrian descriptions of a marbled or vermiculated plumage we forfeit a glimpse of living canvases, cascades of carefully toned browns and golds that would shame Kandinsky, misty explosions of color to rival Monet? I believe that we do. I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place.
As the learned reader will already know, there exists in life two kinds of mystery: a mystery, and then a Mystery. The main difference between them, as anyone can see, is that the latter one has a capital-M.
It’s hard to say exactly upon which kind — a mystery or a Mystery — Phillies beat writer Ryan Lawrence stumbled yesterday, but that he did stumble upon one is as obvious as the nose above Steve Lake’s mustache.
For it was yesterday that Lawrence submitted the tweet you see skillfully embedded (and embiggen-able by clicking) at the top of this post. Nor, as the photographic evidence directly below these words indicates, was Lawrence lying even one bit.
Regard, from Bronson Arroyo’s Baseball Reference page:
In fact, Lawrence is entirely accurate: the words “Saturn Nuts” are written here, plain as day. The real question, however, is why those words appear there.
For that kind of information, I turned to the wild frontier of the internet. It was there that I learned, via the Sons of Sam Horn (SOSH) Wiki, that the sobriquet was assigned to Arroyo in a SOSH game thread by then-teammate Curt Schilling during the 2004 ALDS. Even more research brought me to the primary source.
Regard, Schilling’s own words, under the pseudonym of gehrig38 (a common handle for the former pitcher):
The reader can click on that image to embiggen both (a) the image itself and (b) the joie de vivre on all of Earth.
While not as loin-stirring as, say, woodsy and mead- and pipeweed-fueled coitus with an elf, hugging a dragon would be quite nice, I think we can all agree. And if you were one of 5,615 fortunate souls recently meandering through a particular semi-major American city, you know this firsthand. And you helped Charlotte Knights mascot Homer the Dragon (pictured above, first from left) make Maximum History.
Indeed, Homer has approached, reached and overtaken the record for “Most Hugs by a Mascot Given in a 24-Hour Span,” which is a threshold as timeless and enduring as the trilobite fossils entombed deep within the bottommost sediment of the Yangtze. So bless his heart.
Sure, our dear, departed Gary Gygax might prefer the arms of dragons to be more murderous than loving, but Homer deserves your admiration for cutting a swath of unconditional affection through the boulevards of Charlotte. Know hope, citizens.
Yes, yes, I believe that’s mesh.
Anyone that is a fan of trashy cinema is familiar with the concept. Sometimes, something is so bad that it turns around and is good again. Call it the Last Action Hero law. The Snakes on a Plane law if you’re not into the Gubernator these days.
It looks like the rule applies to some baseball uniform choices as well.
Once again, reader, we find that Great Moments in Spectacles and our industry-standard Mustache Watch come together in a single shining beacon of masculine masculinity.
The gentleman you see in these (very) collectible trading cards is ex-baseball pitcher Fred Breining, notable not only for posting consecutive two-win seasons in the early 1980s but for possessing a surname that’s also a gerund.
In the left-most photo, Breining models for us the Spectacles/Mustache Package Deal that’s captured our attention of late. Of the right-most photo, reader and muscled philosopher Joe P. makes this observation:
Adding to the glory of Fred Breining’s spectacles here is the “Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there” look on his face, as if we’ve interrupted his afternoon of reading Proust at the ballpark.
If nothing else, reader, you’ll have to agree that these images of Breining represent for us that singular pleasure provided by the remembrance of things past.
As this internal office memo I’m holding suggests, today is Bat Day at NotGraphs. Already, Bradley Woodrum has introduced us to the big stick with which famous Negro Leaguer Josh Gibson walked softly, while Dayn Perry has stared at your daughter for 30 unflinching minutes skillfully embedded a video of Josh Womack performing all manner of bat-related tricks.
In an effort to distill Bat Day to its most whimsical, what I’ve endeavored to do here is collect five images from the internet of Batman the superhero engaged in bat-and-ball related activities.
If you, reader, could hold your LOLs till the end, it would be much appreciated.
1. This is Batman playing baseball with Robin and Superman:
Survey Josh Womack’s professional baseball career, and you come away impressed merely to the extent that he had a professional baseball career. That’s to say, Womack’s bestowals on the diamond are somewhat forgettable. What’s not forgettable is the abracadabra-sorcery-jinx-necromancy that Mr. Womack can perform with a maple stick …
Bewitchment! Pointy hat, gnarled oaken staff and flowing purple robe festooned with astral designs!
For those who do not know, Babe Ruth was the white Josh Gibson. It is also a widely known true fact that Gibson hit a homer in Pittsburgh, only to have it caught for an out the following day in Washington.
Observe: Gibson not only hit somewhere around 800 homers in his time in the Negro Leagues, but he also did so whilst swinging an estimably 700-pound bat. We can only imagine the two suitcases contain Gibson’s two, 10-feet-wide batting gloves, which could double for tents in a pinch.
For those who like baseball, underdogs, and legends, may I direct your attention to the Negro Leagues, where greats like Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Buck Leonard built both statistics and folklore like castles.