So I picked a fight with the Internet, and the Internet is beating me as though it entered a cheat code. The blow-by-blow …

Yesterday, I threatened to Ruin Everything^TM by posting the same thing as Eno Sarris, a mere hour later. Content redundancies are frowned upon, particularly by Dear Leader, so after I spent a sleepless, unmentionable night in the NotGraphs Dungeon of Citizen Reprimand, one would think the scales would have fallen from mine eyes. One would think …

Yet, lo, I awoke, fired a Tweet through the Internet, and watched disaster unfurl before me like Dave Cameron’s rolled-up knapsack of Medieval torture devices …

I thought Jose Reyes’s projected stat line was pretty cool, but it did not rise to the fleetingly rare level of “cool enough to repeat this four or five times in succession.” I don’t repeat things like that. I repeat drink orders just to be sure. And I repeat, usually in moments that don’t seem to occasion it, my refusal to quarter soldiers in my home during wartime because the third amendment means that much to me. But I don’t repeat Jose Reyes’s projected stat line. At least, not unless the Internet makes me.

So what does one say at this point? This? “I’m sorry, Internet. Please leave me alone.” Also: Et tu, Firefox.

The latest Great Moment in Spectacles comes to us via handsome NotGraphs reader Patrick D., who rightfully said, “Ron Kittle demands satisfaction.”

If Bob Hamelin’s Great Moment in Spectacles was, as I put it, “a heinous crime against baseball cards,” Kittle’s is the opposite. Donruss’ Diamond Kings series was the best, Jerry. The best!

Patrick also sent along this gem, via nerdbaseball.com:

True story: I always assumed that if I went to www.nerdbaseball.com, I’d simply be redirected to FanGraphs. You do in fact learn something new everyday.

Anyway, here’s Patrick with the final word:

Remember, certain parts of Ron Kittle’s face may be closer than they appear.

Gracias, Patrick.

In the second inning of Monday’s Brewers-Dodgers game, Carlos Gomez made a fantastic play in center field to rob Juan Uribe of a home run. You should really watch it, as it was pretty dang awesome.

More important, though, was Ryan Braun’s celebration of the play, pictured below.

(Click to embiggen, of course)

Again, this picture is but another reason to watch the video linked above, as images cannot truly capture the magnificence and grace of Braun’s celebration of that thing that other guy did. But the image is pretty good by itself, too.

Via Deadspin, we learn that a most interesting paying customer recently graced CitiField. To the daguerreotype …

I’m not going to suggest that world would be a more interesting place if more adult bodies were topped with grimacing baby heads, but —

Wait, that’s precisely what I’m suggesting. Controlling powers of the universe: More Baby Heads Now!

Note: this post features a poll at the bottom. Rate the Rangers’ radio broadcast for yourself.

Eric Nadel’s alma mater (a) is picturesque and (b) allows students to take every class pass/fail.

Continuing what I started over the weekend with a review of the Atlanta Braves television broadcast, what follows is a review of the Texas Rangers radio broadcast.

For the purposes of the present review, I listened to selections from a pair of games on KESN-FM — the May 11th game against Oakland that was delayed by rain and (ultimately) postponed, and then this past Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Angels.

The broadcast team is composed of Eric Nadel and Dave Barnett. As seems to be the case with other radio teams, the pair seems to call a game in shifts, with Nadel taking the first couple innings, Barnett taking the next couple, and so on.

Analysis
As I’m likely to reiterate elsewhere in this review, Nadel and Barnett provide analysis that, as a listener, I wish were a 3 out of 5, but, given the present level of discourse in America’s broadcast booths, probably rates as a 4 out of 5. There are no citations of FanGraphs, no attempts to integrate advanced metrics, and yet there’s generally a respect for sample size and separating, for example, pitcher performance from team performance.

Read the rest of this entry »

They’re New York Mets, of course.

More importantly, though, those “educated fans,” we’re them. They’re us. From Pardon The Interruption, to cartoon’s in The New Yorker — I found this one in a piece, a rather good one by Lawrence Wright, I might add, about “The unintended consequences of American funding in Pakistan“) — we’re everywhere, man.

Cartoon by Michael Crawford. If you want to buy it, you can.

It’s come to the editors’ attention that Dayn Perry has, in fact, posted this video despite the fact that it actually appears in Eno Sarris’s work of only one hour earlier. Perry’s implication is clear: “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

It’s Rain Delay Day here at NotGraphs! And what follows is a fine example of whimsy! Rain descends upon a college game of base and ball. How to entertain the flinty souls still in the stands? As with all things, the penetrating wisdom of the renaissance fair is always near at hand …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkuhqsnZF7Y&feature=player_embedded

I promised whimsy, and whimsy you have received.

(Sweeping bow to m’ lady: With Leather)

If every rainy day was like these rainy days, we might not have as much of a problem with them, ’cause these rainy days made for some awesome rain delay action.

Flip Flop Fly Ballin’ spotted this rain delay, where the comedy was all ‘of errors.’ Of special note is the silly hat. Because, hey, if you’re going to do your job very poorly, it’s worth doing it poorly in a silly hat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTSIJzvNIM8

And maybe this is why more rain delays aren’t like this.

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Unless you’re freshly murdered, you had a better go of things tonight than Vin Mazzaro did. Here is what Mr. Mazzaro and, one must assume, the vengeful Old-Testament God who has it in for him have wrought:

2.1 IP, 11 H, 14 R, 3 BB, 2 K

The list of people I’d wish that upon consists mostly of bloodthirsty dictators. What’s perhaps most harrowing is that Mazzaro had a better FIP on the night than did Kyle Davies, the Royals’ starter. Success!

How the author feels on the inside.

More than three weeks after being shut down by Sony for security reasons, the PlayStation Network appears to be functional again, allowing those of us who use it (i.e. the Network) for MLB.TV to go back to complaining about unconscionable blackout rules and choppy feeds.

Note that returning to full functionality isn’t quite as easy as snapping your fingers (unless, that is, it takes you 10 or so minutes to snap your fingers just once — in which case, you’ll feel right at home). Each user will likely be prompted to do a system update and to reset his password to something that’s longer than 37 characters with at least one reference to Goethe’s oeuvre.