Bob Hamelin. An oldie, but a goodie.

A Great Moment In Spectacles, undoubtedly. And, yes, a most heinous crime against baseball cards, too.

Conservative Canadian props to my colleague and friend Mike Miner for sending the Hamelin gems — this one, too — my way. A quick story, if I may: Monsieur Miner is a Baltimore Orioles fan. Yep, Toronto’s only one. Before he met yours truly, he didn’t mind the Blue Jays so much, he says. Today, he hates them. All thanks to me. This brings me great joy.

Remember, if you know of a Great Moment In Spectacles that ought to be celebrated, please, be in touch: not+tips@fangraphs.com.

Image, by no means easy on the eyes, courtesy of The Trading Card Database.

With a carnival barker’s enthusiasm, I should like to announce: R.A. Dickey names his bats after famous swords! Regard:

One bat is called Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and the other is Hrunting. Dickey, an avid reader, said that Orcrist came from “The Hobbit.” Hrunting — the H is silent, Dickey said — came from the epic poem “Beowulf”; it is the sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s mother.

First and foremost, R.A. Dickey is a Great Man of History because he’s a bearded knuckleballer. But the 11-year-old boy in me — the one who would drift into sleep with the Monster Manual splayed across his breast and dream dreams of a gelatinous cube’s hit points — now holds him in a newer, loftier esteem.

Baseball and swords! What could possibly be next? Hot, delicious pizza, mayhaps?

America loves R.A. Dickey. I declare it to be so, and the rest of America is not free to disavow this love we have for R.A. Dickey.

Early in January, we took a moment out of our busy schedules to appreciate some of the accidental, or pocket, tweets from Mr. Peter Gammons (@pgammo).

Four months later, the man whom no one has ever called George Plimpton for the 21st Century continues to refine his craft.

Below are five notable contributions to the genre of the pocket tweet — all from the past month.

5. This is from today, actually, and features one of the hardest letters to find while playing the Alphabet Game on a road trip.

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy of your attractive friends at Wieden+Kennedy, it’s the newest This Is SportsCenter spot, featuring Jason Heyward, Steve Levy, Scott Van Pelt, and a costume tree.

Secret NotGraphs handshakes for Ted Walker and gondee of Talking Chop.

Take it slow with Ted Danson.

Last week, FanGraphs’ House Librarian Steve Slowinski submitted for the readership’s consideration a post entitled How to Speak Sabermetrics to a Mainstream Audience, in which he (i.e. Slowinski) provided some guidelines for discussing sabermetric concepts with the uninitiated.

While Slowinski’s effort is commendable, it occurs to this author that there’s more work to be done, that “mainstream audience” is rather a broad thing.

To that end, I’ve started a storm in my brain — one that has yielded some brief characterizations of the sabermetric project intended for very specific audiences.

What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list. To that end, if you, the reader, request advice on reaching out to a specific audience, do not hesitate to make note of it in the comments section. Alternatively, if you’ve had some success in communicating with one or more kinds of people the nature of the sabermetric project, certainly do provide this sort of infomation.

With that said, here’s how to speak sabermetrics…

To Your Grandmother
You use the computer for baseball, Grandma. Don’t worry about it.

To an Actuary
It’s like what you do, divided by boring.

To an Italian Person
You apply-a the scientific method-a to baseball-a.

To Ted Danson
Ted Frigging Danson, how you doin’, guy?*

*It’s obvious: you can’t just launch into a sabermetric discussion with Ted Danson.

To Someone Much Larger Than You and Maybe Also Drunk
If you want to believe that “Jeter Rules!” I have no intention of separating you from that opinion.

It’s been a rough week for Osama Bin Laden. First, he was killed. Then the Times refused to call him “Mr.” (The Gray Lady withholds the honorific from only the world’s most wretched scoundrels.) Then he crossed over to the dimensionless horrors that awaited him. And now Bin Laden’s (no “Mr.” for you, you dead, rotting jerkwad!) pleasing demise has united those previously immune to unity: the Mets and the Phillies. Witness spontaneous chants of nation-state:

“I don’t like to give Philly fans too much credit,” David Wright said of the binding powers of Bin Laden and his sucking chest wounds, “but they got this one right.”

This is a trucker hat. With a Montreal Expos Larry Walker baseball card printed on the front. From the eBay listing description:

We acquired this rare cap and many others from a direct family relative of LARRY WALKER in Maple Ridge, B.C. – his home town! 🙂

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of the trucker hat style but I do think this is a brilliant idea as far as cap logos go. I just don’t think I’d drop 22 bucks on it (plus shipping and handling!).

Hat tip to Matt Clapp of Sharapova’s Thigh and his readers, 89% of whom would rock this style as of this writing.

Navin Naswani showed you this interesting photo last week:

What he failed to highlight, however, was the presence of Friend of Site, Ejector of Fears, Joe West. Yes, ol’ Westy actually inspired this event, spinal tapping the base-pilfering hippie — demanding he eject the second base by all means necessary. Computer, ENHANCE!:

God bless that Micronian.

Ozzie Guillen was ejected from last night’s game and promptly tweeted the above tweet. Unsurprisingly, MLB has come back strong today and hit him with a two-game suspension. Of course, it’s hard to imagine a worse offense than tweeting during a game, so it’s understandable that MLB cracked down so hard. Just for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at some other two-game suspensions from recent MLB history.

Nationals manager Jim Riggleman, for participation in the Nyjer Morgan/Chris Volstad brawl last season.

Dusty Baker and Tony La Russa, for participation in the massive Cardinals/Reds brawl last season.

Fernando Rodney, for throwing a ball into the stands after recording a save in 2009.

Jonny Gomes, for his “violent actions” which incited a Rays/Yankees fight in spring training of 2008.

Joba Chamberlain, for throwing two pitches over the head of Kevin Youkilis in a game in 2007.

Dioner Navarro, for bumping the home plate umpire in a game last season.

Dave Trembley, for a “running argument” with the home plate umpire in 2009.

Milton Bradley, for arguing balls and strikes in 2009.

Kyle Farnsworth, for tackling Paul Wilson of the Reds in 2003.

And, my personal favorite, Francisco Rodriguez, for punching his father-in-law in the Mets’ clubhouse.

Take that for what you will. To me, it seems like the MLB is taking tweeting quite seriously.

Embiggen. Go on. Trust me.

The incredible moment in time — October 7, 1978, as the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate winning the pennant — was captured by Los Angeles Times photographer Larry Sharkey.

After hitting his run-scoring single in the bottom of the 10th, the Dodgers mob shortstop Bill Russell. During the celebration, several fans also rushed the field. One was caught by Sharkey trying to steal second base as a souvenir. The unidentified fan ended up the next morning all over Southern California on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. … Additional information on the fan — especially if he got away with second base — was not found in The Times’ archive.

I choose to live my life believing that the unidentified fan definitely got away with second base, making for one helluva souvenir, and story, over the past thirty-plus years.

H/T: It’s a long season.