Weary of those ancient ballpark urinals found in haunts like Wrigley, Fenway and Dodger, the ones taken from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate? Know that the future brings hope …

“Thermochromic coating on steel panel” or urination sorcery? The latter, obviously.

If nothing else, team owners now have the tidy rationale they need for the next round of taxpayer-funded stadium refurbishments. Bodily Functions 2.0!

What a Salvo.

It all started so innocently. Or, as innocent as intense sartorial mocking can be.

A fan site for the Cardinals posted a great shirt idea:
Mike Leake STOLE THIS SHIRT FOR ME.

The response came quickly, a surgical strike:
Tony LaRussa WALKED THE LINE AND FAILED.

Then the Cardinals site dropped a T-Shirt bomb of snark on their opponents, including the genius above. With the balance now obviously shifted in the battle, perhaps the underdogs need a little help?

Incredibly important note: I am not taking sides in this inevitably long and drawn out battle. I’m just making gentle suggestions from afar. Gentle. Suggestions.

Tony La Russa WANTS TO SEE YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Colby Rasmus MADE HIS FATHER PUNCH TONY LARUSSA
Ryan Franklin FOUND YOUR LOST SQUIRREL ON HIS FACE
Matt Holliday IS TOO BLAND TO MAKE FUN OF
Lance Berkman ATE YOUR ELVIS

Why.

I like to think that NotGraphs fills a niche for indirect, informal meditation on fandom. But what about that other niche, the niche for direct, formal meditation on fandom? Will no one plug its conspicuous emptiness?

Possibly anticipating my above lament, earlier this week Leon Neyfakh published a piece in the Boston Globe entitled “How Teams Take Over Your Mind.” This article discusses academic efforts to understand why people get attached to sports, efforts which so far have produced the theories that: a) it’s about the need for narrative, b) it’s tribalism, or c) it’s the opposite of tribalism.

Maybe not groundbreaking. But there are some interesting things in the article that I didn’t previously know:

ONE
RISD American Studies professor Daniel Cavicchi has an excellent blog called “The Ardent Audience” that you should visit upon completing today’s FanGraphs buffet.

TWO
There’s something called “CORFing,” which means “to cut off reflective failure.” There’s also something called “BIRGing,” which means “to bask in the reflective glow.” That’s what those acronyms mean. Don’t even waste your time thinking about what other things they could mean, because their meaning needs have already been filled. Really please just move along.

THREE
In 1999, two guys named George Milne and Mark McDonald developed a scale of fandom. Neyfakh describes Milne and McDonald as “fanologists.” “Fanology” does not have a Wikipedia page and is therefore at risk of not being an actual thing. However, a Google search for “fanology wiki” turns up the entry on “Flirting,” presumably on account of the following paragraph, which contains a lot of things that I didn’t previously know:

The fan was extensively used as a means of communication and therefore a way of flirting from the 16th century onwards in some European societies, especially England and Spain. A whole sign language was developed with the use of the fan, and even etiquette books and magazines were published. Charles Francis Badini created the Original Fanology or Ladies’ Conversation Fan which was published by William Cock in London in 1797. The use of the fan was not limited to women, as men also carried fans and learned how to convey messages with them. For instance, placing the fan near your heart meant “I love you”, while opening a fan wide meant “Wait for me”.

Texas Ranger starter C.J. Wilson suggested today via Twitter not only that (a) he’s occasionally frustrated by the questions he’s asked by reporters but that (b) he’d entertain the possibility of giving fictional answers in the future.

Fortunately, NotGraphs literally specializes in the very important field of fictional answer-giving.

Below are some questions that Wilson either has received or could expect to receive, all with answers taken directly from a most unlikely source — i.e. David Berman’s first and only book of poems Actual Air.

Regard:

Q. How does a pitcher have to act to become a true ace?

A. So dull that he only makes a brief appearance in his own life story.

Q. How’d you feel out there today?

A. Like a turtle tangled up in dry cleaning bag.

Q. What’s been the key to your transition from relieving to starting?

A. A wedding ring with an on/off switch.

Q. How does your cut fastball look to opposing batters, do you think?

A. Like rain in its original, uncut form.

Q. What do you like to do with your free time?

A. Rank the great shipwrecks.

Did you miss the explosive and exploding inaugural NotGraphs chat? If so, then please enjoy one of the highlights …

NotGraphs reader/chatterer/philosopher-king stevedore SubtleStatement passed this along, and let’s just say our gratitude is incalculable. Not even Dave Cameron could calculate our gratitude — that’s how incalculable it is.

Anyhow, Garvey later impregnated that ninja! Untrue fact!

From left to right …

Young Lady #1: “I can’t quite believe my own thoughts, but the photographer is cuter than Jetey-Jetes! He kind of looks like Ed Yarnall. Ed Yarnall was a darn dreamboat.”

Young Lady #2: “Over there, in the distant distance … keep your almond-shaped eyes on the distant distance … The only way Mr. Jeter will notice me is if I distinguish myself from the undistinguished likes of Mitzi and Crystal. I’ll tell him I prefer a sensible Ann Taylor pantsuit to that Aeropostale tripe. Didn’t he once date Susan Sontag? I think he did. Derek, I am complicated but worth the complication. Did you notice that I was respectful of the Anthem without being servile? Convention can be subverted with the cottony touch of approaching Autumn. Vous ne pouvez pas s’étendre vers votre gauche, et pour celui je vous pardonne. My smile is but a mask, you know.”

Derek Jeter: “1, 2, 3 … Corpse face! Ha, ha! No one does the corpse face quite like the Captain! Heh. F*cking A-Rod.”

Young Lady #3: “I can’t believe the Captain smells! It’s a good thing he can’t range to his left. El. Oh. El.”

Turns out, most things are S for W when your job is playing baseball.

Let’s get a few things straight before we dive down my social-media rabbit hole.

1. I don’t like Twitter. Or I didn’t.

2. Twitter and Facebook played small, if any, real role in the Middle East revolutions.

There, I said it. But you know what Twitter is good for? Yep, you guessed it: Knowing about Logan Morrison’s junk-shaving habits. Hint: he shaves it.

Why do I know this? That’s right, @LoMoMarlins likes to delight the world with his manscaping habits, while not talking about anything and everything else… Did I (@PatrickGCain) mention that I don’t like Twitter?

But I do like knowing some players are “good guys” and have a sense of humor. So, without further ado, I give to you some highlights from Logan Morrison, OF/1B of the Florida Marlins…

1. He’s selling his cast.

2. He painted his case pinstripes to match his uniform.

3. He’s very active in responding to fans.

4. He’s following his fictitious silverback Gorilla @LoMoDimples and his strained arch @LoMosarch.

5. He’s unabashedly following webcam girls, despite not knowing what NSFW means. Then again, webcam girls may be very SFW in his line of W.

This, my friends, is your future friend.

He’s Chip Caray, and he approves this message.

Though the consequences of it aren’t entirely agreed upon, it’s obvious enough that at least some kind of bias exists in the classification of batted-ball types that informs stats like UZR and xFIP. This is natural enough: in any case where a human element is introduced, things are bound to suffer. (Just ask FanGraphs’ Dave Allen!) Given the altitude of a press box or the angle at which said press box is situated behind home plate, the trajectory of a batted-ball might be difficult to adjudge. Also, owing to some curious hiring practices, the people who classify these things are frequently drunk or blind or both.

As in other areas of baseball-related research, FanGraphs is keenly interested in reducing the error bars on this particular type of information. Accordingly, we’re taking steps to deal with the present biases in classification — namely, by devising more (and more narrowly defined) batted-ball types. Given the relative paucity of our current classifications (just ground ball, liner, fly ball), there exist large swaths of grey area. Our hope is to reduce — if not entirely eradicate — this grey area.

Below is a working list of 10 classifications we’d like to introduce sooner than later.

• Can of Corn — A very catchable fly ball.

• Can of Organic Corn — A very catchable fly ball at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

• Duck Snort — A batted-ball type that only occurs in Hawk Harrelson’s mind.

• Fist — Like a flare, but way more disgusting.

• Flare — A ball hit just past the infield, but neither a line drive nor a fly nor a fliner nor a flounder (i.e. what would happend if a fly and grounder had a baby).

• Frozen Rope — A very well-hit line drive.

• Klickitat — A sort of ground ball hit to the back part of the infield and which you might call a line drive if you were in a different mood. (This is in honor the Klickitat tribe — a Native American group of the Pacific Northwest who had, by some accounts, upwards of 28 different classifications for batted-balls.)

• Nubber — A weakly hit ground ball. Also, a good name for a dog.

• Partially Thawed Rope — Like a frozen rope, except less glorious.

• Squib — I think you know.

So loyal NotGraphs commenter Card Archives (more on that name in a moment), who is also a broad-shouldered captain of industry, has done a thing and that thing is amazing.

I can’t begin to fathom the Mennonite’s toil that went into cataloguing every Topps baseball card ever, but I stand agape. And then I fall down, still agape.

So lose yourselves within his pages, stick-and-ball enthusiasts, and know that here at NotGraphs a hero walks among us.