As I detailed in this post on the advent of new yellow (“gold”) uniforms for the Oakland Athletics, I love the idea of yellow as a primary color for jerseys. Along with Oakland, the only other candidate for a yellow jersey would be the Pittsburgh Pirates. After all, they did it in the 1970s.
These are pretty good, I guess. But I think we can do better.
If you’re the Rays marketing department — and, let’s be honest, there is a certain resemblance — then what are you to do about the approaching (and awkward and ill-timed) hoofbeats of Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night? Like anyone else with nowhere left to turn, you send up the Fuld Signal:
That, brothers and sisters in arms, is a Super Sam Fuld Cape, and it will be presented to the first 10,000 fans age 14 and under who negotiate the turnstiles on May 29 to cheer on the Sons of Greg Vaughn.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with a Manny Ramirez Bobblehead, banal and outmoded though it may be. But it’s certainly no Super Sam Fuld Cape. I mean, a cape! Heroes wear capes! And so do oversexed barons! Capes!
And so the Legend of Sam Fuld grows and walks among us. My hope is that all of this soon leads the Franklin Mint to give us two things the people want and need: The Sam Fuld Numbered Commemorative Plate and The Sam Fuld Boer War Chess Set.
We love you, Sam Fuld. We love you so much.
It’s likely that readers of FanGraphs willn’t be surprised to learn that Ranger outfielder and 2010 AL MVP Josh Hamilton will be out injured for the next six-to-eight weeks. As SB Nation’s Jon Bois notes today, Hamilton has suffered frequent injuries since his 2007 debut.
However, as further and super-sleuthful research has revealed, Hamilton’s injury list is actually much lengthier than Bois — or anyone else, for that matter — knows.
Exclusive here, at NotGraphs, we’ve reproduced Hamilton’s complete injury history since 2007 — featuring some ailments you willn’t have seen reported on ESPN.
Regard:
5-19-07, 15-day DL, gasteroenteritis
7-8-07, 15-day DL, sprained wrist
8-23-07, day-to-day, cauliflower earring
9-17-07, day-to-day, hamstring soreness (listed again as “strain” on 9-13-07)
4-5-08, day-to-day, Mexican tooth
Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t play fantasy baseball in the traditional sense (I’m a Diamond Mind loyalist, and for that righteous cause I would lay down the lives of a number of acquaintances), but if I did …
I would spend a romantic evening or three at FantasyTeamNames.net, which is a series of related pages that have been fired through the Internet. There you can submit your fantasy team name to the teeming masses, which I refer to as “teeming” because they so often teem, and find out what they think of your squad’s name and, by extension, the value of your existence.
There’s also an Internet computer link that will reveal to you the highest-rated fantasy team names of all-time. Among the ones that give me chuckle and make me forget for a fugitive moment or two that we are all bound headlong for the abyss are: “Honey Nut Ichiros,” and, of course, “Black Sabathia.”
But then I remembered that all of us are going to die one day.
Allow me to preface this piece of investigative reporting with the following video, anonymously submitted to the Mustache Watch hotline. The accompanying message simply said: “Keep digging.”
Naturally, I was intrigued, so I complied and began looking into it, trying to find what the video meant and where it came from. What started out as a curiosity, though quickly turned into a high-stakes struggle between life and death.
If there’s one thing a man wants, it’s to be immortalized in the very permanent medium that is Twitter.
That thing is what’s happening right now to Tampa Bay Ray, New Hampshire native, and Member of the Tribe Sam Fuld.
After the jump, you can find some prime examples of Sam Fuld-related panegyric. Feel free to embrace all the magic by clicking here.
To hear the old guard tell it, our devotion to the numbers is slavish, stultifying, boundless and without bound, injurious to the Republic. You know whom I’m talking about. I’m talking about stout-hearts like blogger Murray Chass, who enjoys using his blog to blog about how bloggers are large and unrelenting meanies and are also unlike him. And there’s Dan Shaughnessy, the valet to human misery who hates each thing in the world more than anyone else hates any one thing in the world. I speak of them and their ilk.
But I come not to condemn. No, it is with some regret that I must say this: I am here to validate their suspicions and antipathies. Yes, I am here to confirm that what follows, as they have long suspected, is precisely what plays out in the mind of a devoted stathead when he or she takes in a game of base and ball:
It is in the interest of peace — a Glasnost of the press box, if you will — that I disclose this dark secret. It is our affliction, and we must own it.
And, I should add, the scene you see above, contrary to appearances, does not take place on a proscenium stage …
No, in the gnarled penumbras of our minds, all things come together in primordial affray to form one large mother’s basement — a mother’s basement buttressed by argument and brag, forged and soldered by our magma-hot Cheetos breath.
It is there that this lederhosen’d numbers dance, which we think is baseball, unfurls before us.
Are we to be pitied? Forgiven? Banished?
I’m only stating the obvious, reader, when I state that NotGraphs, despite the relative brevity of its existence, has already become an industry leader. “In what ‘industry,’ exactly?” is maybe what you’re asking when you read that. Well, that’s a tough question with a number of really technical answers. Still, it’s a true and unavoidable fact.
One quality we here at NotGraphs have demonstrated over and again is our ability to know what people are thinking and doing at any given moment. Thanks to the efforts of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, we recently revealed the exact thoughts certain members of the 1978 Philadelphia Phillies were thinking at the exact moment said team’s photo was snapped.
In what follows, we provide — via the most rigorous and modern techniques available — the five things Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia was most likely saying to pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka on Monday night, as the latter waited to be removed from the game by manager Terry Francona following a dismal performance against the Rays.
Regard, quotes:
• Buddy is going to the farm, Dice-K. It’s just not the type of farm you can visit.
• I think we’re alone now (alone now). / There doesn’t seem to be anyone a-rou-ound.
• Just rub some olive oil on it. That’s what we Saltalamacchias have always done.
• Why’d I put all this Wite-Out on my effing fingers if you were just gonna throw the same pitch every time, dude? Seriously, look at it from my perspective: this stuff’s, like, impossible to clean off.
• That’s not the only thing that ends in a vowel, if you know what I mean.
You’re in for another treat, as the day of lists and bullet points at NotGraphs continues. You’re welcome I’m so sorry.
Last week, “in these very electronic pages,” as the ever eloquent Chairman Cistulli likes to say, I mentioned that upon watching Melky Cabrera high-five Joe West, and then pick something off his bat and eat it, I had to make some changes to My Most Favorite Baseball Players in the Whole Wide World list. Well, what kind of writer basement-dwelling blogger would I be if I didn’t share said list with you?
Now, please keep in mind, I grew up, and remain, an ardent supporter of Toronto’s Blue Jays. I was a freshly minted 10-years-old when the World Series trophy began its two-year northern vacation in 1992. In celebrating Toronto’s back-to-back championships, I was so hopped up on sugar I might as well have lined up and snorted the stuff.
Part I, players 10 through six on the list, is below, and not as Blue Jays centric as Part II will inevitably be. Shall we? We shall.
10. Melky Cabrera
He high-fived Joe West. He picked something off his bat and ate it. You’re damned right that was enough, at this moment in time in the universe, to crack my top 10 list.
9. Kirk Rueter
I was enthralled by Rueter’s 1993 debut with the Montreal Expos, Toronto’s baseball cousins, whom I always kept a close eye on. Rueter didn’t allow an earned run in his first two career starts, and finished his dream rookie season 8-0. Back then, pitcher wins weren’t everything. They were the only thing. Though he spent the majority of his career in San Francisco, Rueter, the furthest from a power pitcher, was the reason I rocked, for a short period of time, a blue Expos hat.
8. Paul O’Neill
It’s funny, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always despised the New York Yankees. It’s in my contract as a fan of another team in the AL East. But I could never find it in me to hate Paul O’Neill. He played the game — wait for it — the right way. At least that’s what it always looked like. In the late 90s, O’Neill was the consummate Yankee; America at its finest. And watching him play game four of the 1999 World Series hours after his father died was about as emotional as baseball has ever been for me. There’s a reason no Yankee wears #21. And, let’s be honest, the brilliant Seinfeld cameo helped. O’Neill hit two home runs for little Bobby!
It was always the way Tony Fernandez threw the ball, from short to first, the side-armed flick, that endeared him to me, and so many others. He could field like nobody else. So smooth. Even the way he held his bat was different. An influential part of the up-and-coming Blue Jays of the late 80s, even in departure, traded to San Diego with Fred McGriff for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter, Fernandez left his mark; the trade was the most crucial the Blue Jays have ever made. And Fernandez, for his part, always thought of himself as a Blue Jay. You could tell. It’s what made his return to Toronto in 1993 so special, as the Jays set out to repeat. In 48 games with the New York Mets to begin the season, Fernandez’s wOBA was a disappointing .293. After being reacquired by the Blue Jays, Fernandez, home again, hit .306 the rest of the way, with a .354 wOBA. Home, as they say, is where the heart is, yo. After winning the 1993 World Series, Tony was off on his way again, with stops in Cincinnati, New York, and Cleveland. Until he came home, to Toronto, again, for the 1998 and 1999 seasons. As much as Fernandez couldn’t get enough of Toronto, we couldn’t get enough of him. I’ll never forget June 1999, when, three months into the season, Fernandez flirted with .400. After a season in Japan, and a quick tour of Milwaukee in early 2001, Fernandez came back to Toronto again, a third time. It was only fitting. Fernandez had to retire a Blue Jay. Thanks for the memories, Tony.
6. Mark McGwire
The first non-Blue Jays jersey I ever purchased was a red, St. Louis Cardinals Mark McGwire one. It was the summer of 1998, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa were Chasing Maris. Like so many people, the home run brought me back to baseball, too. I ain’t mad at you, Mark.
This exercise, and the agonizing decisions that came with it, was a lot more difficult than I originally imagined. Who makes up the latter half of your top 10? Tell me in the comments below. Please? (I have to, I’m Canadian.)
And stay tuned for Part II, dropping in the coming days. And, one more thing: Follow me on Twitter. Why, you ask? I say: Why not?
Image courtesy LIFE, via — who else? — Google.
