On the one hand, yes, it’s called Mustache Watch, which would seem to confine our interests merely to facial hair of the upper lip. On the other hand, NotGraphs has distinguished itself in the baseballing community for its generosity of spirit. In such cases where it’s possible to be inclusive without compromising our authority in matters whimsical, that’s the choice we’ll make.

The image above captures Official Closer™ Jordan Walden, sporting what we might characterize as a business beard — that is, one suitable for white-collar work, and which we might distinguish from the beards worn by Brian Wilson, for example, or teammate Sergio Romo. Those latter beards are much more resemble the sort you’d find on the face of a college student or, you know, 19th-century fur trapper.

Photo evidence (below) suggests that Walden might be in an experimental stage with his beard. More on this situation as it develops. Obviously.

What follows marks the debut post from Andrew Kelly. Of Mr. Kelly, many have said, “He’s a liar.” Of Mr. Kelly, we say, “No, he’s not. He just has a gift for fiction.”

In what follows, Mr. Kelly recounts an episode — exactly as it totally, actually happened — that appears to bind these seemingly disparate ties together.

Are you Ms. Ruiz, apartment 212? You are? Ahem.

BEHOLD! I am Kegasus, the tasteless new mascot of the Preakness Stakes. But for the other 364 days of the year I manage Newport Villas for my good friend and brother centaur, Alex Rodriguez. First of all Mr. Rodriguez would like to apologize for any problems you’ve experienced. As you may know, in recent years he has been plagued by injuries, but this year is different. This year it will be his opponents weeping instead of the running sore on his buttock! And just as things will be better on the field, so they shall be off the field as Rodrigasus has sent you this to solve all your problems:

As you can see it’s a 4’ X 8’ duplicate of the painting on his bedroom wall printed on finest velvet! Here, let’s hang it over your window. So much better. Now you can’t see the broken fences around the complex. You can’t even hear Poot and NeNe conducting their business transactions in the parking lot. And this velvet is so luxurious that it would likely repel stray gunfire! Is not Mr. Rodriguez wise? Is he not generous?

And now, Kegasus away!

Oh, could you point me to the elevator? Those crumbling stairs are tough on the hooves.

Over at the Atlantic, which is a Serious Journal by and for Serious People and which, as the name suggests, is housed deep within the intrepid waters of the ocean to your right if you’re facing north, Conor Friedersdorf has some ideas about how to make sports more palatable to those among us who prefer that their cultural pursuits not last long and be shitty. Here’s Mr. Friedersdorf’s baseball thought experiment:

Presumably I’ll never persuade purists to eliminate a whole inning. So I’ll offer my next best suggestion: allow managers one opportunity per game to borrow an out or two from a later inning. So it’s the bottom of the third. There are two outs, with men on first and third. Your batter strikes out. And you can decide to borrow an out or two in order to try and drive in those runs… but it’s going to cost you, because once the current inning ends the opposing manager gets to decide at his leisure when to charge you that out or two.

Like most proposals for radical change, this has not a whit of a scintilla of a chance of happening, but it’s decidedly less half-baked than most of its species. Usually, we get indeterminate bleats like, “MAKE THINGS GO QUICKER NOW!” or things like, “PAY CUTS FOR ANY PLAYER WHO IS RUDE TO A DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST!” or, “MAKE PITCHER PITCH BAT, MAKE HITTER HIT WITH BALL!” or “ARGH!” Mr. Friedersdorf’s, at least, sounds like something worth trying in rec-league softball, which means Charlie Finley could’ve come up with it during a Dewar’s bender. (Lest it seem otherwise, that’s totally a compliment.)

As for how to improve our fair game, the NotGraphs Highly Reputable and Totally Real Think Tank needs your help. To get you started, here’s one heavily focus-grouped suggestion: pre-game flyovers by Falcon Heavy.

I can only imagine that this video is shown to all incoming Minnesota Twins.

(Tip of the hat to The Common Man of The Platoon Advantage, who I can verify is actually a real person and not merely an abstraction!)

Recently, over at Beyond the Boxscore, master Dave Gershman submitted (with skillfully embedded video) what he considered to be the top-10 baseball commercials of all time. While “all time” might signify an instance of waxing hyperbolic, the post is still recommended for anyone who likes (a) watching things and/or (b) avoiding other, more pressing responsibilities.

Constantly aware that there’s no gain in the absence of pain, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has endeavored to provide an addendum of sorts to Mr. Gershman’s list — namely, a collection of the five best baseball commercials never to’ve been made. The ideas, of course, are authentic; it’s just, for one reason or another, they proved unsuitable for America’s virgin eyes (and virgin other parts, presumably).

Here are those five commercial ideas, with the relevant synopses and reasons for never seeing the air.

Advertisement: “We I.D.” PSA with Craig Counsell
Synopsis: Counsell attempts to enter a Milwaukee-area bar with some Brewer teammates. While everyone else shows ID, Counsell realizes he’s forgotten his driver’s license. The bouncer, accordingly, refuses to let him in. Incredulous, Counsell walks away… and returns second later with a hastily made shiv, which he then uses to slowly and graphically eviscerate the aforementioned bouncer. When life’s last breath has left the victim’s mouth, the narrator says coldly, “This could have been avoided.”
Didn’t Run Because: Totally nauseating and scary.

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What follows is an object lesson in what can happen when you go poking Google to see if the bees come out. Turns out, they do. There’s this:

Page viewers of a certain age will recognize this as the sculpture of Lionel Richie that was sculpted — as sculptures necessarily are — by that cute blind girl in the “Hello” video. If anything I’m saying here tolls not the bells of sweet memory for you, then by all means go back to necking at the skating rink or trying to buy “the angel’s dust” drug at the mall or whatever it is you kids and your loud radios do these days.

For those who are still with me and in need of some remedial coursework in smooth-jazz balladeering, here’s the musical video in question. And please do watch all 5:29 of the damn thing:

Yeah, I didn’t watch it, either. Anyhow, about, oh, three-and-a-half years ago (as I said, I was wandering around Google after dark) the scribes over at Ladies-Dot-Dot-Dot posited that the blind girl’s tender ministrations led not to a loving rendering of Lionel Richie but rather to the determined visage of Blue Jays legend George Bell. I submit into evidence:

Eureka: That sculpture is of George Bell. The poor girl may have wound up with Lionel Richie (I dunno, is that what happened? I didn’t watch it and can’t remember MTV plot elements from 25 years ago.), but she was clearly under the impression that George Bell was teaching that acting class, and, more principally, it was George Bell with whom she fell deeply in love.

Lionel Richie, you devious cad. Not since Jacob donned the fake chest hair to swindle the birthright from Esau has someone taken such vile advantage of the visually impaired.

Important American Filmmaker (and occasional FanGraphs contributor, turns out) has turned his attention ever so briefly away from DIPS theory and towards the always wholesome field of advertising.

The product he’s promoting? Actually, it’s The Process Report 2011, discussed by our own Jackie Moore in these pages last week.

Little else to add from me — except that I’ve watched the video and have suffered no lesions or other ill effects as a direct result.

Yesterday, after watching Melky Cabrera high-five Joe West — he high-fived Joe freakin’ West! — I had to make some changes to my My Most Favorite Baseball Players in the Whole Wide World list. Needless to say, Melky skyrocketed up the rankings.

Then Peter Hjort, of Capital Avenue Club fame (one of the best blogs in the bidness), blessed us again, with “another good Melky moment,” as he put it.

Sit back, and enjoy the 11 second ride:

When Melky’s hungry, Melky’s got to eat. And judging by the way Cabrera so nonchalantly went about his business, he knew that morsel of, well, whatever it was, was there for the taking all along.

I can appreciate a man with a plan. Long live the Melky way.

You’re the best, Peter Hjort. Gracias.

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I’ve been ambling through some early 20th-century newspaper archives. The best part of all this has been disinterring the sports prose of one W.J. Slattery of the long-dead San Francisco Call.

Suffice it to say, if a man like Mr. Slattery still brandished his quill (which, I imagine, he did in much the same way that decorated cocksman Aaron Rowand brandishes his bat) then the print dailies of the world would not be in such a state of crisis.

Why do I say this? Please dig his lede from April 8, 1907, in which he mourns a San Francisco Seals loss to the Portland Beavers:

The Seals had enough of the left-over victorious spirit to put it on the Beavers when the teams made their bow to the Oakland fans yesterday morning, but the afternoon mixup before a house that was overflowing was a delusion, a snare, an imposition and a joke to the admirers of the native talent who were rooting for San Franciso. Never was the score a tie.

This “snare” was particularly surprising if you’d seen the mighty Seals go through their warm-up liturgies:

The Seals rushed on to the field with seemingly an overstock of real pepper when the bell rang. They whisked the ball around in practice like a flock of two-time pennant winners. There was confidence in the demeanor of each man; In fact, the entire team made the play so strong that the majority of the spectators conceded them the game before the first ball had been pitched.

And of the villain of this story, the poised Portland hurler by the name of Mr. Groom who vanquished the Seals despite the triumphalist vigor of their infield practice, Slattery writes:

It was his curves that kept the Seals off the bases in virtually every Inning, though the willing fans did the best they could to ruffle the youngster by saying things that only a baseball rooter can say when he feels like talking.

Indeed, the things a baseball rooter will say when he feels like talking.

Yours truly is a baseball rooter, and he happens to feel like talking: Mr. Slattery, we need your like and ilk among us today.

Confused.

I’m no pro at baby-rearing: I’ve just been babysitting my four-month-old nephew for a week-plus. But, that week coincided with opening weekend, and so an interesting parallel was born. The teams that were supposed to contend – they are not unlike crying babies. There are only four basic approaches to mellowing out a crying baby, this semi-expert says.

Feed the Baby
In this case, feed the baby with information about why the team will right ship. Talk about sample sizes and fluke in-game occurrences. Empty the bottle of its contents: reason based on precedent. Point out that we’re only about 2.5% of the way into the season, and what that might look like in another sport – half-way through the first game in an NFL season, for example. Keep feeding until the baby is sated, and then burp them so they don’t get indigestion.

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