If I learned anything over the offseason, it’s that ESPN’s Enrique Rojas has got Latin America covered. And I mean covered. If there’s baseball news coming out of the region, Rojas is bringing it to you.

He’s a must follow on Twitter. Even if, like me, you are the furthest from fluent in Spanish, but enjoy reading words like “beisbol” and “Cardeneles.” And then saying them over and over in your head, in your finest Spanish accent.

Seriously, though. Rojas. The man owns Latin America. Edgar Renteria disrespected by the San Francisco Giants? Rojas let us know. Octavio Dotel to the Toronto Blue Jays? Rojas dropped that bomb. Vladimir Guerrero to Baltimore, and Jose Bautista’s long-term, arbitration-avoiding deal in Toronto? Boom, Rojased.

Heard this: Enrique Rojas knows how old Jose Contreras really is.

Thanks to the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, a unit I’ve developed quite a fine rapport with since I joined the NotGraphs team about three months ago, I’ve learned of some of Rojas’ previous scoops, in years gone by:

In 1961, Cuban intelligence knew the Bay of Pigs Invasion was coming. It was an Enrique Rojas tweet that alerted them to it.

In October 1962, it was Rojas who let the world know of three-way talks between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba; the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Years later, in 1993, Rojas tipped Colombian authorities to the whereabouts of Pablo Escobar, the world’s greatest drug lord, whose Medellin cartel fashioned itself “the New York Yankees of the cocaine world.”

In 1994, Enrique Rojas — still bringing the top-notch reportage, showing no signs of slowing down — broke word of another significant three-way deal: NAFTA.

Impressed? You should be. Now give it up for Mr. Rojas. We likely wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.

Image courtesy Christopher Hall.

Famous for writing standing up, but he could do it all. Photo: Cornell.

In 1962, Vladimir Nabokov — author of Lolita — published a book called Pale Fire, which presents a long poem written by a fictional author, with another fictional character chatting to you about the poem along the way, and it’s all riddled with complicated allusions and things. Since my descriptions so often fall short, I will just report that it is considered a masterpiece.

What’s more, there’s a baseball angle! The poem within Pale Fire references a newspaper headline about a Red Sox-Yankees game, presumably a game from before 1962, since that’s when Pale Fire was published. But significant questions remain, namely: Was that Red Sox-Yankees game ever played in real life? And did Tim McCarver ruin it for everyone?

If I’ve piqued your interest,* I can’t take credit for the payoff. Brian Cronin over at the L.A. Times’ “Fabulous Forum” blog did not-inconsiderable legwork and posted a very enjoyable writeup exploring whether the game referenced by Nabokov was a real game. If you just want the answer, one Michael Donohue also discussed this question back in 2004, albeit succinctly.

And just on the off chance that any of our NotGraphs readers are also the kind of people who like to waste their time reading about sports on the Internet, I should point out Brian Cronin’s “Legends Revealed” website, which has lots of sports-myth-debunkery content, and his book, which leaves no comic book legend un-revealed.

* If I haven’t piqued your interest: Come on! This is like literary/baseball-historical Indiana Jones! It’s like if Harrison Ford got cast in Field of Dreams, but Dan Brown did a rewrite on the screenplay, and Umberto Eco was his writing partner. And Christopher Nolan directed it. And Harrison Ford’s wife in the movie was Salma Hayek. Interested yet? Need I point out that in 1989, when Field of Dreams was released, Salma Hayek was 23? Changed your answer?

This video comes to us courtesy the year 1989. The footage appears to be from their Scottsdale spring-training facility of that same year.

Among its multiple splendors, one can find in this video:

0:06 — Will Clark (I think, right?) talking about an itch he has.

0:41 — Roger Craig, Patron Saint of Heroic Nonsense, do what comes natural.

0:53 & 1:05 — Kevin Mitchell’s funny body.

Video also courtesy the efforts of YouTube user sfgiants22.

Today, we learn about and learn from three essential characters in baseball’s unwieldy canon.

Life: As someone named R.J. Anderson has noted in these pages, Wally Pipp was a more-than-serviceable first baseman for the Yankees for 10 years, accumulating 35.1 WAR from 1915 to 1924. He’s considerably more well known, of course, for being replaced by Iron Man Lou Gehrig on June 2, 1925 and effectively losing his place with the New York team.

From Pipp we learn that, sometimes, there are other people who are way, way, way, way more talented than us.

Prayer

The Italian expression che sarà
does not literally describe,
but is certainly applicable,
to the circumstances
surrounding your career
starting in June of 1925.
On the bright side of it all,
you got to live for three years
in that great American city, Cincinnati,
birthplace to professional baseball
and popular boy band 98 Degrees.

Read the rest of this entry »

You may recall yesterday that you read of Padre Cameron Maybin’s gastrointestinal pratfalls that came to him courtesy of Panda Express. You may also recall that Mr. Maybin took to The Twitter to express his disdain for Panda Express, and finally you may recall that it subsequently came to light that a prominent member of the Padres ownership hootenanny spends his downtime, presumably under cover of night, as CEO of Panda Express. From that point, the plot, much like a Chinese entree made with too much cornstarch, thickened.

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team undertook rigorous delving (i.e., I happened to run across what follows in my Google Reader) and, well, behold what Mr. Maybin now says on The Twitter:

Man just got back on the wagon panda express was great today, now I’m ready for action…. Best oriental cuisine around… Let’s go…!

That kind of cynical capitulation should lead you to a couple of assumptions: one, Mr. Maybin received a talking-to or at least a hard, knowing glance; and, two, he’s not yet eligible for salary arbitration.

In related news, I can’t say enough good things about Dave Cameron’s line of handcrafted origami hobbits! My shelf is overflowing!

Coming soon to a minor league park near you!

Replacement level players are, by definition, valueless. They are available in massive quantities, so cheap as to be practically free, and so bad that they can be easily replaced by picking a random player out of a hat – in short, they’re the baseball equivalent of a Twinkie. They may look and smell like baseball players, but you’d much prefer to have your 2 TAR (Twinkies Above Replacement) Ho Ho if you hadn’t dropped it on the floor.

But despite this, replacement level players do have an important role in major league baseball. No, it’s not that they’re necessary organization fillers: it’s that they’re some of the most entertaining, likable goofs this side of Bertie Wooster. I don’t know what it is – the interminable bus rides, the copious amounts of junk food, the prolonged exposure to minor league mascots – but something has a way of making them a bit….odd. Just look at what’s happened to career minor-leaguer Dirk Hayhurst. He’s progressed to the point where he must paint himself with polka dots before every game, and he won’t trot to the mound without his antlers in place.

And that’s why despite the overwhelming un-reception that Casey Fossum’s signing received from most Mets blogs, I want to come out and applaud the Mets for this signing. Yes, Casey Fossum stinks. Yes, he has long since left his heady days of youth and effectiveness behind him. Yes, he posted a 5.72 ERA in Japan last season and got demoted to their version of the minor leagues. BUT, Fossum dominates the league in three key areas: nickname, novelty pitch ability, and pitch face.

Nickname: According to his Baseball-Reference page, Fossum’s nickname is “The Blade”. Its etymology has been lost to the depths of time, but I’m sure it’s referring to his chiseled, badass 160 lb. frame.

Novelty Pitch: It’s not every day that you stumble upon a pitcher that throws a 50 MPH eephus pitch, let alone one that calls this pitch a “Fossum Flip”.

Pitch Face: I don’t know how Fossum’s face and body can contort into such shapes, but it’s truly a thing of beauty.

So Mets fans out there, don’t despair. Even if Casey Fossum reaches your major league club and loses you every game he pitches in, he’s still a more likable player than Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez combined, right?

You’ll die as you lived
In a flash of The Blade
In a corner forgotten by no-one
You lived for the touch
For the feel of the ball
One man, and his Eephus.

– The Casey Fossum Anthem, also known as “Flash of the Blade” by Iron Maiden.

In response to this morning’s player-profile game at the main site, reader (and possible genius) Jason B decided to make his own mad lib from the framework of Eno Sarris’s write-up of Angel reliever Jordan Walden.

As a service to the entire United States, I’ve inserted Jason’s responses below. Certainly do not hesitate to provide your own version.

Looking back through Wilford Brimley’s minor-league history, it’s hard to find a harbinger for last year’s double-digit strikeout rate. He only once struck out as many as one batter per inning on the farm. But Sisqo was a starter for most of that time, and his move to the pen played up his velocity (his fastball averaged 98.8 MPH) and simplified his repertoire down to that booming fastball and a useful slider. An above-average swinging-strike rate (13.3%) seems to suggest that he can continue to strike Major League batters out, but for fantasy uses, the real question is his proximity to the closer’s role. With Harry from “Harry and the Hendersons”, Janet Reno, and George Wendt in the pen around him, though, Charlamagne has too many veterans to pass to be considered a real sleeper for saves in 2011. Coach Shakira likes his veterans, as mediocre as some of his other options might be. My cat, Mr Purrfect, is best used for strikeouts and holds out of the pen.

Today, we remember another three lives in our ongoing — and totally not futile — effort to canonize baseball’s worthy figures.

Regard:

Life: While useful enough as a player, posting a 7.8 WAR over 1729 plate appearances, Pecota has become most famous for lending his name to the eponymous projection system developed by Nate Silver and still hosted by a certain enemy website.

It should be noted, also, exactly how fitting it is that Pecota’s feast day falls in what is basically the middle of forecast season.

Prayer:

You inspired probably
one of the most famous
backronyms ever.
Also, now I just learned
what a backronym is.
Thanks, Billskis!

(Note: Other relevant honorifics are acceptable in place of “Billskis.” Use your discretion.)

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Padres fly-catcher Cameron Maybin recently enjoyed a leisurely, industrial-grade meal at Panda Express. He then tweeted about the, um, lasting residue of said meal:

Never eat panda express sh*ts had me feeling awful for 2 days back on my grind tomorrow,, We got action…

Nothing surprising so far. If you eat meal with a higher sodium content than the tears of the Dead Sea — chow that’s best left to the iron-gutted frequent flyers and Food Court loyalists among us — then you risk violating your non-aggression pact with the digestive system.

At this point, you might be wondering why I didn’t just post an image capture of Mr. Maybin’s rather unremarkable tweet. However, examination at its most cursory has led me to believe that Mr. Maybin deleted said tweet. Why would he have done that? Gaslamp Ball, presumably after filing a daisy chain of FOIA requests, has arrived at the answer:

At some point Panda Express has left us all feeling, lets say, not so fresh. But when Cameron Maybin, the Padres new Center Fielder, complains of its sickening after effects and warns his twitter followers never to eat it… hilarity ensues. That’s because Tom Davin, the CEO of Panda Restaurants, is a member of the Padres Ownership Group.

Well, that’s a shame. It’s one thing not to be able to trust flesh lovingly prepared outside the service entrance of a Hot Topic. It’s another thing entirely not to be able to complain about it on your Internet computer.

Anyhow, if any “Cameron Maybin is in the best shape of his life” articles come your way in the near future, please be skeptical. Is it the new Charles Atlas workout that left him lean and angular, or is it the case of Montezuma’s Revenge perpetrated upon him by his employer?

Click to embiggen

This screencap was taken a full two nights ago.. Now, of course, only mere minutes remain until Albert Pujols’s self-made contract deadline. Will Albert stay in St. Louis? Will he bolt for Chicago? Los Angeles? Maybe… no… not New York?!

The clock is ticking. Mang.