Although his max-effort delivery would make me hesitant to hand out a multi-year contract, there’s no doubting the raw stuff. Fathom:

'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulp6dsF4iVA&feature=player_embedded'>watch?v=Ulp6dsF4iVA&feature=player_embedded

I played a fair amount of Wiffle Ball games back in the day, and I can say that — were the young Sudden Sam you see above one of the neighborhood kids — after our initial amazement subsided we’d hold games in secret just so this guy wouldn’t show up and make a shameful hash of us all. He would probably have a way-cool bike, too. Like a Kuwahara or a custom-made Hutch or something. Big jerk.

(Curtsy: TedQuarters)

THE EXTRA 2% – Sneak Peek

Though I’m not entirely sure “It was a dark and stormy night” is the most relevant opening line for a book that examines the meteoric rise of the Tampa Bay Rays, there’s little else to criticize about this excerpt from (FanGraphs author!) Jonah Keri’s forthcoming book, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First.

Just from this brief excerpt — which includes Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s foreward and Keri’s prologue — the reader can already feel himself not only being (a) seduced by the Rays’ David-and-Goliath narrative, but also (b) overcome with a strong desire to give exactly $15.44 to Keri and his handlers.

One also feels slightly sick to his stomach when he’s forced to remember that, after the 2002 season, the Rays traded literally their best player, Randy Winn, for Lou Piniella — i.e. a frigging coach.

Were the countdown clock you see here mercilessly discarding the days, hours, and minutes till the end of the world as we know it, that would be horrible. Though it could do wonderful things for the availability of parking in the city, this hypothetical apocalypse would seem to offer few other advantages.

Anyway, as it stands, we needn’t worry quite yet about the End of Days. In fact, this clock is merely designed to alert bespectacled Americans to an event where they can be amongst their own.

Regard this blockquote:

On Saturday, February 12th, make your way to the heart of New York City to celebrate Strat-O-Matic’s 50th Anniversary/Opening Day 2011. For the first time ever, we will be celebrating the release of our new baseball season and other awesome products in the Big Apple, along with a special event in honor of the past 50 years. The day will feature seminars, panels with our research team, guest speakers and of course the opportunity to meet Hal Richman, creator and founder of Strat-O-Matic, as well as plenty of time to check out the new cards and play against other fanatics.

Dates, times:

Location:
Community Church of New York
40 East 35th St, New York, NY 10016

Date and Time:
Saturday February 12th
7:30am to 6:00pm
(Registration is 7:30am to 8:30am

Finally, I would be be remiss not to include this — about how you can get discounts in the sexiest way possible.

Restaurant/Lunch Information for Day of the Event:
• Austin’s Café (deli). 10 Park Avenue, corner of 34th Street. 15% off everything when you mention Strat-O-Matic.
• Gigi Café (deli). 64 East 34th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues. 10% off everything when you mention Strat-O-Matic.

The similarities are uncanny.

Username ‘letsgocyclones’ on AmazinAvenue has a decent day job. As a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city, he is surrounded by some of the most precious cultural artifacts our nation has to offer. No matter how grueling all that standing might be, he can at least look left at a Jackson Pollock, or right at a Jan Van Eyck. It gets much much worse than that, we can agree.

But letsgocyclones would trade it all in for a clipboard and a radar gun. Like many of us, he spends much of his day instead ruminating about the Mets’ second base situation or who their left-handed reliever might be in the coming season. There’s no shame in that, the distraction and entertainment sports provide beyond the actual moments themselves are a foundational part of being a sports fan.

As we’ve been showing – at least in some part – by our email interviews of Craig Calcaterra and Shannon Drayer, some of the best thinking is done by people mixing different sections of their resume. As Drayer used some of her history as a barista to focus on interpersonal relationships in baseball and baseball journalism, and Calcaterra has called upon his legal knowledge in parsing important moments in recent baseball history, letsgocyclones has found a genius way to mix his day job and his passion for his favorite team.

A diptych to the strikezone.

In two legendary FanPosts at AmazinAvenue, letsgocylcones has paired Mets’ icons with Met icons, to hilarious results. Some of the pairings are based on a shared line or perspective, some on gesture, some on content. In the case of this Oliver Perez – Jackson Pollock pairing, the two, together, have something post-modern to say about the strike zone. (Try the comments section here for a photoshopped version that hammers the point home.)

The original Dickey Face.

Though it’s all in good fun, there’s a little meat in there too. These pictures are an important part of our current culture. Though they seem ubiquitous, and are produced daily about eight months of the year, they are an art of a modern medium. It’s both meaningful and unmistakable that the same forms and subjects that humans have enjoyed in history are once again resplendent in our present. Just look at this picture pairing. On the left you find the subject of the popular “R.A. Dickey-face” competition, and on the right, a 17th century baroque piece called Magic Scene with Self-portrait by Dutchman Pieter van Laer, who went by “Il Bamboccio.” Magic, indeed.

Of course, I cannot let my art history minor fade silently into the night without a fight. So, I submit my own pairing. On the left, you have Ben Francisco avoiding a high-and-tight from Logan Ondrusek. On the right, Son of Man by Rene Magritte. Not quite as good as the work by letsgocyclones, I will admit. Perhaps I need a little more time in the museum.

Bowler hat, batting helmet.

The Mariners’ David Aardsma is more than just a quality reliever and the guy whose aardvark-like surname bumped Hank Aaron from alphabetical pole position in The Baseball Encyclopedia. He’s also pretty good at the whole convalescence thing:

Still under orders to put no weight on his surgically repaired left hip, the Seattle Mariners closer is none-the-less taking on two rehab sessions a day, and will start throwing in another three weeks.

From his chair.

“I’ll focus on the arm motion, just throw without using my legs,” Aardsma said. “Then by the time I can throw standing up, my arm will have a little more strength, and will have stayed loose.”

Big hairy deal. One time I checked the mail while hung over.

Anyhow, the piece notes that Aardsma was on an exercise bike within an hour of waking up from surgery, so none of this should be especially surprising. Fittingly — untrue fact forthcoming! — this will be the chair from which he throws:

What we have here, objectively speaking, is a photo of Rod Carew on a piece of finished wood — purchased at a thrift store in Madison, Wisconsin.

Because I heard not one mention of it during my many and incredibly challenging art history courses in school, I can’t guarantee that this item is art.

What I can tell you that it stirs something deep and profound in the manbosom.

Note: Thank you to reader MarkW for the depth of his artisitc knowledge.

It’s a pretty sure thing that the player’s bat is what speaks loudest when it’s contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.
– Brooks Robinson

Over at The New York Times’ website, you’ll find an interesting little interactive feature they’ve put together called Gloves of the World Series.

Photographs of 16 baseball gloves are available to be looked at in stunning detail, from 1910 through to the year 2000. Ever wondered what Babe Ruth’s mitt looked like back in 1926? You can find out without visiting Cooperstown.

Baseball’s gloves have come a long way. Johnny Murphy’s 1941 mitt looks like a short, fat person’s winter glove. By 1965, the modern baseball glove had arrived, and Minnesota Twins left fielder Bob Allison was rocking “The A2001,” Wilson’s nylon-stitched beauty.

The final glove in the interactive feature is from the year 2000, and belongs to Edgardo Alfonzo. A Rawlings number, it serves as a reminder that the New York Mets — yes, the New York Mets — actually made the World Series 11 years ago.

Glove tap — see what I did there? — to The New York Times, and the image aboves comes courtesy of Flickr user mgdms.

The only problem with the above video, called FIP: A New ERA, is that writer, director, producer, illustrator, and narrator (?) Bradley Woodrum didn’t release it before January 1st — which, that means it won’t be eligible for this year’s Academy Awards.

It’s a bit of a must-watch situation, this, but two salient details that’ll give you at least a broad sense of its content are as follows:

1. It’s about FIP, and

2. It has a dragon in it.

A DRAGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

H/T: DRaysBay

As part of NotGraphs’ initiative to become the industry leader in forthcoming-book announcements, we are pleased to announce a forthcoming book and the receipt of advance proof for same.

The book in question is Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, and it has been authored by John Thorn. Thorn’s name you will definitely recognize if you’re the sort of person who cared for sabermetrics before, say, the year 2000, for he authored, alongside Pete Palmer, The Hidden Game of Baseball, in which book the pair introduces linear weights (among other concepts integral to the field).

Thorn has apparently done some other things in the meantime — like, for example, consult Ken Burns on his very famous documentary about the game and also edit Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game.

As for the present text, it appears to be a revision of baseball’s creation narrative, going beyond not only Abner Doubleday but also beyond Alexander Cartwright, too — all the way (or so this publicity material suggests) to “Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and other fascinating figures that have accrued around baseball’s origins.”

The book goes on sale March 15th.

Western Civilization seems to be circling the drain these days, so baseball might as well get in on the act. To that end, we have “Cleat Chasers,” the latest offering from the ubiquitous sub-genre of reality programming (curtsy: Hardball Talk). The executive summary:

“It’s a reality show about girls who stop at nothing to score with athletes while they are away from their wives and girlfriends during baseball spring training,” a source close to casting told RadarOnline.com exclusively. “It’s about girls that have gone pro in the sport of ‘cleat chasing.'”

Objectification en masse and calculated erosion of the family unit? I’ll take two!

Item!: A highly placed source tells the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team that the “Cleat Chasers” pilot will feature Snooki giving Ichiro a “Happy Clancy” in the men’s room of a Del Taco in Tucson!*

(* – Patently untrue, and the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has no idea what a “Happy Clancy” is or whether such a sordid indulgence even exists.)