An essay. You get a long essay about the nature of being a baseball fan, children, and the mixed emotions I have about fostering in my son not necessarily a love of baseball (because I don’t really have mixed emotions about that) but, more precisely, a love of spending time thinking about baseball, to the exclusion of the universe of other things a kid can spend his hours thinking about. Not that it’s really within my control, but still. (And that’s too long a title, so instead you get the nonsense clickbait title that I went with.)

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Some found footage from behind the scenes…

The Ironic Jersey Omnibus, facing impossible odds, continues its trek through the heartland of America, reaching the city of St. Louis. There it encounters a problem: the Cardinals.

Being an American League fan from the West Coast, I’d never really given the Redbirds much thought: they’re a natural phenomenon, something that just happens sometimes, like droughts or school budget cuts or music award shows. And this may have been easier if I’d cranked these out faster than four a year, and got through the Cards before last year’s playoffs. But then the Cardinal Way happened, and like it or not we can never really look at the Greatest Fans on Earth the same way again, no matter how much we’d like to.

Even without that uncomfortable moniker, we have to admit that the trouble with the Cardinals is that they’re simply not very funny. They win a lot, and they draw well, and they develop talent with methodical precision, all admirable traits. But if the Cardinals are all about winning, if there’s no subtext or commiseration, can a jersey ever be ironic at all? Why wear anything but a Matt Holliday, and announce one’s anonymous presence on the perpetual motion machine that is the Cardinal bandwagon?

I turned to Dan Moore, Internet Cardinal Authority, for help. He agreed that the well of gallows humor from the last downturn (fifteen years ago!) is running dry, the mid-nineties era when the team was playing in an old stadium on withered Astroturf for a broke owner. Sure, you could wear a 1993 Gregg Jefferies jersey, but otherwise there’s so little surviving and to have survived. And with the insularity of the St. Louis fandom and the Cardinal Way urging an unspoken unilateralism, it’s difficult to find ways to wink. (Note: there is no Eckstein to be found here. We do not indulge in cliché.)

With that in mind, here are my best efforts at jersey irony:

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It’s 1981. A dapper, 36-year-old Don Sutton appears on the The Match Game. He sports a fluffy, brown afro and a winning smile. He’s still got another half decade left in his Hall of Fame career.

Now it is 2014. You’re living maybe not the live your dreamed, but a life nonetheless — and likely a more practical, more quietly excellent life than you expected. And you need a desktop background for your 1920 by 1080 monitor.

Don Sutton has finally found that match. And it’s us. Today, that match is all of us.

The remainder of the Kansas City Royals’ postseason games, regardless of opponent, will just begin in the top of the 10th inning, according to a statement released early Saturday from the Office of the Commissioner.

“It appears unavoidable at this point,” announced Selig, “that after a flurry of sacrifice bunts, improbable defensive plays, and a Terrance Gore stolen base, that the Royals will have tied up the goddamn game by the end of the ninth. As a courtesy to our fans — some of whom I’m informed would like more than four hours of sleep — I’ve issued an exectuive order that the balance of the Royals’ games will begin with extra innings. That way, when one of the club’s mostly disappointing ex-prospects records a dramatic and probably game-winning extra-base hit, he’ll do so at some point before midnight on the East coast.”

Asked how this might alter his club’s strategy, Kansas City manager remarked slyly that he and others within the organization were looking into “extra-extra innings,” to see if that’s a thing that maybe exists.

So, your team is out of the playoffs, eh?

Well, like it says up there in the headline, here are five things you can do.

1) Plant a Hoegaarden. Have you never done this? No? Here’s what you do: Take one bottle of Hoegaarden, preferably of the Grand Cru variety but Witbier and Julius are also acceptable, and drink the bejeebers out of it. Open another bottle, preferably with your eye socket, and drink it while miming the Belgian national anthem. If not yet taken into custody, drink a third beer. Now, convinced of its properties, dig a small hole in an open field and, into it, drop another full bottle. Water liberally with a Miller, Coors or Budweiser.

2) Get in shape. I know you hear this a lot. Get in shape! Or, alternately, In shape, is what you should get! Or, also alternately, Should, as it concerns you, is the appropriate approach to getting in shape! And with your team out of the playoffs, now is finally the time. In keeping with that desire, the shape I suggest to you – again, now that you have little to live for – is all curled up, in the far corner of a dark room, with a pillow over your head.
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The purpose of this post is to announce, for the benefit of those who endeavor to maximize their experience of pleasure while simultaneously minimizing pain, that there appears to be a YouTube channel (MLBGlobal11) which features a not-insubstantial quantity of videos depicting major-league players and coaches getting ejected from games — many of which are accessible from this specific video of Angels pitcher Jered Weaver receiving an invitation from umpire Hunter Wendelstedt to remove his person from the field in 2011.

Credit to MinorLeagueBlog for originally drawing the Weaver video to the author’s attention.

Everyone over at RotoGraphs seems to be revisiting their 10 bold predictions. I thought I’d make some new ones instead. 10 bold predictions I didn’t make, but could have. And, in retrospect, should have. Because all predictions should be made in retrospect.

1. The Royals will make the postseason.

Clearly that should have been bold prediction #1. 1/1.

2. Corey Kluber and Michael Brantley will finish the year as top-5 MVP candidates but the Indians will not make the postseason.

I didn’t keep Michael Brantley in my AL-only Scoresheet league. I am no longer a member of my AL-only Scoresheet league. I am a very poor Scoresheet player when it comes to deciding which outfielders to keep. Jacoby Ellsbury, before his big year? No. Austin Jackson, after his rookie season? No. BJ Upton? Yes, yes, yes. My track record was really terrible. Hopefully the new owners can win some championships, especially since they have Nick Franklin, current and future star.

3. Jacob deGrom will be a name that I will know by the end of the season.

And it’s easier to spell than Syndergaard, so no complaints here.

4. Speaking of the Mets, they’ll finish in 2nd place in the NL East.

Talk about a prediction that would have sounded bold but turns out not to be bold at all, not when 6 games separate 2nd and last, and they were 17 games behind the leader.

5. The Rangers will finish with a worse record than the Astros.

That was just a terrible, terrible season. And they went 13-3 over their last 16 just to get to 67 wins!

6. Justin Morneau will lead the NL in batting average.

I *did* keep Morneau (as a crossover) in my AL-only Scoresheet league! And flipped him for Marcus Stroman in May, when my team was already a pile of garbage. So I’m not the most terrible owner possible, I promise.

7. Jonathan Lucroy: Monster.

Did anyone project this?

8. Garrett Richards: Monster.

I did read something somewhere pre-season about Garrett Richards having a potential breakout season… but I ignored it.

9. Tim Bogar will be managing the Rangers by the end of the season.

Not that Tim Bogar was an unexpected candidate for interim manager, but that would have been a mighty bold prediction. I remember when Tim Bogar was a Mets prospect. I can probably list a hundred Mets prospects from the ’80s and ’90s without really pausing to think. In retrospect, there were probably better things to be paying attention to as a kid than who was in the Mets’ minor league system. Tom Edens, Craig Shipley, Darren Reed, Jose Oquendo, Al Pedrique, Kevin Baez, Terry Blocker, Herm Winningham, Mike Fitzgerald, Floyd Youmans, Terry Leach, Tim Leary, Josias Manzanillo, Julio Machado, Don Schulze, John Mitchell, David West, Kevin Tapani, Rick Aguilera, (a different) Jose Bautista, Kelvin Torve, Kelvin Chapman, (a different) Brian Giles, Dave Telgheder, Eric Hillman. Okay, I’ll stop now. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments. Brent Gaff. Dave Rajsich. Ronn Reynolds. Ron Gardenhire (!)

10. The Royals will make the postseason.

Extra bold. Deserves to be listed twice. (Also, I ran out of steam at 9.)

Many American commenters – OK, one American commenter* has exercised his American commentary of late by claiming that a recent headline, like the ending of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Cupcake, should have been different, that instead of reading, “How to Youthify the Yada Yada,” it should have read, “How to Youthenize the Yada Yada,” a claim to which its author (me!) has now given due deliberation, with much furrowing of brow and drinking of cheap tequila.

Ultimately I’ve decided that though the commenter’s comment was clever and thus wholly indicative of my own mental vacuum of elite waggery, the proposed headline would have suggested a much different story, one centered not on drawing America’s youth to the Pastime and giving it new life, but, rather, on luring America’s youth to the Pastime and subsequently driving them away, thereby administering a slow mercy killing to this moribund sport.

What follows, then, is that very story, in handy sequential suggestions:

In the top of the first, show Frozen – and also hand out popsicles made of frozen cough medicine, Sriracha, hair from the shower drain at the Y, salt, shredded newspapers from Novosibirsk, paprika, Dr. Scholl’s Foot Powder and cumin.

In the bottom of the first, keep showing Frozen – and also dub the voices of Elsa and Anna with voices from a 1950s Yugoslavian physical fitness film that centers on the performance of deep knee bends whilst hoisting sacks of poultry byproducts.

In the top of the second, dress the infielders as an astronaut, a fireman, a policeman and a football player, respectively – and also compel those same infielders to perform a Baroque opera based on the 1546 scientific text De Natura Fossilium.

In the bottom of the second … cupcakes! – with icing made of quartz!
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The ghost of Andy Warhol (pictured here) bears almost complete resemblance to the actual Andy Warhol.

THE BEYOND — Noted late artist and Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol was known during his life for problematizing the relationship between fine art and popular culture. A recent encounter by the present author with the late icon’s shadowy specter, however, suggests that the latter’s tastes have changed somewhat in the 25 years since his death.

“Really, if you want to know, the majority of my time is dedicated to following the Pittsburgh Pirates,” the incorporeal form of the former silver-haired evangelist of Pop Art told NotGraphs from his home in the Beyond. “I read all the blogs, track the advanced stats. It consumes quite a lot of my time now.”

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