(For more nonsense inspired by my son, check out my piece on McSweeney’s last week, “Your Baby’s Klout Score is in the 25th Percentile.”)

Given that yesterday was the day that baseball began on this continent, it may come as no surprise to the reader that I dreamt of baseball last night. Sweet, sweet baseball. Honey-glazed baseball. Baseball, beer-battered and dipped in cocktail sauce. Baked-Alaska baseball, burning for me. Food metaphor. Baseball.

My subconscious, apart from being hungry, was aware of the outfield situation in Boston, at least in part*. The situation being that Grady Sizemore played his way into the opening day position most of us assumed would go to Jackie Bradley, Jr. While my conscious self produces little sympathy for JBJ, given that he still does baseball as the thing that earns him money, it seems my sub-conscious swung perhaps too far in the other direction last night, producing a scene closely resembling this here rapidly repeating GIF:

The slightly less crisp but emotion-laden version that occurred in my sleeping brain lasted about as long one run of the above GIF, yet felt like it lasted much longer. Perhaps three or four consecutive loops of the above GIF. The dream then morphed abruptly into me trying to tie someone else’s shoelaces at Fenway Park. Because my subconscious doesn’t bother with where games are played.

*It/I did not know that Shane Victorino got injured, and that JBJ was called up for yesterday’s game.

Terry Francona probably won’t murder anyone this year.

Yesterday, in the electronic pages of FanGraphs, managing editor Dave Cameron published a post entitled Five Things I Believe About the 2014 Season, in which piece he shares five ideas concerning the recently started campaign.

What follows is a similar piece by the present author, except without all the carefully considered arguments and relevant evidence.

1. I don’t believe that the Miami Marlins are actually a team of secret operatives posing as a major-league baseball club, but actually attempting to infiltrate the largest drug cartel on the Eastern seaboard.

I don’t believe it. That said, it has certain merits as a working theory for that club’s difficulties.

Read the rest of this entry »

The author, whose loving mother is talking at him without cease even as he writes these words, won’t belabor the point — which point is that the very excellent Jose Fernandez just threw a curveball to strike out the also very excellent Troy Tulowitzki.

Here’s, for example, one slow-motion GIF of that curveball:

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Casey Janssen. Placed on the DL yesterday, after recovering enough from his earlier injury to appear in back-to-back games and not be able to have his DL stint backdated. Janssen will be replaced as the Blue Jays closer by Sergio Santos, who will likely never give the job back, costing Janssen millions of dollars as he goes from “proven closer” riches to “fungible reliever” pennies.

2. J.P. Arencibia. At least as a backup he had a chance of small sample size lucking him into nice-looking stats that would make it seem like he still knows how to hit the baseball. As a starter, less likely.

3. Daisuke Matsuzaka. 25 Ks in 23.2 spring innings, and a ticket to AAA. At least it’s Las Vegas. Then again, last time I was in Vegas, someone stabbed me in my hotel bathtub and stole my kidney. (Joke’s on them– that wasn’t my kidney.)

4. Bobby Abreu. Too young for the Phillies. Oh well. Rumored to be offered a minor league deal by the Mets, which makes him particularly unlucky this week.

5. Mike Jirschele. 36 years in the minors and now he gets to be a coach… for the Royals. Maybe Hopeless Joe should be Hopeless Mike. (Serious note: if you haven’t read ESPN’s piece about Jirschele and his journey, do that now. Best piece I’ve read all month, at least.)

On more than one occasion last spring, the present author published in these electronic pages a love letter from deep within his own self to Pittsburgh minor-leaguer Phil Irwin’s curveball — making note of that pitch’s “wild eroticism,” for example, or its capacity to provoke religious experience.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers, as you know, signed Miguel Cabrera to a very long contract for a very large amount of money, and while I don’t think it’s the epic mistake of titanic proportions that most of the Internet seems to, I have to admit that it will almost certainly not look good by the last 3-4 years of the deal. But I think as long as TV revenue keeps rising and the Tigers keep putting butts in the seats of Comerica Park (acknowledging that their ability to compete might be hampered by the extra long and expensive Cabrera extension), it won’t be a disaster for the club.

But as I hinted above, the majority feels like the deal is an atrocity somewhere between the rollout of SimCity last year and Idi Amin’s reign in Uganda during the 1970s. Nobody, however, has taken the news harder than the anonymous executives who have been talking to Buster Olney, who would also like you to know he is the victim of your racism.

These executives, according to Olney, are “appalled,” “disgusted,” and “aghast” at the Cabrera contract. This is kind of a higher level of moral outrage than I would expect from around a league that continues to say nothing about the continued employment of Josh Lueke. For let us not forget that, while Miguel Cabrera has been given all of MLB’s money, taking it from the starving mouths of the children of MLB’s owners, who only collectively earned $450 million in revenue last year, Josh Lueke raped a woman. Just so we’re clear, this is the reference scale to tell your run-of-the-mill outrage from that which inspires anonymous MLB executives to trip over each other to get to Buster Olney and titter and gossip away like a cast member of The Hills: Read the rest of this entry »

So, it appears that various humans of the seamhead breed are spearheading a decidedly ’Murcan crusade: namely, to secure Opening Day as a national holiday, thus positioning the day of the inaugural overpriced hot dog alongside such perennial classics as Thanksgiving, Easter and Shark Week.

Frankly, this seems an effort worth fighting for, and fighting hard, perhaps with bleeder nunchucks and mind-control tactics not unlike those on The Manchurian Candidate. Why? It’s not just because we’ll all get a day off from the steel mill. It’s also because we’ll get a really big parade! And parades are what we Americans do. Mostly for the exercise, because of all the sitting.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Post discusses Bryce Harper’s diet. Mostly healthy, except:

“I mean, I’m not perfect,” Harper said, laughing as he sat in the Washington Nationals’ dugout this week. “I eat ice cream all the time. Outside of that, I’m going to be smart.”

Clearly, a Ben & Jerry’s opportunity here. So… what should Bryce Harper’s flavor be?

1. Bryce Pudding. Vanilla ice cream with a rice pudding swirl and cinnamon-fudge-coated raisins.

2. Sugar ‘n Bryce. Sweet cream ice cream with gingerbread spice cookie chunks and an eye-black lico-Bryce swirl.

3. Bryce Cream Cake. Cake batter ice cream with red, white, and blue Washington Nationals uniform-color cake bits and a buttercream frosting swirl.

4. Bryce Krispie Treat. Vanilla ice cream with a marshmallow swirl and chocolate-covered Rice Krispie Treat chunks.

Okay, now I’m hungry. Someone please help make this happen.

One of these men is the literary heir to Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara.

It has recently come to the attention of the present site that one of the major leagues’ 30 organizations has within its employ — for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, but remain entirely praiseworthy — has a scout who submits reports of a distinctly whimsical nature.

While not at liberty to reveal the identity either of that scout or the organization to which he belongs, there are indications that the work of that scout, however surreal, exerts some influence over the organization’s decision-making.

What follows, exclusive to this site and thanks to the generosity of the unnamed orgnizations are brief excerpts from reports that this Dadaist Scout has filed within recent years — all of them (i.e. all the excerpts) relating specifically, in this case, to the sound certain players produce when the ball comes off their bat.

The Sound off Miguel Cabrera’s Bat
Is like a weedwacker committing patricide.

Read the rest of this entry »