(For a bigger video, go here.)

I had heard earlier this week that Wil Myers had bestrapped himself with a GoPro camera, and today I’ve discovered the harvest of that effort. Are there deficiencies in this footage? Sure there are. Such as: Wil’s repeated efforts at the same joke — a joke which, as it turns out, renders him incapable of working for the CIA (“Don’t do anything stupid,” *points at camera on brow*).

But what this film shows us is more than worth enduring the jittery cinematography and awkward verbal exchanges. What this film shows us is the future of baseball media. As cameras get yet even smaller and our interest in athletes yet even more invasive, I think we will one day see the hat-mounted camera become a staple of the baseball uniform.

Let’s examine the highlights of Myers’s footage:
• Witnessing the signature Wil Myers batting circle warmup from his perspective.
• Viewing the world from Myers’s upright, tall batting stance.
• Watching two neatly crushed balls proceed from bat to blue oblivion.
• Participating with Myers as a trio of fly balls whiz into his glove.

Now imagine if we could have watched from the perspective of Willie Mays as he — with back turned towards the crowd — basketted The Catch. What did Kirk Gibson see while standing in the batter’s box with two bad legs in 1988? And what did it look like to John Jaso when he caught the final perfect game pitch from Felix Hernandez in 2012?

It’s coming. And it’s going to be kinda awesome.

Scenes like this one always appealed to Tyler Smith.

SCHENECTADY — A man eager with anticipation for the start of spring training baseball games in Arizona and Florida — but also simultaneously demonstrating signs of gustatory hallucination — is probably having a stroke, according to those present.

Read the rest of this entry »

ATLANTA — In a move that was both surprising, yet right in line with recent activity, the Atlanta Braves have signed Colton Jackson, a baby, to a 29-year contract extension. Jackson was signed to his initial contract by the Braves a mere month and half prior, forty eight days after his birth.

“We are excited to continue our tradition of committing to our promising young talent,” said Braves general manager Frank Wren. “Colton here has shown a lot of potential in these last two months. He’s been very responsive to our jiggling of keys, and has really upped his performance in peekaboo. We like his makeup, and with some time we feel his fingers won’t look so weird. All in all, it’s a great day for the Atlanta Braves organization.”

Wren said that the signing of Jackson, along with the recent extensions of Freddie Freeman, Andrelton Simmons, Julio Tehran, and Craig Kimbrel will help solidify who the Braves are for many years to come. He would not comment on the rumors that the team is in talks to gain exclusive signing rights to Freeman’s first born son, but the so-called “sperm retainer” has been discussed heavily within the front office, sources say.

“I’m excited to see Colton take his position around 2044,” Wren said. “We should be in our fifth or sixth new stadium by then.”

In my brief time here at NotGraphs – a time marked, incidentally, by writer unrest, failed coups d’editeur and overwhelming displays of Cistullian force – I have noticed a pair of salient things, “salient” being an old Latin word for “an old Latin word that slots directly before the American word ‘things.’” One is that humor writing, or, perhaps more accurately, alleged humor writing, is not nearly as fun as it seems, in part because The Paul Reiser Show took most of the good jokes but also because La Garde Cistullian – honestly, that’s what it’s called: The Cistullian Guard – allows us just one bathroom break per 18-hour workday and just three squares of an off-brand Slovenian toilet paper made primarily from corn husks and insect parts.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following tweet, which concerns a real and not fake statement made by Brewers manager Ron Roenicke with regard to outfielder Ryan Braun, is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

The freely available video from which this GIF has been captured — and which appears to feature the College of Southern Nevada at Western Nevada College in 2010 — offers more or less everything a person could want so far as Bryce Harper and mountains are concerned. Like, Bryce Harper singling to left in front of a mountain, for example. And also Bryce Harper making an extra-inning relief appearance in front of a mountain.

What said video also offers is the footage above — of teenage Bryce Harper not only homering in front of, but also mostly onto, the mountain in question.

Surely, one realizes, Walt Whitman was right when he said… all those things that Walt Whitman is famous for saying about one thing and another.

FLORIDA — Here I am, at spring training with my favorite team, after an arduous journey that involved my car breaking down, no one wanting to help me as I tried to wave down passing motorists (I guess I shouldn’t have worn my old worn-out Michael Jackson “Smooth Criminal” t-shirt, where the first word is barely even visible after so many washings with the discount store-brand detergent), and then a brief case of norovirus I picked up in the gas station bathroom after I pushed my car along the highway’s shoulder — dislocating my own shoulder in the process.

Anyway, looks to me like everyone is in the worst shape of their lives. Unless I’m just projecting. Hey, I used to have decent metabolism. I could eat a whole pizza — but now I can only eat half a pizza, since that’s all I can afford, and still I balloon up like a Bartolo. Anyway, after a rough 2013, I can only imagine everyone’s in for a rougher 2014, or at least a rougher start to the year after I had all the starters sign a team ball and inadvertently gave them all my norovirus in the process. My bad.

And of course there’s the battle for the fifth starter slot, which probably won’t be won by anyone after I took the contenders out for lunch to a beachfront restaurant, for a group interview I thought would make an amazing piece I could sell somewhere and finally make some money from my freelance writing… and they all got washed away to sea and drowned. Don’t ask — I should have read the Yelp reviews more carefully. Who knew you needed a license to operate a restaurant on a boat, and that you also needed the boat to be airtight. A titanic mistake on my part, unfortunately.

So I talked to one of the top prospects too, and he was doing great until I reminded him that the stock market is volatile and his signing bonus may not actually be as safe as he imagined. He said that put a little pressure on him, that I really made it sink in that he has to do whatever it takes to end up with a major league career. So, that plus the random drug test a few hours later and it looks like he’ll be back in the second half of the season. Oh well.

The ace reliever has a new pitch. Well, he did until I accidentally bumped into him while I was doing the grounds crew a favor and trimming the hedges.

The third baseman didn’t really understand my practical joke about the hot corner and now he has third-degree burns over 90% of his body.

And the star outfielder is gone. Missing, I mean. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned my connection to the team when I was talking to my bookie. Joke’s on them, though — I can’t even come close to affording the ransom!

Looks to be another losing season. Why wouldn’t it be? I only root for the best.

As fans, when Spring Training comes round, we thirst for any whispers coming from down south. The more we hear about baseball, the more real it becomes. Reporters know this, and have taken to tweeting out pictures from Spring Training camps to feed our insatiable hunger. Some aren’t so great. They can be blurry, or taken from a far distance, or not really actually of anything of note. There is a whole Internet web site devoted to this. We may poke fun, but I still consider these art. With that idea in mind, I have created my own Bad Spring Training Pics using nothing but Google and a free image editing computer program. I’m not at Spring Training yet, but that does not mean I can’t partake in some of this good-time action.

The entrance to Salt River Flats in Arizona

Byron Buxton’s elbow

Salvador Perez’s ear

Joe Girardi’s swimsuit area

The brim of Carlos Marmol’s hat

#Rays Balfour had his rather cool truck at camp today. pic.twitter.com/yansZRkgvK

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) February 19, 2014

Because as an Australian player of ball, one must transport and carry various sundries — such as a bag one can sling over the shoulder or lay gently in the passenger seat (buckled or unbuckled). In order to help create a sense of size with this truck, I went ahead and pulled the ol’ Woodrum Family Prius around and parked it side-by-side with the Balfour Compensator for a more visceral comparison:

Obviously a many thanks to Erik Hahmann (@ehahmann) for alerting us to this trucktastic tidbit.

Pitchers and catchers have reported, spring training starts in a week or so, your MLB.tv subscription has been renewed, and each team’s official Web site will have a new, exciting tagline for the season. Here’s a sneak preview of those taglines. (Clicky click ’em to big ’em up.)

Read the rest of this entry »