The following tweet, which concerns a real and not fake report regarding Masahiro Tanaka’s negotiations with certain major-league baseball clubs, is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):
“Skip” James was a difficult, haunted man who was torn—like many Southerners, black and white—between the Devil’s music and God’s word. He sounded like someone possessed, a one-man Southern Gothic drama…In a way, James’ story is the truest story of the blues: He led an open wound of a life, and all he got for it was minor-league, post-mortem stardom.
No one knows what to expect from Jose Abreu. Certainly I do not know what to expect from him. Thus, this post is not about his fantasy value, or his fantasy projections. It is merely a fantasy about Jose Abreu.
Jose Abreu will arrive at spring training riding a unicorn.
He will bring pasteles for his teammates, filled with guava paste and cream cheese. They will look at them strangely and throw them in the trash.
He will swing three bats at once. One of them will be carved from the arm of Fidel Castro. Another will be carved from the arm of Raul Castro. The third will be carved from the arm of Juan Castro.
He will hit twelve home runs during spring training.
I will draft him. So will you.
Those are the last twelve home runs he will ever hit.
Because the unicorn will eat him.
Because he’s only watched a third of it, the author can’t guarantee that there isn’t some manner of dirty sexy business secretly inserted into the video embedded here.
What the author can guarantee, however, is footage of the following:
Credit to citizen of the internet @_mistermet for alerting his brothers and sisters to this video.
Welcome the latest of NotGraphs’ award-winning series of crossbrand edutainment, wherein we consider the life works of an Important Historical Figure and examine, through careful research and analysis, what kind of manager that man would make. Today’s selection: the underrated twentieth-century French antihero, Phillipe Pétain.
Pétain rose from relative anonymity to become Commander-in-Chief of the French Army during the later stages of the First World War, primarily because he alone among his peers showed a hesitance to hurl his soldiers endlessly into mustard gas-coated barbed wire. He emerged from the War a hero on the scale of Eisenhower, only to end his life thirty years later in disgrace and exile.
Strategic Tendencies: Pétain was very much of the Earl Weaver school of warfare; he was preferred to wait for the three-run home run, saving up his offensives until he was assured of victory rather than dashing forward at the slightest opportunity. He was the sort of man who would hate to make outs on the basepaths. At the same time, the sacrifice bunt would play right into Pétain’s strong sense of nationalism, and of putting one’s country before one’s own happiness.
Defensive Philosophy: For aesthetic reasons alone, Pétain would never employ the shift.
Slate has an article about William Edward White, the first black major leaguer, who played in one game in 1879 and lived his life as a white man. It’s an interesting piece, even though his family didn’t even know he played major league baseball, and it’s not clear he even thought of himself as black…
But it doesn’t compare to the saga of Harold Partridge Outfielder, baseball’s first infielder, who lived his entire life believing he was playing the outfield. See, Harold was born in 1652, and was taught that the outfield started just behind second base — and that from there to the lip of the grass was in fact outfield, not infield. So when Outfielder played a deep second base, he believed he was acting as an outfielder, not as an infielder. He played one inning for the New Amsterdam Van Stuyvesants in 1675 and then fell victim to dropsy and was never heard from again. His existence will always be merely a footnote to a footnote to a footnote in major league history. But his legacy lives on here, in the virtual pages of NotGraphs.
Also, he was a gay Jewish woman.
Given just a few relevant biographical data points, basically anyone with even just a cursory knowledge of market research could reliably and accurately identify the present author’s tastes — which are little more than a function of his demographic signifiers.
“Wears fashion spectacles,” such a one might suggest. “Prefers natural foods,” that same one would continue. “Unutterably alone,” he or she would rightly conclude.
In which we take descriptive passages concerning the Roman Colosseum and retrofit them to refer to Marlins Park, as Lord Jupiter intended.
From William M. Johnson’s book, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie, with germane revisions …
But perhaps especially symbolic of the Floridian psychosis was the fact that military victories and religious festivals would be celebrated by an orgy of killing in the circus arena. Wildcats, bears, elephants, hippopotami, the largest and most exotic species that the animal-catchers could supply were all butchered for the sake of entertainment, with the conquering audience ecstatic, worked-up into a frenzy of blood-lust. While officials at the inauguration of Loria offered 500 lions, 410 leopards and 17 elephants, when Marlins Park was dedicated, 9,000 wild animals were sacrificed in a spectacle lasting a hundred days. On another occasion, to celebrate a win over the Mets, 11,000 animals were brutally destroyed. In one great festival commemorating Henderson Alvarez’s no-hitter, notes Marian Murray, enough animals were killed to stock all the zoos of modern Europe.
This has been “Inserting Marlins Park into Descriptions of the Roman Colosseum.”
Curling has been an Olympic sport since 1998. And, especially in last eight years or so, it has become everyone’s favorite Winter game to ironically like, make fun of, or become enthralled in strictly under the auspices of seeming incredibly interesting. You can put even money on a late-night talk show doing a remote somewhere where the host feigns an attempt to learn curling while he mostly dicks around and makes fun of a sport — not game, sport — that has roots as far back as the 16th century. Yes, curling is a little different. Yes, the shouts coming from the skips can seem out of place when juxtaposed next to such a slow-moving and low-contact event. It uses equipment not seen in any other sport. The curlers themselves look like they could work in your law office or butcher shop. That’s because they all work in a law firm or butcher shop or some other office — they all have day jobs. Baseball — the main subject of this Internet blog — is approaching. Pitchers and catchers are reporting. And while the mere fact of that brings excitement, it’s just that. There’s not much substance there. So, in the next few weeks, let me offer an alternative to fix your eyes upon. Let me sell you on curling.
Some of you might not need selling. That’s cool. Keep reading if you’d like. For everyone else, let’s get some things out of the way. Curling and baseball are really nothing alike. I won’t go over every difference because they are many, and they seem fairly obvious. We all know baseball is great. But curling is pretty great, too. It’s seen as mainly a game of strategy, and that isn’t far off. But don’t sell the players short as actual athletes. Surely, many aren’t fit and toned in a way that we may expect, but the throw — coming out of the hack in that smooth, forward motion while carrying a 40-pound stone — is not easy. If those hacky late-night bits serve any purpose, it’s to show just how difficult that motion actually is. It takes years to perfect that delivery. It can escape even the most experienced at times. And sweeping is no breezy task, either. It involves not only moving the broom as fast as you can, but simultaneously applying the most downward pressure possible. It races the heart and perspires the underarms.
But the strategy does play such a big part. The physics of the game allow only a handful of shot types. It’s how they are employed that separates. There are plans and backup plans and backup plans to the backup plans to consider. Opponents must not only be out-played, but out-thought. The basic rules are simple enough, and while it seems that some skips are running on autopilot at times, it only appears that way because they’ve been in that spot a thousand times before. It’s when they stop to think that things get squirrely. Doubts come. Past failures are remembered. It takes a flexible body, a flexible mind, and nerves of steel to compete at a high level at curling.
So, why should you care? Why should the baseball fan even raise an eyebrow? While the motions and actions of the game differ, the aesthetics match a fair bit. It’s slow-moving, in general. There’s periods of inaction followed by bursts of excitement and tension. Even if you are new to the sport, the high-leverage situations will be easy to spot. It’s leisurely and enthralling. Straight-laced and quirky. Mostly, it’s fascinating.
You can find the TV schedule online, and you should be able to stream a lot of it. Matt Sussman of Baseball Prospectus published some great primers to the competition. The fine folks at The Classical were nice enough to run a piece of mine that originally ran in their magazine, about the non-polished tournaments that happen all over our country. If you watch, you’ll figure out the rules quickly. There will almost certainly be an explanation before many of the early events. Cheer for the USA, if that’s your thing. The men are a long shot, but the ladies have a fairly decent chance at a medal. And many US players come from here in Minnesota. Cheer for the cute women or men. There are some of each. Cheer for the Norwegians and their famous goofy pants. But just give it a shot. It may surprise you. If not, you can at least be the most interesting person at the party by having observed more than five minutes of it. Curling is everybody’s favorite sport that they don’t actually watch. You can buck the trend, fair NotGraphs reader.
