NEW YORK –Days after initial reports surfaced regarding Boston Red Sox first baseman Mike Napoli roaming the streets of Boston without a shirt, new findings indicate that Napoli is still on the loose.

The above image from Twitter user @FrankTheKoala_ posted on November 2nd shows Napoli on the streets of Boston, presumably celebrating the recent World Series victory by the Red Sox.

However, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has uncovered grainy footage that shows Napoli has made his way to New York City. He has appeared to have befriended an African American man, and has participated in exercise activities with that man.

Stay tuned to NotGraphs as we continue to provide updates on this story.

Almost two years ago, I made the mistake of empowering you, the reader, with the ability to create, from whole cloth, the Ron Swanson Hall of Fame, honoring the mustachioed dynamo equally skilled in woodworking, meat preparation, hoarding gold, saxamaphone, avoiding his job, and dispensing warm and sincere advice who elevates NBC’s criminally underwatched Parks and Recreation from sublime to divine comedy. I should have, like an enlightened, benevolent despot, made the decision for you, but it turns out I’m too lazy. You actually managed to do an ok job though, electing Old Hoss Radbourn, Ty Cobb, Nolan Ryan, Jeff Bagwell, and Lou Gehrig to be the inaugural class. To date, I’d say we have created the best fictional Hall of Fame based on a fictional character that has ever not actually existed.

With the offseason upon us, now we can turn our attention back to important things, such as choosing the second class of current or former baseballers to join this illustrious group. Thus will we stave off the creeping dread of winter for a short time and four months without baseball. Today, the floor is open for nominations in the comments section and in my Twitter feed, and will remain so until next Wednesday, when we will vote our consciences, because the only thing I respect more than a kindly king making the difficult decisions the rabble cannot is the stupid precedent I have already set. Repeat nominees from last time are allowed, so if your favorite wasn’t popular enough to make it before, you’re welcome to try again.

The established categories under which players, mangers, front office types, mascots, broadcasters, clubbies, groundskeepers, organists, and beer venders can be nominated include:

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What the world needs now is maybe love, or even sweet love. What the world wants, however, is images of top free agents in front of actual and probably hot stoves — such as the ones that follow, for example.

Robinson Cano in front of a chimenea, popular in Mexico:

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I played baseball for one season in 4th grade, maybe 3rd, and I had no idea how the game of baseball worked. My three primary memories from that season were: 1) Nearly crying after I struck out, 2)  being genuinely surprised when I caught a fly ball in center field, and 3) hating baseball. My first experience was deeply off-putting, and so I “chose” football in the way children take sides because they think side-taking is important. The result of this being that I didn’t come around to baseball for a long time. Of course, I did come around eventually, otherwise why else would I waste 2-6 minutes of your life twice a week writing for NotGraphs.

I was visiting colleges in Boston during the 2004 ALCS/World Series and fell in love (juicily, tenderly, eternally) with that postseason. Shortly thereafter my friend David introduced me to Fire Joe Morgan, and my parents bought me Moneyball for Christmas. In maybe 4 months my opinion on baseball changed from “meh, I’d rather not” to “YES YES PLEASE MORE WHAT IS THIS GLORIOUS MYSTERY.”

The point of all this personal back-story bullshit, besides being my personal outlet for missing baseball and feeling nostalgic about the season and all that bullshit, is to explain to you that for most of my life I missed out on baseball as an American cultural experience. I’ve never seen Bull Durham or Bad News Bears. I’ve never read any baseball books besides Moneyball and some passages from The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Even though I’ve obviously had time to catch up since 2004, there’s always been a steady rush of other media to waste my life on, and I remain a woefully undereducated baseball lover.

This offseason it’s my goal to catch up. Below I’ve made a list of books, films, and other media that I haven’t seen/read/consumed, or that I have consumed but want to re-consume because it’s been too long. What this can be for you, hopefully, is a reminder of some baseball staples that you maybe haven’t munched on yourself. Selfishly, I hope to hear the books, movies, shows, documentaries, etc. that you recommend in the comments.

Ten Baseball Movies/Shows/Documentaries I Want to Watch this Offseason
Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (I’ve only watched Part 1)
Bull Durham
The Natural (I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember much)
Major League I & II (must rewatch)
Eight Men Out
Bad News Bears (1976)
Bang the Drum Slowly
42
The Pride of the Yankees
A League of Their Own

Ten Baseball Books I Want to Read and/or Attempt
Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Game of Shadows by Mark Fainranu-Wada and Lance Williams
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri
The Book by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, Andrew Dolphin, and Pete Palmer
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It
Juiced by Jose Canseco
Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample
Drinking with Boileryard Clarke by Dayn Perry (duh)
The Art of Pitching by Tom Seaver
Any other compelling baseball biographies or autobiographies

Yes, I am horribly behind. And there are billions more! Of course there are. It is now your job to tell me what they are in the comments.

Sadly, some will have disappeared by the time this is published.

So far as rousing public addresses are concerned, David Ortiz’s Game Four one of those lacks the gravitas, probably, of Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day Speech. On the other hand, one finds that Henry V’s career WAR production was much less impressive.

On Friday, the Seattle Mariners granted Franklin Gutierrez his freedom, as defined by his freedom to not be paid seven million dollars by the Seattle Mariners. A scant four days later, November 5, marks his Feast Day in the latest of an unrightfully-neglected series. Raise a glass to our friend, the Job of baseball, and join us in prayer.

Life: In 2009, his first season with the Mariners, an age-26 Gutierrez posted a six-win season. In the four years since then, he has suffered ailments from his elbow, knee, shoulder, groin (three times), back (twice), oblique, leg, hamstring (three times), pectoral, heel, head (twice), neck, and lower intestine. He also had a bad case of the flu.

It is, one must admit, a novel way to avoid the dehumanization of synecdoche so common in baseball. The man is not just He also, in his brief window of playing time, posted a slugging percentage north of .500. Some team will therefore take a chance on him, and he will either prove to be a winning lottery ticket, or a losing lottery ticket, or not a lottery ticket at all but rather a crude-crayon-drawn map leading to the buried remains of the family gerbil.

Spiritual Exercise: Consider the Protestant work ethic that has made America so great, at least according to your outdated middle-school history textbook. If hard work and talent are what bring people success, how do you explain the misfortune of Franklin Gutierrez? Conjure some moral failing that designates his suffering as justice, and relieve yourself of the crushing burden of knowing that happiness is essentially a series of meaningless die rolls. Then drink an American lager, and think about all the things you’d like to own if you made more money.

A Prayer for Franklin Gutierrez

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HINT: His dog’s name is Astro.

Okay, that is probably not a hint, since they would have to give up their entire team for him.

But still, John F. Kennedy’s dog’s name was Lincoln, and Lincoln’s dog’s name was Kennedy, so you never know.

Although I (still) have no say whatsoever in who takes up ol’ Jim-Tim McCarver’s seat at FoxSports’ Roundtable of Sports Insights & Sports Analysis (since the last time we checked in, word is that Harold Reynolds is the front-runner — a sage decision by Fox, for sure), I will nonetheless sincerely and quixotically continue in the process of considering candidates to replace him.

Chad Finn of the Boston Globe has implored Fox to “go bold” in hiring Jim-Tim’s replacement, suggesting Pedro Martinez or Dennis Eckersley. There is no way that is bold enough for me. That is Taco Bell bold. I am looking for Brett Favre bold. So:

Today’s Candidate: Jon Bois

Candidate Profile: from Kentucky; been to Canada; kind of charming beard (via its ginger patchiness); preternatural feel for absurdism; food opinions; top-notch Twitterer; should not be confused with John Boys, Dean of Canterbury from 1619 to 1625*.

A lot of what Jim-Tim McCarver said while broadcasting felt surreal to me. Someone once wrote that he was insightful, but to me, everything Jim-Tim said sounded like a language wherein most of the words are borrowed from English, but they often have different meanings than they do in English, and the syntax is completely different. In that way, I actually sort of came to enjoy ol’ Jim-Tim.

As mentioned in the above profile, Jon Bois exhibits a preternatural feel for absurdist humor — a sort of intentional and comedic surrealism. While steeped in the language and culture of professional sports in America, Bois lives in his own world where his thoughts are molded and presented with the sincerity of Mitch Hedberg. He makes fun of sports cliché and banter, but, somehow, not in a snarky way. Perhaps Bois avoids snarkiness by exhibiting a joy in what he writes in a way that makes him vulnerable.

Many of his tweets are immediately engaging (as they often ask followers a question) yet completely ridiculous. One such:

who is the next fantasy stud & dud; well; guess what it is you

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) September 8, 2013

I’ve been wanting to do a parsing of why the above tweet (or, say, his “Favre Watch” piece) is so funny — because it seems like they shouldn’t be so funny, yet they make me laugh whenever they pop into my head, which is pretty much every day. In said tweet there are so many basic levels of comedy:

• an insiderness — not everyone will get what a fantasy stud/dud is — which can be leveraged for comedic effect and [select] audience enjoyment
• a fudging of syntax, complete with misplaced and missing punctuation (humorous to nerds and at a basic level to many others, too)
• surprise: a punchline where it seemed like there was no reason for one — obviously surprise is a big part of comedy
• momentary confusion on the part of the audience: was that really a punchline? why?
• awareness of the context of the utterance: while there is probably no reason for anyone to ever tweet anything, one still wonders, upon reading this tweet, why it was tweeted; still, that is part of the joy and the humor of reading it — the tweet suggests a misunderstanding of something on the part of the tweeter which the audience knows is feigned but also which, when presented earnestly, amounts to comedy.

Conclusion: Jon Bois is a comedy savant who knows some things about sports. Therefore, I consider him a strong candidate to replace Jim-Tim McCarver. I can’t really think of anything that I would like more to see on national television than Jon Bois judging, from 1-10, what ballplayers had for lunch that day, or proffering/asking for opinions on random topics that have nothing to do with the game. We’re likely to get as much or more insight from that as from most announcers presently employed.

Hey, can we agree on one thing? It's time to permanently retire Reggie Jackson's nickname http://t.co/8PP8AuwYoT

— robneyer (@robneyer) November 4, 2013

When Rob Neyer says “jump,” the present author is compelled to inquire as to which altitude might most satisfy him. And when Rob Neyer suggests by way of social media that Reggie Jackson’s nickname ought to be retired, the author says, “Hear, hear” — and whatever is the equivalent of “hear, hear” in at least three or four of the Romance languages.

What else the author says is: “There are other nicknames that ought to be retired, as well.” Nicknames like the following, for example, which are entirely authentic and not just produced by pairing randomly generated player pages from Baseball Reference with choice phrases from Yelp reviews.

1. Neil “Bacon Dust” Allen

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