This is probably not what you think.

As you may know, Out of the Park 14 (OOTP 14) is perhaps the best baseball simulation game on the market (review). It is an addicting and delicately balanced game (cue Dubuque).

But my friends over at BlueSeatLyfe.com found a way to make the game even more interesting. Below the jump, you will find a singup to enter YOURSELF into the 2013 draft class. You can choose either a position player or a pitcher, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Over the next few posts, we will follow your player through the seasons.

Will you be a bust or a boom? Will you be the first Nigerian to win the Cy Young? Will you go undrafted and then cry yourself to sleep every night? Join us and find out!

The first 5 people will be guaranteed coverage. Any additional signups will be subject to the whims of my magnanimity.
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The Jerusalem Post reports:

Brad Ausmus, who managed the Israeli national team’s bid for the World Baseball Classic, was named the manager of the Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers announced the hiring of Ausmus, 44, on Sunday, making him the only Jewish manager in Major League Baseball. Ausmus was a catcher for four teams in his playing days.

And poor Bob Melvin wakes up today, with a cup of herring and his daily copy of the Jerusalem Post, and has to call his agent to find out if the A’s have fired him in the night. Because, according to Wikipedia, Bob Melvin is also Jewish. (More confirmation here.)

Which means that 2 out of 30 — almost 7% — of major league managers are Jewish, making us an overrepresented minority, and surely leading to a new line of MLB Bagel Bat Weight giveaways coming to a stadium near you.

Ausmus managed Israel’s World Baseball Classic team in 2012, and once wore tefillin.

Lynn Henning of the Detroit News writes:

[Ausmus is] Jewish, which will stoke a sense of kinship between Ausmus and the Tigers’ deep Jewish audience. In that context, there has been something of a void in the Tigers’ profile dating to the end of Hank Greenberg’s hallowed years in Detroit.

Because that’s why I root for a team: shared religion with team’s manager. Excuse me while I go check out the latest news about the 2010-11 Texas Legends of the NBA D-League.

Some people are pretty surprised that Wodehouse wrote a story once about baseball.

It has often been said of this world that all one needs to survive in it is an endless supply of brandy and the collected works of PG Wodehouse. In fact, this isn’t the case at all. One would die of malnutrition, almost certainly, if confined to that particular diet — and would likely lose a taste for literature, however uproarious, at some point en route to Blackest Death. That the man who said it often did so from within the confines of a hospital for incurable pauper lunatics indicates that it probably oughtn’t be filed under wisdom proper.

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Because the waking life holds nothing for me, I took an afternoon nap recently. Within the gauzy bounds of that nap, I learned that Pedro Martinez, baseball merchant of the sublime, had recorded and released a country music album. I purchased and downloaded it but — in keeping with the general state of shit — I woke up before I could listen to it.

I was so struck by this dream that I hinted at it to the world …

Pedro Martinez Country Music Album.

— Dayn Perry (@daynperry) November 2, 2013

This was at once a statement of fact, the first entry on a list of demands and — like all forms of communication — a distress signal. As badly as I wanted Pedro Martinez Country Music Album to exist, I might as well wish for an electric sandwich.

Things as they are, I am left with nothing but remnants in the foul-smelling penumbrae of my imagination …

In Donald Barthelme’s “How I Write My Songs,” whomp-whomp is a refrain, and so the title of one track on Pedro Martinez Country Music Album will be “Whomp-Whomp,” which could be a thinly veiled song about coitus — suggestive yet necessary, like a bra. “Got Damn, Woman” will be another track, honky-tonkish in execution. “Funeral for a Mockingbird” is yet another, acoustic until Pedro himself drifts in with the pedal steel in the second verse. “Angina in Carolina” is his hymn to long-haul truckers. During production, Pedro used accomplished Nashville session players, I feel sure.

I know little else about Pedro Martinez Country Music Album. It visited me in a dream, is all.

Last week, I mocked Dick and The Cannon for treating Terry like she had the emotions of a twelve year old. I was wrong. In all of their terribleness, I missed something in these characters that this week’s episode of Back in the Game makes entirely clear. Not only are their own concerns about Terry’s emotional state, entirely valid, but it accurately reflects them as well. Everyone on this show, including Terry’s son, acts like an idiot child. Only one of them has a valid excuse for that.

In this week’s episode, Terry plans to go trick or treating with Danny, over Danny’s objections, dressing her almost-pubescent son as Raggedy Andy to her Raggedy Anne in a selfish quest to preserve her family tradition that will get her son beat up. But, when a former high school rival rekindles their competition, Terry can’t wait to ditch her son so she can go to Dick the misogynist league president’s costume party in a hotter costume. It’s not entirely clear why people like Dick, given that he’s a massive douche, but there seems to be an endless supply of attractive people at his party, where he makes them compete in stupid games to stroke his ego.

The Cannon, meanwhile, is standing watch in the cemetery ostensibly to keep kids from knocking over his wife’s tombstone, but also to renew his feud with another septuagenarian, as they keep adding details to their wives’ tombstones in a game of one-upsmanship. They wind up bonding over their love of their wives’ asses.

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 “I say I work in a museum…”

–Jonny Gomes, Docent

Jonny Gomes, Docent, doesn’t do well with groups of middle schoolers.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, dabbles in curation–primarily the curation of postseason awe, and ancient Etruscan crested helms.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would appreciate if you could keep it down, please.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, finds dinosaur bones “trite, but necessary.” Much like post-game interviews, and bunting.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, shook hands with former Louvre Director Henri Loyrette in 2005, and has not yet washed his hands (i.e. his own hands).

Jonny Gomes, Docent, finds l’art dans tout, even shoddily attempted MS Paint images.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would like you to exit through the gift shop, or, after exiting, cross Yawkey Way and enter the gift shop there.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, invites discourse on the evolution of late art deco architecture in 1930’s Latin America, but asks that you take your discussion of statistical analysis in baseball outside, please.

Jonny Gomes, Docent, would like to remind you that the utility closets are for museum staff only, and not for scoring tongue-action with Jenny Michaels during the class field trip.

Baseball fans generally understand what is meant in referring to the “2013 season,” for example, or the “2014 season.” When do these seasons actually begin, though?

Below are points both for and against the resolution that the 2014 season began yesterday, October 31st. The points have been arranged in the style of the Team Policy Debate in which the author once participated with a Russian kid named Simon in ninth grade.

First Affirmative Constructive
The 2014 season did begin on October 31st, i.e. the day after the conclusion of the 2013 World Series. The point of any season, ultimately, is to identify a champion. When said champion has been decided, that season can be considered complete. When the season is considered complete, the following one (i.e. season) necessarily begins the next day. The 2013 World Series concluded on the evening of October 30th, with the Boston Red Sox being identified as the champion. Therefore, the 2014 season began the following day, October 31st.

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The dispassionate fulfillment of one’s personal duties is probably one of the top-10 or -15 virtues there is, so far as virtues are concerned. It isn’t so important as unyielding insouciance, of course, nor a certain proficiency in the construction and maintenance of the four classic tie knots. That said, it’s almost certainly more desirable than knowing how to ride a unicycle — a practice which, if the author’s sources are correct, is actually punishable by law in Singapore.

Sometimes a man must attend to his business, is what one acknowledges. Of late, it has become clear that the author’s business is to report, in a timely fashion, such instances as when a hitter in the Korean Series (Game Seven of which takes place in a few short hours) releases his bat with a flourish after making contact.

According to priceless internet citizen Dan of My KBO, two such instances occurred last night — video of both being present below. Note that, once again, the author has deliberately inverted the Korean names which appear here, for reasons even he barely understands.

Jun-Seok Choi’s name was invoked not 24 hours ago in these pages under very similar circumstances. Here he is flipping his bat following a fifth-inning home run in Game Six.

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Just a friendly reminder that everything ends, and that you and everyone you’ve ever loved or will love will, someday, be gone. Baseball is no exception. But do not fret, fair NotGraphs readers. Take this time to do all the things you neglected whilst adhered to your couch. Hug your family. Volunteer. Start that patchwork quilt you bought all the stuff for. Watch football, for all I care. Just do something. Do not mourn the season. Cherish the times you had with it, but do not be melancholy. It will be back. You may not be, but it will be. Find solace in that. The winter is yours for the taking. So take it. Carpe Off Season.