Seeing a well-constructed paper airplane soar hundreds of feet into the middle of a major sporting event elicits a childlike joy in me — maybe in you all, too, ye perusers of NotGraphs.

Seeing an entire dugout of professional baseball players lurch in excited unison: also a joyful thing (when it’s a team for which you’re rooting, anyway).

From the etherial guitar sample (The Clash’s “Straight to Hell”) to the cash register and firearm sound effects, “Paper Planes” by M.I.A. and Diplo is strangely triumphant and thoroughly enjoyable, as well.

Put them all together and you have this:

(GIF via MLB on Tumblr)

Last night’s game was a doozy. For those of you who missed the action, here’s a handy graphical summary.

Craigslist.com is a questionable, slimy internet zone where people express opinions about beards. That’s what I learned today. I mean, I already knew Craigslist was questionable and slimy, but, until a couple hours ago, I didn’t know that it housed semi-rational* beard-related opinions. It does! Allow me to share one such opinion for your continued amusement and workday distraction (click to embiggen):

*For Craigslist, that is

Is there such a thing as too much corporate sponsorship?

Hats off to @DavidOrtiz for that big blast over the green monster. On 2nd thought, everyone take hats off. Let it flow. #Whiff #WorldSeries

— Head & Shoulders Men (@HSforMen) October 25, 2013

USA Today had what I thought was a fascinating article last week about MLB sponsorships during the postseason, and how individual team sponsors get obliterated if they conflict with MLB-wide deals.

It goes so far that the Fenway Park grounds crew has had to use a backup tarp on the field during the playoffs because their regular one has a giant L.L. Bean logo – and that’s not even a competitor of an MLB national sponsor.

The whole article is worth the read.

Boston Red Sox baseball has been sponsored by Kotex and Kleenex.

— Rob Z. (@RobZ24) October 27, 2013

CS, 1-6

It all started so innocently. Game one of the ALDS, too, so there was still plenty of baseball to play. The pitcher wasn’t paying attention, the runner at first thought nobody was looking, and so he took off for second base. Bartolo Colon arose from his slumber and tossed the ball to Jed Lowrie for the out, and the world wondered for a brief second why Torii Hunter would do such a thing.

K, PB, 1-3

So in the bottom ninth of that same first game of the ALDS, maybe we were a little more primed for weird. Brandon Moss swings and misses badly at a Joaquin Benoit curve in the dirt, sure, and then the ball hits umpire Mark Wegner’s shin guard, yeah, and wait that’s the ball in play and yeah okay, now that we’re talking strange, it makes sense: Benoit gets the assist. And very few people in the world noticed that two things had just happened that had probably never happened before in the same game, let alone in same season.

FC 4-2, E5, RS

This might have shown up in an error book before. You might read it as “double play ball fielded by the second baseman, and the third baseman muffed the throw from catcher.” You could read it that way. Which seems to be a failure for scorekeeping. This should read something like “F-C 4-2, OBSTRWTF, RS OMG.” Maybe. In any case, it doesn’t quite capture the weirdness that was watching Will Middlebrooks doing The Worm in slow motion as we all watched and tried to decide if he meant to take Allen Craig down, or if it was just Allen Craig showing off his wheels, all set against the despair in Dustin Pedroia’s face.

PO 1-3

Well now there we have a downright normal scorecard offering. It’s all context here. Making the third out with the go-ahead run at the plate is a no-no, written or not. And without knowing that it was rookie Kolten Wong at first, and “can we get him a world series win” Carlos Beltran at the plate, you might not get how bizarre this was. And then you add in how the game ended the night before, and really these four characters don’t do it any justice.

So what will happen tonight? Maybe we could get another phantom grand slam? Or how about a steals-second-no-steals-first moment? A walk-off balk where the pitcher lets the ball drop on the mound?

We can only keep our pencils sharp and our minds open.

Now THAT’S what I call obstruction!

This has been Baseball Players Twerking.

No one with anything resembling “sense” is pretending that Josh Hamilton’s 2013 season — his first with the Los Angeles Angels after signing rather a large contract with that club — was anything but a disappointment relative to his previously established levels.

What some people are pretending, however — like the present author, for example — is that certain of Josh Hamilton’s single-game strikezone maps from the past year are burning-hot universe stars which, when connected via a free graphics editing program, form nearly recognizable shapes and figures.

One finds, in this case, an entry from Hamilton’s September 13th game against the Astros (box). In said contest, Hamilton appears to have offered at 15 pitches during the course of the game, probably only about six of which fell within the regulation strike zone. The constellation which results bears more than a passing resemblance to a child, dressed in a probably racist Asian-type conical hat and traditional changshan, performing a probably racist martial-arts kick of some type.

Credit to Texas Leaguers for the strikezone plot.

Da jersey font is Molson Serif, dontchaknow?

Woe is Bryan Clutterbuck. He doesn’t like clouds, he doesn’t like Canada, and he doesn’t like coffee! Bryan Clutterbuck probably doesn’t even like baseball any more. Also, he has a cold.

The El Paso Ambulators!

Bryan Clutterbuck used to have a nice little butcher shop in Texas, regular poker game in the back after hours, sponsored a softball team. Those were the days. Big meat, loyal regulars, bone cleavers at the ready. The young Widow Johnson once made a pass at him; she went on to remarry, but not to Bryan Clutterbuck. Alas.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to MLB.com:

Selig: ‘Never say never’ about changing DH rule

“Never Say Never,” is, of course, a Justin Bieber song (and album title). So, clearly, Selig is a Belieber.

NotGraphs has obtained an exclusive copy of the new lyrics Bud Selig has written for “Never Say Never: DH edition”

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Let’s do this math:

David Eckstein + Parks and Rec + Bob Loblaw = gritty; it always equals gritty

Well that’s what happened:

Because Parks and Rec had this law firm create Ron Swanson’s will.

Because Bob Loblaw is watching out for our best interests:

A secret ceremonial hat tipping, complete with unicorn costumes and blood snifters, for Tyler Hissey.