Video: Revisiting Strasburg’s Debut

With an excellent performance in his second rehab start Friday night — one that gives him nine strikeouts and zero walks in 4.2 innings in his return from Tommy John surgery — Stephen Strasburg has re-entered the public baseballing consciousness.

Because his brilliant debut occurred before NotGraphs was even a thing — and because MLB video has become embeddable in the meantime — it’s fully within all of our rights to re-live his 14 strikeout, no walk performance together in these electronic pages.

Below, I’ve made note of some extraordinary moments from the first two minutes or so of the above video. The bespectacled reader is invited, however, to add his own commentary where relevant.

0:11 — Records first major-league strikeout against Lastings Milledge on a pitch that was spotted later that night at an area club drinking vodka tonics with no fewer than seven Naomi Campbells.

0:34 — Delwyn Young strikes out on a curveball that removes whatever was left of his (i.e. Young’s) virginity.

0:41 — A 91 mph changeup. The phrase “God is dead” is subsequently removed from all English versions of Nietzsche’s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.

1:24 — Jeff Karstens strikes out looking on 101 mph fastball, calls therapist on way back to dugout.

1:40 — Announcer Bob Carpenter incorrectly, but also sorta correctly, identifies Strasburg’s changeup as a fastball.

1:49 — The entire television audience goes through a second puberty. Prepubescent children experience consecutive puberties.