Yo I made that post about baseball rivalries in, I think, December and queued it up and completely forgot it was happening, and in light of last night, it is hilarious.
Seriously. Fuck you, Clayton Fucking Kershaw.
I was looking through my tags and realized that I do not draw enough of Bahorel, Joly, and Lesgles— which is a travesty because I love this delightful Bon Vivant Trio! (Courfeyrac begins the evening with them but has a tendency to disappear before the end of the night.) I should draw more of them, I thought. And then I thought, they should be on a shounen manga baseball team.
Anyway, HOW TO PLAY LES MISERABALL:
- Select unattainable ideal of choice
- Keep ideal in mind as you struggle magnificently under the weight of the broken class system
- Strike out
- Make way for the next generation of players because THE EIGHTH INNING IS GREAT BUT THE NINTH INNING WILL BE HAPPY
- Somebody take those bases home and put them in the wash, the last team got blood all over them
Better Know A Sports Thing: Rivalries
So you’re a fan of a sport. Let’s not question why. Maybe it’s because you like the godly athleticism displayed by your favorite dreamy player. Maybe your team won a big championship recently. Maybe you were raised by sadistic parents inflicting their fandom on you, and you can’t help it, even though you have been unfortunate enough to have been born in a city with a team that thinks that on-base percentage is a number you try to keep down as much as possible, in case the base demons rise up and bite you on the foot. (Let’s not pretend this post is not about baseball.)
Inside Major League Baseball's Dominican Sweatshop System
Teen shortstop Yewri Guillén died the day the Nationals were supposed to ship him to America. Has MLB learned from the tragedy?
(Source: paxamericana)
Scrolling back through my text messages for ill-advised crossovers is like mining for gold in the middle of Scrooge McDuck’s bank vault.
The ’70s may have brought us bell bottoms and disco, but they also saw the beginnings of the mascot craze in professional baseball. In 1984, the Giants decided to try their hand at the mascot game, but with their own special twist: They created an “anti-mascot.”
The creature they unleashed was the now-legendary (and infamous) Crazy Crab. The idea was to poke fun at traditional mascots, and television commercials depicted manager Frank Robinson having to be restrained from attacking the poor crustacean. Fans were encouraged to boo and hiss the phony mascot, who was portrayed by actor Wayne Doba.
The prodding worked all too well. With a 96-loss season soothing no souls, Crazy Crab became the object of hatred and abuse. The crowd would hurl all sorts of things at the beast, both verbally and literally, and even players got into the act, dumping drinks and other things into the suit.
Broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, both players during the year of Crazy Crab, were asked in an online chat if they ever had trouble with him. Their response: “No, we used to drill him with the resin bag daily, so he was scared of us.”
Catcher Steve Nicosia once donned the suit while he trashed the volatile Jeffrey Leonard’s locker. While playing the Crab, Doba was even tackled by a San Diego Padres player and ended up filing a lawsuit against the team for back injuries.
On the final day of the 1984 season, as he stood on the field in the suit before the game, Doba reportedly told a Giants executive, “I hope there’s nobody up there with a gun.”
Things I’m taking away from this story:
- San Francisco has been the worst hive of scum and hipster scarves in the world since at least the 1980s.
- There is no 2. I’m stuck on 1. The Crazy Crab was ironic. I’m astounded. I cannot believe I live in a world where that’s true.
- FUCK THE PADRES
i ruin everything
The President of the York society (whose name was Dr Foxcastle) turned to John Segundus and explained that the question was a wrong one. “It presupposes that Sabermetricians have some sort of duty to do baseball – which is clearly nonsense. You would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to rearrange the stars? Sabermetricians, Mr Segundus, study baseball which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more?”
An elderly gentleman with faint blue eyes and faintly-coloured clothes (called either Hart or Hunt – Mr Segundus could never quite catch the name) faintly said that it did not matter in the least whether any body expected it or not. A gentleman could not do baseball. Baseball was what street sorcerers pretended to do in order to rob children of their pennies. Baseball (in the practical sense) was much fallen off. It had low connexions. It was the bosom companion of unshaven faces, gypsies, house-breakers; the frequenter of dingy rooms with dirty yellow curtains. Oh no! A gentleman could not do baseball. A gentleman might study the history of baseball (nothing could be nobler) but he could not do any. The elderly gentleman looked with faint, fatherly eyes at Mr Segundus and said that he hoped Mr Segundus had not been trying to play baseball.
Mr Segundus blushed.
why emma what is this delightful thing you have sent me
This is, in many ways, my masterwork.
And here is a conversation I had while in the throes of research:
nextian: can i just ramble about how good this part of the bible is briefly
courtyardhound: i think you should cunningly make it david/jonathan/baseball
nextian: (good as literature, it’s really just astonishingly militaristic and terrible as a religious text in this section, wow, but anyway)
nextian: FINE
nextian: YOU ASKED FOR IT
nextian: so like tony la russa is the beloved manager of the cardinals right
nextian: and everything’s glorious and he came to his throne in a cloud of grit and everyone’s singing his praises but he gets these headaches
(Source: time-trippin-ride)
My new thing for Getting Blanked: an anatomical diagram of Kevin Youkilis.
Click the link to see the full piece.
http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2012/12/19/flip-flop-fly-ball-kevin-youkilis-an-anatomical-diagram/
When I say I love something, I mean it. I love this.
The Oral History of Fire Joe Morgan
It’s no secret that I feel ‘feelings’ for Fire Joe Morgan. Besides being the first internet webzone that combined sports with actual humor, it’s probably what firmly got me into the statistical revolution. Because as an 18 year old entering college, I was a baseball fan inasmuch that I loved baseball, thought Billy Beane’s computertech was trying to ruin the game, and bunts were man’s best friend.
And then I went to college where, along with the helpful, insistent prodding of my sabermetrically inclined roommate (an amazing feat at Emerson College), and his recommendation of Fire Joe Morgan, everything came together in a spark of light. Though my love of the bunt has never changed.
When FJM shuttered their operations four years ago, probably because all that sweet Fremulon money dried up, there was a gaping hole in my soul. Today, at The Classical, Ken Tremendous, Dak, and Junior return to talk about their legacy. And wouldn’t you know it, even Brandon McCarthy was a fan:
“And occasionally that nerd would be someone like Brandon McCarthy, who wrote us years ago, when nobody knew who he was. He was just a fan of the site, and he was pitching for the Rangers at the time. And he became a big fan of the site, and would write us all the time, and would tell us stories that we frankly can’t repeat. And we went and saw him when they played the Angels, and stuff. We keep in touch with him, and he came by Parks recently, after he got hit in the head. He’s better now.”
Part one of three is up now, and I advise you to check it out and then come back the next day. After all the hours of enjoyment that Fire Joe Morgan gave us, isn’t that the least you could do?
A Non-Exhaustive List of the Few Non-Red Sox Caps I’ve Seen in Boston and What I Assume They Mean
Reds: You are spending the offseason drowning your despair in Mat Latos’ sweet, sweet tears.
Mets: You are from New York, but are not literally the mortal incarnation of all that is bad and terrible in the world. You have probably been described as “scrappy.”
Marlins: The sad, tragic circumstances of your upbringing mean that you hate yourself and your lot in life with the deep abiding despair of the man who knows there is no hope. Or possibly you’re from Florida, but that just brings me back to my first point.
*A’s: You comfort yourself, when your coworkers make fun of your winter warddrobe, with the knowledge that you grew up on the side of a hill that they would fearfully refer to as “a mountain”. Someday a great earthquake will come to these people too and humble them as well. Then they will learn the power of the earth. Oh, this hat? Are the A’s a team? You thought it was just an Oakland thing, like “crunk”.
Dodgers: You are a terrible person.
Yankees: You are the terrible-est person of them all. Your greatest dream is to get into a fistfight with a man wearing a Dustin Pedroia jersey, but until then you’ll eat your substandard Boloco burrito as combatively as possible.
*The manager pinch hits Tumblr user @nextian due to her expert Bay Area knowledge.
- Emma: Did you know that jeter autocorrects to heterosexual
At the moment reading Over the Monster is like watching a friend on the rebound after a really bad breakup. “Oh my god I heard some Marlins are single now!!! Maybe they’d be interested in a team with a historic ballpark and a great personality?” “Do you think we could possibly… sign EVERY free agent?”
Then it shades slightly into possible serial killer territory when you realize they seem to be in a race with the Yankees to hoard every catcher. Just as a backup. Or possibly to lock up in their murder basement. It’s unclear.
Don’t be ridiculous, Sares. There’s no murder basement. To lure someone into your murder basement, you don’t trade for them legally, you stand on street corners and awkwardly try to solicit them to come home with you because you’ve got candy and Snoop Dogg tied up RECORDS YOU MEAN RECORDS YOU HAVE SNOOP DOGG RECORDS. The Red Sox haven’t started just announcing to the world that they have—
oh my god
How An Offseason Rumor Is Born
First, the team contacts the player, PLAYER X, that they most covet:
After PLAYER X responds in the affirmative, the team raises the stakes.
Before they can respond however, Ken Rosenthal, sitting in the back of the class, has witnessed something going on. He then sends his own note:
The player then responds:
Which leads Rosenthal to tweet:
And thus, the offseason rumor has been born.
Any questions?
