There are six spring-training games available on MLB.TV today, which equates to roughly 18 hours of baseball, which suggests that probably at least one marvelous thing will happen today.

Because we at NotGraphs are dedicated to documenting the marvelous — and because the present author is the sort of person who has “downloaded” the necessary “software” — it follows that we should render footage of said marvelous thing into GIF form, fit for public consumption.

Having said that, it should be noted that the author is unable — owing to his many Important Duties — the author is unable to watch all 18 of those hours of baseball. So it falls to the bespectacled readership to serve as the eyes, ears, and (for some, unrelated reason) glistening biceps of said author.

In the event that he/she isn’t too busy, the attentive reader would do well to report in the comments section any instances of the following, with a view towards that manufacture of a GIF:

• Decidedly breathtaking pitches
• Particularly amusing incidents
• Probably anything Melky Cabrera does

Providing the inning and batter and count and whatever-all-else would be helpful, as well.

Allez, NotGraphs, allez.

Please note, for your records, that Mississippi Matt Smith is the newest contributor to NotGraphs and submitted his first, uh, submission to our electronic pages earlier today.

Note, additionally, that he has asked me repeatedly and with vigor not to refer to him publicly as Mississippi Matt Smith.

Note, thirdly, that I have not only ignored his protests, but have, in fact, furtively changed his display name to Mississippi Matt Smith.

In conclusion, here’s a frightening Eudora Welty-shaped mask:

As noted earlier in these pages, managing editor Dave Cameron made his second — and probably final, because he’s a weirdo’s weird — appearance on MLB Network program Clubhouse Confidential, hosted by the vigorously coiffed Brian Kenny.

For the busy executives among us, a brief account of the footage above (kindly made available by MLB.com):

Coy Smile: 0:21

Nervous Swallow: 0:57, 1:29, 2:04

Frog Mouth: 2:05

Blinks: N/A*

Crack Analysis: Whole Thing

*At least so far as I can tell from a single viewing. Seriously, I’m not gonna spend my whole night watching this, people.

As someone who hangs on NotGraphs’ every word and doesn’t read any other websites and won’t ever leave me otherwise you-know-what will happen, you’ll remember the footage embedded here of managing editor Dave Cameron’s inaugural appearance on last Monday’s edition of MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential.

While interested parties have noted many flaws with Cameron’s appearance (like, for example, the whole face part of his body), a great deal of attention has been focused on the frequency with which Cameron blinks — which is to say, “almost never.”

The present author counts two of them (i.e. blinks) — one at the 0:37 mark, and another at 2:30 — plus a nose scratch at 0:23 that maybe is or is not accompanied by a third blink.

In any case, this important information is relevant to your life insofar as Dave Cameron is making another appearance on Clubhouse Confidential tonight — one that we can scrutinize in ways that ultimately contribute to Cameron’s burgeoning body dysmorphia.

The show airs at 5:30pm ET, again at 7:30pm ET, and then a third time in a fever dream you’re gonna have tonight.

Last night, I was forced to confront author Dayn Perry about his recent conduct.

Awkward heterosexual man-hug for Jeremy Blachman, who has made an art form of xtranormal.

The alert reader will suspect as much already — but I’ll state it here for posterity’s sake (and also for the sake of the less alert reader) — that internet personality and real-live baby daddy The Common Man will be contributing to these pages now.

While, for contractual reasons, we’re unable to reveal his true identity, we are allowed to say that he’s at least one of the people in this photo:

While it goes without saying that NotGraphs has, in its lone year of existence, become the standard by which literary-minded and generally marvelous baseballing websites are judged, I’ve always been of the opinion that it (i.e. NotGraphs) would be greatly improved if only it were possible to acquire writers who were more talented and attractive and better and smarter and better than the ones already writing for the site.

Fortunately, as a product of our most recent — and only slightly drawn-out — talent search, the dream that I’ve dreamed so hard has become a reality.

In fact, it’s with great pleasure that I introduce four new writers to the site — each of whom is better and more physically fit than any of the site’s current stable of writers.

Regard:

Robert J. Baumann received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas and has had poems published in/at 3:AM Magazine, DIAGRAM, and Shampoo — i.e. journals that you’ve never heard of, but which are important nevertheless.

Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a real-live novel satirizing the world of corporate law and described by USA Today, not for nothing, as “wickedly amusing.” He’s also had work published by McSweeney’s.

If you’re familiar with Paul Lukas’s UniWatch, then you’re likely already familiar with Summer Anne Burton, who is (a) an Astros fans and (b) drawing every member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year at her site Every Hall of Famer.

Cody Wiewandt was a four-year Varisty football player at sporting powerhouse Oberlin College and is very likely — although no one can prove it — the secret lovechild of George Plimpton and Alan Alda. You can read his work at The Paris Review.

Portrait of the artists as a middle-aged Jewish woman.

After the events of September 28th, we at NotGraphs are a little verklempt.

Please, talk amongst yourselves.

I’ll give you a topic: the parfait should change its name after yesternight in baseball.

Discuss.

If you’ve wondered recently to yourself, “Where in the world is Carson Cistulli?” the answer to that question is, perhaps surprisingly, not that he has gone from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe, Chicago to Czechoslovakia and back, but rather that he was in Tuscany over the weekend and, presently, has found his way to the south of France.

If you’ve never been to this country (i.e. France) before, you should know that it’s pretty similar to the United States, except for the fact that (a) the unemployment rate here is exactly 100% and (b) you can get arrested for not smoking.

Another thing you should know is that, as is the case with a lot of the foreign media that arrives here, FanGraphs actually looks different in this country. Embedded above is a totally clickable and embiggenable image from the author’s own computer screen. The attentive reader will note that, while not crazy different, there are, in fact, some small edits that Sarkozy and Friends have made to the Baseballing Experience that is Our Fair Site.

Towards the end of this most recent weekend, concerned (and likely bespectacled) reader Matt Defalco noted some strange traffic patterns occurring at our parent site — which patterns he captured and rendered into a highly compatible image format.

To wit:

As you can see there, via both your eyes and large portions of your cerebral cortex, Red Sox-er Josh Beckett’s player page was visited almost 27,000 times on Sunday — or, approximately 26,500 more times than the next most-viewed page.

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