So today I realized/learned that Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland is 67 years old. Seriously? Just 67? Look at this guy:

Stunned by my discovery, I did what any sane person would do: I expressed my shock and dismay to the approximately two dozen sad, lonely souls and spambots who follow me on Twitter.

Wait, Jim Leyland is only 67 years old?

— Matt Klaassen (@devil_fingers) May 8, 2012

America’s response tells us something about something, I tell you what.

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Perhaps the reader will feel inclined to file this under Old Effing News, Asshole, but the News in question is New to the present author, and thus it is rendered here in the important and electronic pages of NotGraphs.

The New News is this: the Marlins’ new center-field camera angle (pictured above) is excellent — and joins the Pirates’ new center-field camera in the totally fictional and not-real Most Improved Camera category.

That gives us seven straight-on center-field cameras now, as follow (see all camera angles here):

• Atlanta
• Baltimore*
• Boston
• Miami
• Pittsburgh
• St. Louis
• Tampa Bay

*Mostly straight-on. Like, 95%.

Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi in 2009: “Whereas a guy like Teixeira was born with a swing so gorgeous you want to paint it, Youkilis fighting a middle reliever to a nine-pitch walk looks like a rhinoceros trying to fuck a washing machine.”

Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi in 2012: “Tim Tebow trying to throw a forward pass is like a moose trying to fuck a washing machine.”

Mr. Taibbi is a fairly prolific lad, so in some ways it’s excusable not to have a running mental catalog of the jokes one has cracked. Still, Taibbi’s dragging a simile howling from the vaults is like watching a washing machine trying to fuck sports.

This is one of my favorite keepsakes: “Old Timer’s [sic] Baseball Photo Album”, published by JKW Sports Publications in 1961, collecting photographs from the private collections of Robert A. Cutter and William N. Jacobellis. I was flipping through it searching for inspiration for a post when I saw an image that immediately seared itself onto my eyeballs. I will never be the same… To the jump if you dare.

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Much about the Internet is disappointing. This for instance. Also disappointing is that there exists a person who claims to hate Pablo Sandoval. Pablo Sandoval plays baseball well and is happy, large and furry. Ergo, one should not hate Pablo Sandoval. However, an exhaustive search of HotBot and Lycos and Ask Jeeves has turned up this Internet exchange:

When did the Internet turn into the Internet?

The Internetting Gentleman conducts a search …

The Internetting Gentleman unearths a notable search result …

The Internet is: ON.

Oakland Athletics Tickets

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“Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated” by Mr. @cistulli is only $0.99 for the Kindle. It’d be rude not to buy it at that price.

— Craig Robinson (@flipflopflying) January 26, 2012

I’ve got to admit, it was pretty fantastic listening to a Britisher, the one and only Mr. Craig Robinson, talk about baseball, among other things, last week on FanGraphs Audio. That accent, man; gets me every time. Although, I will say, it pained me deeply to learn that the legend behind Flip Flop Fly Ball, the man who’s led me — led all of us — on numerous baseball infographic adventures, is a New York Yankeees supporter. The horror.

Anyway, after listening to Mr. Robinson wax poetic about baseball, Mexico City, and the remix of R. Kelly’s “Feelin’ On Your Booty,” I came across his tweet, embedded above, about the works of NotGraphs’s Supreme Leader, Carson Cistulli. As a Canadian, and therefore the definitive opposite of “rude,” I felt it was my patriotic duty to buy “Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated.” I mean, the cover alone is worth the $0.99. (Or $1.03 Canadian.) And, let me tell you, the book didn’t disappoint. Cistulli is one of the greatest poets of our time; a real-life Rafael de la Ghetto, if I may.

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Among the things that are always funny — along with taking your pants off at an area H&R Block location and then, later that same day, taking your pants off again at an area Jackson Hewitt location — is when somebody asks the Atlanta Journal Constitution‘s David O’Brien about the Braves bench but misspells the word shot and then David O’Brien answers the question anyway and then a blogger notices it and takes a screen cap of it and writes a post all about it and then cries because his life is just a husk of a life.

With the news last week that Fausto Carmona is not actually Fausto Carmona, many have been wondering how widespread this fake identity phenomenon actually is among major league players. While it is generally assumed that such players hail from the Dominican Republic, my investigative reporting has uncovered a more surprising poser in the major league mix.

“Hunter Pence” of the Philadelphia Phillies was arrested yesterday outside the consulate my heart, for assuming a false identity. His real name is Rick Nielsen, he is 37 years older than he has claimed, and he is the lead guitarist and songwriter of Cheap Trick.

“hunter pence”

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