The following comes to us from NotGraphs reader Brian Reinhart — a gentleman’s gentleman, and a nerd’s nerd. By now, I trust you’re all familiar with FanGraphs: The Game. If you’re not, I’ll wait. Brian will, too; he’s polite like that. Anyway, Mr. Reinhart is reporting — and our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has confirmed this — that a “grittily rebooted edition” of The Game is about to be released. And, well, he had us at “grittily.” Inspiring work, Mr. Reinhart. Thank you.
We are pleased to announce that, following the success of FanGraphs: The Game, beta testing has completed on a grittily rebooted edition, and FanGraphs: The Game: Washington Nationals DL Edition is ready for the fantasy-sporting, slightly-too-macabre public. The rules, as ever, are simple:
1. Every week, participants choose one member of the Washington Nationals whom they believe will make a trip to the disabled list, and specify the injury type.
2. Participants earn 10 points for every accurate prediction, as well as 5 points for specifying the correct injury type but the incorrect player, and 3 points for identifying an injured player but forecasting the wrong affliction.
3. It is possible to earn 5 points for accurately predicting a setback to a previously-DLed player.
by Summer Anne Burton - January 18, 2012
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Dan McShane won on Jeopardy four times in a row last week, where he was introduced as a professional “Baseball Game Logger,” which is 1. the coolest job ever, except for maybe “Personal Shopper” or “Rock Band,” 2. not actually his job any more, as he is currently employed by Everyday Health, 3. easily confused for baseball b-logger, which led to this story being forwarded to me by at least two people who wanted me to know that “people like me” could win Jeopardy. He accumulated $64,001 in winnings, which he plans to use for “world travel”. The weirdest thing I discovered while researching Dan McShane is that, thanks to his sweatered youthfulness, he has developed somewhat of a cult following with the teenage girls on tumblr. Examples:
dan mcshane is his name. please dominate this game show for several days so your face doesn’t have to leave my screen anytime soon.
On a completely thinspo unrelated note…
I think I’m in love with the jeopardy returning champ. Dan McShane. Also John Green’s new book was amazing. Okay, back to thinspo.
Now do some sit-ups everyone!
wow jeopardy is stepping it up. this man is gorgeous. dan mcshane needs to win a billion more times then marry me. ok thanks
by Bradley Woodrum - January 2, 2012
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A few weeks ago, the venerable Prof. Cyril Morong executed a rather interesting projection for Albert Pujols, comparing similar and even dissimilar players to Pujols to get a feel for how well he would perform at and beyond the age of 35.
In short, the Angels look like they need either majorly bumped revenue or a World Series ring collection in order for the projected Pujols to be worth his contract.
Sure, science may say that, but what about dated video games?
Well, let’s turn to Baseball Mogul 2008, the addicting baseball simulation game that feels dangerously close to spreadsheet management. Why not a newer version of the game, such as Baseball Mogul 2012? Well, what’s the fun in that? Read the rest of this entry »
by The Common Man - December 22, 2011
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I don’t mean to depress you. I don’t want to bring you down. I don’t want to ruin your holiday season.
But no matter what you do… No matter what happens to you… No matter what you receive under the tree or in your stocking…
You will never be as happy as Carson Cistulli was in 1989 to receive VCR Baseball.
This is not a failing on your part. It’s simply a fact. No one has ever been this truly, perfectly, unadulteratedly happy before. Read the rest of this entry »
by Jeremy Blachman - October 27, 2011
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A friend pointed out that I misspelled Saltalamacchia in a previous post.
I figure I deserve to be punished. And so why shouldn’t I make the punishment fun?
If you haven’t wasted at least a few hours doing pointless baseball (and non-baseball) quizzes over at Sporcle… well, I’m about to ruin your productivity forever. Because even if you don’t like the quiz I’m about to link you to, I’m pretty sure something over there is going to suck you in (or you are far more immune to the distractions of the Internet than I am… though, really, if you were, would you be reading NotGraphs?).
My self-inflicted punishment for misspelling Salty’s name is that I’ve created a quiz to test how well you can spell the hardest names in baseball (current players only). Yeah, that Marc guy is one of ‘em.
[First one with a perfect score wins... about $40,000 less than the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. My last spelling bee was in 4th grade, when I was eliminated from my district's competition by misspelling halibut. For more than twenty years, I didn't eat halibut, in silent protest. That streak was broken due to an unfortunate choice of entrees at a wedding a few years ago. I think it must have been something like "halibut or garbage?" because I honestly don't remember what would have possibly made me choose the halibut and end my lifelong strike. I have not eaten it again since. For those who haven't already clicked over to the quiz-- or a different post!-- by now, I spelled it "h-a-l-i-b-i-t." How many fourth graders frequent the local fishmonger and study the price list??? I'm still convinced it was the pronouncer's fault. The winning word was refrigerator! Refrigerator!! But I'm over it. Really, I am.]
by Patrick Dubuque - August 17, 2011
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You may not have been alive back in 1991. Or perhaps you were, but you weren’t of the age where you came home from school to eat macaroni and cheese and watch Disney Afternoon on syndicated television. But if you were, and you had parents who bought you Nintendo games for Christmas and didn’t consult with you about them first, you may have once before opened up an instruction booklet to read these words:
At last it can be told. How, at the turn of the 24th Century
the game of baseball was changed forever. It happened in Cape
Codpiece, Florida during the annual winter meetings. On the
aluminum paneled walls of the posh hotel’s Presidential Room
hung stirring portraits of baseball’s all-time greats. Legends
like Cecil “Rooftop” Shingleton, Travis “Tee” O’ Justice, and Tip
“Rude” Wayter. Around the huge conference table sat a group of
sour, seething executives collectively known as the baseball
team owners. The issue before them-astronomical player salaries.
(A Solar League official had just ordered one of the weakest
franchises to shell out $2.4 billion a year to Gomer “Go Homer”
Gomez, a lifetime .250 hitter.)
For hours the owners debated their options. Until suddenly
Irving Flopilidopolous, owner of the Boston Banshees, leaped from
his chair and slammed his fist on the table.
“Robots!” he exclaimed. The other owners looked blankly
at each other. Then smiles slowly crept across their faces as they
realized they had found the solution-replace the players with
mechanical men. No more salary demands. Better yet, no more salaries!
Just obedient automatons pre-programmed for action.
The now inspired owners worked feverishly that weekend
to refine their new sport which they christened Base Wars. The
public was quickly captivated by this bizarre combination of
baseball and gladiatorial combat played by an army of armor clad
cybernetic swingers. They especially loved the one-on-one battle
royales for base possession, the loser of which is retired to the
scrap yard. It wasn’t long before Base Wars became the new
intergalactic pastime.
It is a well-established fact that the kids these days are somewhat entitled, what with their mp3s and their Kinects and their computer graphics. Back in my day, we listened to mp2s and played migraine-inducing Virtual Boys and our video games sometimes didn’t even have graphics. If you wanted to kill a troll, you typed the words “kill troll”, and the game narrated whether or not you were, in fact, successful in killing the troll. Note: you were often not successful in killing the troll.
Among computer games, the interactive fiction genre began before people even owned computers. Thirty-five years after people first typed “xyzzy”, the community is alive and well, or at least alive, dwelling in a strata of internet culture just beneath the basement from which the bloggers write about their sabermetrics.
Which leads us to our subject: three weeks ago saw the release of the first narrative baseball game. Bonehead is written by Sean M. Shore, and tells the story of New York Giants first baseman and teenager Fred Merkle, whose baserunning gaffe in the final week of 1908 helped cost his team the pennant and dogged him the rest of his life. Your goal is to re-enact that day, beginning with standing in line at the train station on the way to the stadium.
What’s interesting about Bonehead is the distinction it makes between you as the player and Merkle as the character, despite the fact that you are effectively acting as Merkle throughout the story. The game makes it clear early on that Merkle is destined for misfortune, and that “winning” the game, i.e. playing it to its proper ending, brings about this misfortune. Between passages of the game Shore weaves vignettes of Merkle’s later years. Meanwhile, the game provides multiple opportunities to end the game another way, many of them averting ignominy.
Bonehead is free to play, and the game can be downloaded here. The game file requires an interpreter to run, and they can be downloaded on the same page.
(Full disclosure: purchased at a Goodwill for $1.49.)
For years in the late 80s, Classic sold trivia games that “played like the real-life game of baseball”, especially the part of the game when the pitcher spins a spinner and then asks the batter a trivia question. This led to some exciting showdowns, such as the moment when Dennis Eckersley asked Kirk Gibson a question that happened to be about Gibson’s own childhood, culminating in that famous limp around the basepaths. It is not impossible that this event led laid the foundation for the second golden era of the televised game show, running from 1999-2008.
Classic cleverly designed their board game by doubling the trivia cards as actual baseball cards, thus rendering them instantly collectible. The format of my particular game set, series 3, bears early cards of such luminosities as Chipper Jones, Frank Thomas, Adam Hyzdu, Alex Fernandez, and Nolan Ryan’s son Reid. The card borders, a rich lemon with random navy tiger stripes, make 1991 Fleer look reserved by comparison. Each card also leaves a helpful 3/8” autograph box on the bottom of the back of the card, because if you’re lucky enough to get an autograph from your favorite baseball player, that’s exactly where you’d want to look at it.
But enough talk! You don’t come to NotGraphs to read. You come to NotGraphs to play outdated trivia games with faceless internet writers. So put on your imagination cap and play some trivia, using whatever spinner you happen to have near the computer. Try your hand at the actual questions on the backs of these cards. Answers and scores after the bump.
“Rookie” level questions (1 point):
(11) What is a no-hitter?
(68) How many balls are there in a 3-2 count?
(9) What are the foul lines made out of?
(62) Who is the “longman”?
“Double” level questions (2 points):
(91) I hold the All-Star game record for most sacrifice flies. Who am I?
(89) I hold the All-Star game record for runs allowed in an inning. Who am I?
(60) I was called “Buster” by my Yankee teammates. Who am I?
“Triple” level questions (3 points):
(79) I caught Nolan Ryan’s 2nd no-hitter. Who am I?
(86) I set a Baltimore opening day RBI record in 1990. Who am I?
(45) I am the only ML pitcher to win games in 4 different Canadian stadiums. Who am I?
“Home Run” level questions (11 points each):
(64) I am the Mariners all-time saves leader. Who am I?
We know baseball players have feelings. And we know we have feelings about baseball cards. Maybe it’s not so far-fetched to think that baseball cards themselves have feelings.
We know that baseball players are competitive. And we know that we baseball fans are competitive, even about collecting. So maybe it’s not so far-fetched to believe that if baseball cards have feelings, one of the feelings they have more often than not is one of competitive fire.
All of this necessitates a competition between baseball cards. A seeded tournament.
If you’re reading this, you have undoubtedly heard about the cool new version of fantasy called ottoneu. According to ottoneu’s creator, Niv Shah, “[t]he name ‘ottoneu’ is derived from Otto Neu, a shortstop who played in one game in 1917 for the St. Louis Browns. In this game against the Yankees, he did not have a fielding chance or an at-bat.” Sounds reasonable, right? Catchy and obscurely baseball-ey? A likely story… too likely. But I was curious, so I dug deeper.
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