Minneapolis — Considerable speculation has flooded the internet blogs regarding Albert Pujols‘s motives for throwing his glove at Angels teammate Erick Aybar following the club’s 6-2 victory over the Twins on Wednesday (box).
In point of fact, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has learned that the gesture was in response to an ongoing argument the pair have regarding the utility of deconstructionist thought.
“Pujols, he doesn’t recognize the internal contradictions of philosophical discourse,” Aybar said when reached for comment. “The moment we attempt to utilize rhetoric in the service of describing metaphysical reality, we have obscured reality.
Said Pujols in response: “I regard Aybar’s claims only as an attempt to deliberately obscure discourse and nothing else. He argues against language until it no longer exists.
“So how I do refute him? I throw my glove. ‘Deconstruct that,’ I said. Q.E.D.”
by Robert J. Baumann - May 10, 2012
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Are you wondering what Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Sergio Santos is doing whilst on the Disabled List?
Well, the NotGraphs infamous and dowdy Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has been hot on the trail of the erstwhile closer, and has discovered that Santos is the namesake of the Andrew WK-owned Santos Party House club/venue/lounge in lower Manhattan. During his recovery, Santos been hobnobbing with AWK at various of the club’s events:
“We are your mother-father, we are your final friend…”
Probably all of my NotGraphs comrades, not to mention you, the erudite reader, have already read The Art of Fielding, a novel by Chad Harbach. The lovely website Poets & Pitchers hosted a reading group for the book when it came out last fall, to which NotGraphs heroes Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry contributed.
I, a slacker, began reading said just this past weekend. So far (175 pages in), I am most taken with “the book within the book,” a collection of Zen-like adages with the same title as the novel, written by fictitious Hall-of-Fame shortstop Aparicio Rodriguez (who is at least a little bit based on Ozzie Smith). The central mantra of the book within the book, at least for character Henry Skrimshander, seems to be:
26. The shortstop is a source of stillness at the center of the defense. He projects his stillness and his teammates respond.
by Robert J. Baumann - April 16, 2012
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The Major League Baseball season is long, and, theoretically, there’s a reason for that even beyond making the league and owners a ton of money: to ensure that the best teams win out in the long run; i.e., to mitigate the effects of short-term luck.
At the same time, Commissioner Bud Selig has recently proposed and pushed through the addition of a second wild card team from each league. The extra spot makes the results of the long season a bit less meaningful, as a team that would have otherwise been an also-ran could have a hot September, nab a wild card, win the one-game playoff, and go all the way with your mom!.
Realizing that he has made a mistake — that only the very best teams should play for the pennants — but also realizing that it’s too late to revoke the second wild card, the Commish has decided to correct this by significantly amending the regular season schedule: he’s borrowed the idea of “running it twice” from the world of high stakes poker.
by Robert J. Baumann - April 5, 2012
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The Miami Marlins gave away a “Marlins Commemorative Opening Night Lanyard” (more like lameyard, amirite?) to fans who attended the premier regular season game at Marlins Stadium last night.
In case you were wondering what other teams are giving away in their respective home openers today, NotGraphs has compiled a list: Read the rest of this entry »
by Summer Anne Burton - February 8, 2012
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Faithful reader Tim Nicodemus has brought our attention to this story about a new Skip Schumaker baseball card featuring a whole lotta squirrel, and very little of Skip Schumaker.
Truth is, the Rally Squirrel card is only the beginning. Here at Notgraphs, we have already received the following sneak preview of the next few cards in this history-making series of “NOT THE FACE”
There exists a modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi, and that analog is Yahoo! Answers, where wisdom is dispensed like rubbers from a truck-stop vending machine. So what were baseball fans wondering about four years ago? This, natch:
And what sayeth the Oracle? Many things, actually, all of them varying shades of inane. It turns out that the modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi is stupid and unhelpful. What else will disappoint on this hollow, purposeless day?
by Bradley Woodrum - December 12, 2011
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As you all undoubtedly know, I spend about half my waking hours researching my Fangraphs pieces, which means about 5 of the 20 daily hours I spend working at the computer go the sole scouring of Wikipedia, our culture’s depository for generally agreed-upon knowledge. Anyway, for reasons somewhat beyond me, I ended up recently at the Wikipedia entry for the Caribes de Anzoátegui, a top baseball team in the Venezuelan Winter League, wherein I spotted this subtle typo:
I dunno, perchance it’s just society, but I am not certain whether (1) the author merely misplaced a G, or if (2) the author — likely an ESL such person — tried to sound out “foreign” and ended up with a meng-like solution. And therein lies the quandary: Does the mere doubt make me a racist?
Yes. Probably.
I take comfort in assuming, however, that my colleague Dayn Perry — Mississippi native — would have only considered the second option, while Boss Carson Cistulli (Boss ‘Stul for short) — who spends literally half his time in France, the other half travelling to France — would not have even noticed the error in his French-addled mind.
Our sources have released yet-seen footage of the Jonathan Papelbon negotiations with the Philadelphia Phillies GM, Ruben Amaro Jr. It cost many lives to retrieve this information:
Many thanks for the share belong to reader M. Santaspirt — no, that’s too obvious — Matthew S.
by Bradley Woodrum - November 16, 2011
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Will White was — and in some senses, still is — this man:
You, dear reader — likely bespectacled and alone in a little gray cubicle of life — will notice a strange tingling sensation in the anterior chambers of your eyeballs as you look at yonder picturegraph. This is the feeling of MAJESTY enrapturing your ocular cavities. Do not be alarmed, but do know you will likely require the visitation of a physician and/or mortician at some point today.
For above we have featured:
THE VERY FIRST EVER GREAT MOMENT IN SPECTACLES HISTORY.
Yes, the faint, white circles around the honorable Will White’s eyes are nothing less than Baseball’s First Glasses (according to this spurious site). And couched appropriately beneath those darling rounds — why, the curled mustache of king.
Also he’s bald.
That, in the biz, is what we call, “A Grand Slamming.”
Will White was a pitcher for Red Caps, Reds, Wolverines, and Red Stockings, and pitched as old as age-31, which in modern years, is about 65 years old.
White’s career reached an obvious down-slope, however, when in 1885 he twirled a scant 293.1 innings of 3.53 ERA ball. A clearly broken man at that point, he pitched only three more games before presumably spending the rest of his days crawling through the depths of some grimy coal mine, drowning the sorrows of his ever-failing vision on cocaine-laced, alcohol-rich Coca-Cola.
The brother of this man, Deacon White, obviously got the first hit in the first inning of the first professional game in history.
And, unsurprisingly as Science has led us to understand that the Mustachioed Gent is in every wear Superior to the Smooth Lipped Ninny, the good Deacon White sports a lip fur salaried not only to catch soups, but fast- and curve-balls as well:
Why of course Deacon played for the Forest Citys, Bisons, and Alleghenys. What else would you expect?
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