Review: Complete.

Hat tip, glove slap, and furtive glance to Steve Slowinski for pointing this out to me.

Tommy Lasorda, brief and awful Major League pitcher, legendary former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, godfather to Mike Piazza‘s younger brother and to Alex Avila, recipient of all sorts of honorary positions, current “Goodwill Ambassador” (read: Walmart Greeter) for Major League Baseball (despite a history of amazing, amazing profane tirades), and still a perennial presence at Dodgers’ spring camp, is going to turn 85(!) this year.

In his twilight, he has embraced Twitter. Surprisingly, his tweets are cogent and even integrate a full range of hashtags, @’s, links, and pics. He interacts with fans and young players alike, and he’s not at all curmudgeonly or haughty about his success (though he doesn’t hesitate to post office-poster-worthy phrases of disgusting optimism that all seem to vary only slightly from “If you think you are a winner then you will be a winner”). I’m not sure if someone is ghost-tweeting or maintaining his MLBlog for him, but given that both media are updated pretty often and that many of his tweets are about food, I’m willing to give Tommy himself full credit.

I’d like, also, to give Tommy full credit for living with great vigor, eating until his arms are tired and tucking in his jersey to his uniform pants like it’s a good idea. He denies the grip of death so audaciously that he is able to assume that a man fifteen years younger than him is dead:

It has come to my attention that Jimmy Wynn is not dead. Sorry for the error. Hey, not even Babe Ruth batted 1.000.

— Tommy Lasorda (@TommyLasorda) March 12, 2012

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You may or may not be familiar with former New York Times sportswriter Murray Chass, and his blog. (That link to Wikipedia gives a decent summary: in short, Chass not a huge fan of statistics, bloggers, and Mike Piazza.) I leave it to others to cast broader judgment. I write this post only to express a little bit of confusion regarding his latest blog entry, featuring the headline:

WITH THIS WOULD-BE MANAGER,
V IS FOR LOSER

(Referring to Bobby Valentine, and his possible hiring by the Red Sox.)

Are there really no words starting with the letter V that mean loser, or something close?

Because that seems like an awfully weak headline if there’s any chance at all to find a word that starts with a V — or even has a V somewhere in it.

Faced with no better ideas for a post today, I decided to look for some possible alternatives. You may be able to do better in the comments.

My contenders:

1.
With this would-be manager,
V IS FOR VERBOSE,
which he is, often to the detriment of his players

2.
With this would-be manager,
V IS FOR VAUDEVILLIAN PERFORMANCES,
like wearing a disguise in the dugout

3.
With this would-be manager,
V IS FOR THE VOMITING
he inspires in me

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Four views. No view.

Staying with a friend who doesn’t have cable but does have an iPad, so it was time to see what post-season baseball on the ‘Pad would look like. It’s also been a long couple of weeks on the road, and my thoughts no longer come fully formed. Here, then, are my notes, which taken in sum can provide a review of MLB At Bat ’11, the iPad app from MBL.tv — or at least hopefully they will.

* Man this resolution is terrible. And I can’t figure out how to improve it. Is this my problem? Am I already this old? Am I fat-fingering ‘e-mail thingermerbobbers’ after my dial-up finishes screeching? I can’t be. Can I put this in the review?

* Chase Utley is so dreamy. How can he be so ruggedly handsome and yet finely coiffed at the same time? Is it the pomade? Is it the soul patch? And then his game is so saber-friendly. If only he weren’t a Phillie.

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Deion Sanders, trying to bring fashion to bloggers at the Van Heusen Institute of Style #BWB4 Kickoff Party also presented by Captain Morgan & Guinness Black Lager.

What is a blog? What is a blogger?

At BlogsWithBalls 4.0, hosted this past weekend by Bloomberg Sports in their fabulous digs, those questions seemed prevalent. Though never specifically addressed, the struggle to define the blog and its writer simmered below the surface. Questions of access, funding, and innovation were all debated openly in the mostly excellent panels and yet it often felt like an element was missing.

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Just your typical Triple-A lifer.

If only Fernando Perez was a better ball player. Then again, if he was, it might be unfair to the rest of the men in the world. He’s — forgive the fawning — an excellent renaissance man even without good baseball results at the time being.

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This image is presented to the world courtesy British gentleman and graphic wunderkind Craig Robinson, whose every post at Flip Flop Fly Ballin’ we would steal if it weren’t for our commitment to Utmost Decency.

No. It’s not alcohol. A Cubs fan’s greatest ally is a shoulder on which to cry. Few better shoulders exist than Tim Souers’s, the artist behind the site Cubby-Blue.com.

The life of a Cubs fan meanders along a path of self-loathing and repeated punishment. For those of us who choose this way of life, it sure is nice to lighten the mood occasionally with some fancy art and bone-jostling funny-tales.

Taste the bitter wine of the Cubs life, and grow wiser on its drought of suffering.

So loyal NotGraphs commenter Card Archives (more on that name in a moment), who is also a broad-shouldered captain of industry, has done a thing and that thing is amazing.

I can’t begin to fathom the Mennonite’s toil that went into cataloguing every Topps baseball card ever, but I stand agape. And then I fall down, still agape.

So lose yourselves within his pages, stick-and-ball enthusiasts, and know that here at NotGraphs a hero walks among us.

If NotGraphs exists for one reason, it’s to propagate the spread of Joe West-related art throughout the country, world, and universe. But if NotGraphs exists for two reasons, the second of those is to celebrate what is Good about baseball and the internets.

Thank you, Grant Brisbee, for doing the thing you do.