Who Is Delivering Carson Cistulli’s Newspaper?

Unless you have been without internet access for the last several weeks until this exact moment, or are somehow reading these words from the flickering monitor of a hollowed out office building where you are scavenging supplies while attempting to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, you are no doubt well aware of the website Matthew Carlins described as “the most important blog on the internet today.” I am, of course, talking about the website of NotGraphs’ very own Carson Cistulli, Getting the Paper.

Getting the Paper is a statement of the human condition, reduced to the combination of sunshine, newsprint, weeds, and Craftsman-style porch. It flies in the face of our expectations, hurling paradoxes at our feet and forcing us to re-evaluate the societal norms that have, without our explicit permission, created the foundations of our knowledge. Why does this website exist? the website asks. Why am I viewing it? By viewing it, have I already validated its existence? Have I validated mine? How can we track the location of newspapers when newspapers stopped existing back in 2009?

These are all important questions that I leave to the reader; there is no time to answer them now. Instead I raise a separate but equally vital issue to your attention. None of us exists in a vacuum, Paul Simon notwithstanding; one cannot get a paper unless it is given. We are bound to look up to the heavens and ask, “Who is delivering Carson Cistulli’s newspaper?”

To answer this, we turn to science.

Here is a photograph of Mr. Cistulli’s porch, which may or may not need a new coat of paint. If we assume that the wooden steps are the target area for the periodical, we can set up a strike zone as follows:

And here, after a sample of twenty-two days, is a map of newspaper placement:

Carson’s deliveryperson is someone who lives down in the zone, with only a few mistakes thrown belt-high in the center of the plate. The proliferation of low papers tells us that we’re looking for someone who wields a cut fastball, who’s a little homer prone and doesn’t rack up a huge number of strikeouts. He doesn’t show much of a preference for one side of the plate over the other, which likely rules out a reliance on sliders. Finally, he probably needs to have had some spare time since the beginning of August, and could stand to use a little extra cash.

We threw this information into the NotGraphs Computer, a Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus, and it returned this eerily similar PITCHf/x heat map:

Our riddle is solved. It is incontrovertibly proven that Carson Cistulli has had his newspaper delivered by Jamie Moyer. The man truly is ageless.




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Patrick Dubuque served as former Bill Spaceman Lee Visiting Professor for Baseball Exploration at Pitchers & Poets. Follow him on Twitter at @euqubud. That last sentence is designed to appear as an imperative.

11 Responses to “Who Is Delivering Carson Cistulli’s Newspaper?”

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  1. Diane says:

    And given that there are no papers left ON the steps, can we assume that Carson “swings at everything”?

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  2. JDanger says:

    Nice work here, Patrick, but I can’t help but wondering how you accounted for the “missing paper” day. That’s a HUGE omission.

    I’m sorry to tell you that your calculations are probably way off and you will have to re-process the data.

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  3. okobojicat says:

    If you head over to gettingthepaper.com you will also notice a complete lack of movement for the bike that resides on the porch. What has happened to this fiend?
    Does the bike long to ride the roads of Madison? Does it dream of winding pathways under orange and red and yellow leaves, but is denied the beauty of Wisconsin?
    What is the story of the bike, that is the questions I want answered.

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    • Dave Barker says:

      Yes, the bike is problematic. It raises the question, “Were all of these photographs taken on the same day? Granted, there is shadow variation, but Mr. Cistulli might have decided to dedicate one entire day to taking multitudes of photographs simply by moving the paper around his dilapidated porch. Going forward, I think we’re going to need to see Mr. Cistulli displaying the front page of the paper for verification.

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  4. Dan says:

    Good think it’s Moyer and not Aroldis Chapman. There would be dents in the concrete.

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  5. is there info on weighted paper type values for Sunday v. Weekday papers.

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  6. Jack says:

    Jamie Moyer makes a lot of sense, considering he delivered King Nebuchudnezzar’s paper every morning when he was in the 7th grade.

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  7. deadhead says:

    Looks like the Chicago White Sox have sent the grounds crew up to Madtown. Horrible.

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