Here is a picture of some professional baseball players who are no doubt having a much more enjoyable and carefree experience moving than the author, who is currently in the midst of transporting all of his belongings across the city of Seattle from an apartment to a house while also painting many walls of said house and not getting very much sleep.
Also, Nick Punto lol.
I’ve been slacking on the baseball writing like an MF’er lately because I quite literally bought a goddamn house. It’s been a busy and stressful time so get of my back, alright?
Please click this internet hyperlink to read the entire post over at Call to the Pen
Seeing as I didn’t follow baseball last night, I really don’t have much of anything to rely on for reference or inspiration in this post. All I know is I like baseball, and you like baseball, and here we are, stuck in this awful mess I’ve constructed for the two of us. I have followed baseball’s current season rather closely, though, at least up to this point, so why don’t I just wing it? It wouldn’t be the first time, that’s for sure. How much could have really changed? Baseball players are people and people are predictable. It’s not like anyone hit three home runs in a single game or got suspended for performance enhancing drugs or anything like that. That kind of stuff never happens! So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to offer you a handful of things I’m almost certain happened last night in the sport of baseball:
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Oh man, the Red Sox sure have been bad. But they fired their hitting coach! So now everything will be better! I investigated this exciting new development over at FanSided and wrote words about it. Congratulations on winning the 2012 World Series, Red Sox!
PS: I was going to add an image to this post and so I Googled “Red Sox suck” and holy shit, was that ever a terrible idea. It was almost enough to make you root for the Red Sox. The internet is such a stupid place. What the hell are we all doing here at this stupid place?
Please click this internet hyperlink to read the entire post over at FanSided
Dustin Pedroia was asked about the firing and he responded with great optimism. “I feel awesome,” said the second-baseman, currently sporting an OPS of .333, the lowest mark of his career since his rookie season. “Don’t get me wrong, Bob was a good guy, but now that he’s gone I just feel like such a better hitter, you know? All that junk he used to tell me about my front foot and clearing my hips and all that? Yuck. Confusing. Now I’m free, man. I feel great.” Slugger Adrian Gonzalez agreed with his teammate, he himself posting near career low hitting numbers this season. Gonzalez was confident improvement was coming soon. “Bob was always telling me these strange things, things like ‘Be bad at hitting’ and ‘Don’t worry about hitting the ball hard.’ I never understood that,” said the first-baseman. “Now that Bob is gone, I won’t be hearing that kind of instruction, and I’ll be able to better focus on other things, like being good at hitting.”
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I am nothing if not timely, and so I would like to alert your attention to a certain Keith Law ESPN chat that happened on the 2nd of August, 2012. In said chat, Law was asked by a reader about catcher’s receiving skills and what exactly makes one a good receiving catcher in comparison to a player who just isn’t very good. Here was his response:
…Depends on how hard/soft your hands are, and how strong. Some guys can just grab a pitch and freeze their hands to keep it in the zone. Some stab and dive and otherwise catch like they’ve got goat’s heads in their gloves.
Now, I don’t know about all those technical and interesting and useful baseball details, but I do know that I just read the words “goat’s hands” in reference to poor receiving catchers. At least, I think I did. Further complicating this completely useless exercise, Mr. Law seems to have typed “heads” instead of “hands” in his answer, and while I’m sure he could have meant that, I’m going to make an ass out of you and me and presume that “heads” was a minor typo. Heads would certainly work, and it would still be quite funny, but hands makes more sense to me and I just wasted a bunch of my time Photoshopping goat hooves over player’s hands and so we’re going with hands. I hope that’s alright with everyone. Below, you will find a few submissions of poor defensive catchers with goat’s hands. To help me select specific players for this dubious honor, I consulted Mike Fast’s excellent pitch framing article for some catcher’s who seem to be really bad at catching and receiving baseballs pitched to them. I also chose Jesus Montero because he’s a Seattle Mariner and I’m familiar with him, and people make fun of him all the time for sucking at defense.
Jesus Montero
Ryan Doumit
Chris Iannetta
Mike Napoli
Say, I think Felix Hernandez may have thrown a perfect game yesterday and that I may have been present at Safeco Field for the final several outs. I think that was real. This is something I am very happy to report. How it all happened—all the details and circumstances and machinations and whatnot, I’ve preserved in virtual space with virtual words over at the virtual website Call to the Pen. You can click this internet link and read my little story over there. It might be a bit sappy and overenthusiastic but it’s a nice story that I enjoy and one I’m happy to have documented. Felix Hernandez, everybody. Felix Mother Fucking Hernandez.
Felix Hernandez! Felix Hernandez!! Felix Hernandez!!!
Felix Hernandez
Please click this internet hyperlink to read the entire post over at FanSided
The current frontrunners for the two MVP awards are: All the good players. All the good players are popular, and the more good players on lists in posts like this, the more one is able to excite or upset or anger people who think their favorite or preferred good player is more deserving than the other good players. This is Internet 101 and I’m about to totally nail it here pretty soon. There’s the young superstar who’s mashing the baseball and playing a superior defensive position with elite skill. There’s the other young superstar who’s doing the same thing. There’s that third baseman who’s really good, and the catcher who’s recently caught fire at the plate despite his position being perhaps the most difficult and physically demanding on the diamond. There are also all those first baseman who always hit a ton of home runs. And there are even pitchers who are good and who cause a lot of arguments! Baseball is crazy with good players and all of them have a chance to win the MVP. Doesn’t that make you happy or mad and make you want to discuss and comment and link others to this post?
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How’d that Football Player get in there?
Here’s the story of how I ended up buying this Official Jackmaster Baseball Knife: I frequent many baseball related internet websites in my day-to-day life. One of these internet websites is FanGraphs. Within FanGraphs, there exists a cousin, or sister, or bastard child site by the name of NotGraphs, a place where baseball whimsy and ridiculousness and insanity is practiced. I probably don’t have to tell you that I am a big fan of NotGraphs. One day, while browsing NotGraphs, I came across a blog post entiled “Baseball and Sharp Objects” and I read it and I was taken by the subject of the post. The subject of the post was, you guessed it, the Official Jackmaster Baseball Knife. It was weird and unique and rusty and dangerous and involved baseball and so I wanted to buy it with money and own it. I even documented my desire with a comment on the blog post. The guy that says “Holy shit! I want to buy this,” that’s me. I’m Kyle. Before commenting, I searched Ebay and it’s archives for evidence of such a thing even being for sale. I was in luck. I found an expired auction for the knife and included a link in the aforementioned comment. Determined to waste my not-so-hard earned money, I proceeded to directly contact the attempted seller of the Official Jackmaster Baseball Knife. I told him that I had intentions to bid on and purchase his item were he to ever make it available for auction once again. He told me that he planned to re-list the item sometime soon and would try to let me know when he did so. Some days later, he let me know the knife was live on Ebay and available. I made a single, solitary bid and patiently waited until the auction ended and I was the victor. Then I paid for the thing and it was shipped to my address and now it’s here with me and it’s mine. I’m still trying to decide how to properly display it.
As you can see, the sides of the knife show pictures of different blade positions and baseball terms that apply to them. Things like “Strike,” “Out,” Homer,” “Single,” Double,” etc. The internet tells me that the baseball game the knife is designed for is some kind of variation on what is called “Mumbley Peg.” In Mumbley Peg, two knife owners take turns throwing a knife between their own feet. Whoever gets the knife closest to his foot is the winner, while the loser has to pull some Mumbley Peg type piece of wood out of the ground with his teeth. Sounds reasonable. There are definitely more complicated ways of playing this game but let’s leave it at that because I mean really, who has the time. So, as you can probably guess, with this Official Jackmaster Baseball Knife, some similar knife throwing takes place but instead of feet and terror being involved, a baseball game is played and it’s particulars depend on how the knife does or doesn’t stick into the ground. That sounds like something wonderful I’ll never partake in because television and the internet exist.
So that’s the story of how I ended up buying this Official Jackmaster Baseball Knife and what it’s all about. The important thing is that I purchased it with money and felt a fleeting thrill of having done something exciting, and for a few, all too brief moments, I was overcome with adrenaline and endorphins and I no longer felt small or alone or feared death.
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The Trance of Waiting 