Old Time Family Baseball

While discussing his upcoming baseball movie, Million Dollar Arm, Jon Hamm admitted that while he’s not “friends” with any St. Louis Cardinals players, he is a “text pal” with David Freese. 

Thanks to an NSA database request which was, shockingly, approved (topical political joke! yes!), we have the content of some of those conversations. 

Conversation #1: 

Conversation #2: 

Conversation #3: 

Conversation #4:

Conversation #5

With David Wright currently trailing Pablo Sandoval in All-Star voting despite Wright’s majestic tongue or the game being held in his home park, the Mets PR department reached out to Cougar Life in hopes of accessing their voter bank of attractive, older, David Wright-loving fans. Unfortunately for Cougar Life, the Mets eventually had to back out from the deal and Deadspin got wind of it. Now, as silly as it is to have home field advantage in the World Series potentially changed by what athlete a determined block of single women choose, it’s not the silliest marketing campaign that we’ve had this year. 

Oh no. 

Just look at some of the other teams and how they’ve attempted to get their star into the game: 

Pablo Sandoval

While the Mets try and reach the attractive singles market, the Giants have put up flyers in all Buy 10 Get 1 Free sub shops in the greater Bay area. 

Lance Berkman

Trailing David Ortiz by nearly 1.2 million votes, the Texas Rangers turned to the Elvis Presley Impersonators International Association in hopes of getting a surge of votes.

BJ Upton

Despite hitting .161/.259/.280, BJ Upton is still in the Top 15 for NL outfielders thanks to the Braves’ marketing department tapping into the Brotherhood of Evil Brothers database. 

Paul Goldschmidt

Currently second behind Joey Votto, the Diamondbacks reached out to the League of People Who Wish Paul Goldschmidt Was Jewish and Are Kind of Disappointed That He’s Not Even Though They’re Still Big Fans. 

AJ Pierzynski

With Pierzynski fourth in voting, trailing fan favorites Matt Wieters and Joe Mauer, it would take a miracle for him to top the popular vote. Fortunately for the Rangers PR department, the world is littered with complete and total assholes, and each one will be receiving a flyer in the mail, trumpeting Pierzynski’s skills and un-likability. 

Jose Altuve

 The Astros have now partnered with The Jockey Club in a vote-exchange, with jockeys throwing their (minimal) weight behind Altuve and the Astros refusing to serve horsemeat hot dogs. 

Joe Mauer

Even though Mauer is leading American League catchers in votes, that hasn’t stopped the Twins from giving free sideburn trims at area Super Cuts on June 21 and 22 to any fan who votes for Mauer. 

Ever wonder why a ballplayer has such a high salary? I mean, sure, they’re a highly skilled individual in an exclusive and demanding profession. And sure, teams essentially have a license to print money, and so the ballplayers certainly deserve their share. But it turns out that the players actually need the high salary, simply to cover their minibar expenses.

USA Today, when surveying Major League tastes in travel, discovered things like people actually purchasing $6 bottled water. Or, in fits of extreme excess, David Freese says: 

“There’s nothing wrong with waking up in the middle of the night, going to the bathroom and grabbing those peanut M&Ms on your way back to bed.”

I mean, you do that a couple of times a week, that sets you back, what, $3,000-$4,000? At least, that’s been my experience.

So the next time someone tells you they’re angry at ballplayer salaries, you look them dead in the eye and you tell them, “Hey! Do you want them not to eat that can of mixed nuts?” 

(h/t HBT) 

While you were spending most of your time debating the merits, or lack thereof, of Man of Steel (I, very sadly, belong in the latter camp), baseball things still happened.

What you may have missed: 

Wil Myers is coming Tampa Bay. Let’s leave the second ‘L’ off of al of our words! 

Or, we can add them to words! 

Baseball players grew up idolizing Ken Griffey Jr! And other things they think! 

Hiroshima Toyo Carp sign Kila Ka’aihue. May all his singles be homers. 

Jurickson Profar: “Water is for sharks.” 

Baseball in the year 1749! Craig Calcaterra collects all the relevant data.

A very scary moment this weekend. Alex Cobb took a line drive off his head. Fortunately, it’s only a mild concussion when it could have been much worse. 

I’m guessing this is the result of Zod’s terraforming World Engine? 

MLB on pace for most extra inning games ever. Nothing to not like about that. Unless you’re a beat writer on deadline. Or someone who likes to watch baseball, but then get up in the morning. 

Democrats beat the Republicans 22-0 in the annual baseball game. INSERT INANE POLITICAL JOKE HERE.

Ballplayers play worse as they get tired over the course of the season. It makes sense, but now science kind of proves it!  

Pedro Strop would kindly like the Orioles fans to stop, or should that be ‘strop’ booing him. Said Strop: 

“I heard it when I was walking from the mound. Booing somebody like that–I was giving everything I’ve got to help the team win and to give a good show. … They don’t care about players. They care about good results.

It’s not a big deal. I know they just want to see good results, but at the same time, they don’t know what it takes, what hard work and dedication it takes to perform well. So that’s why they boo, because they don’t know.”

I’ve never understood the appeal of booing the players you want to succeed, perhaps because I’m a hippie-dippie ‘positive reinforcement’ guy and find booing mean. Anyway, maybe lighten up. A little? 

Boog City, a poetry publication, has their baseball issue out for your enjoyment! 

With The Man of Steel coming out tonight, returning Krypton’s Last Son to his rightful place in pop culture, it’s time that we look back at Clark Kent, newsanchor and boob around town, as nearly bungles away the Little League town championship in 1982’s Superman Family #215. 

The story opens with Clark anchoring the nightly WGBS news. He passes the mic to Steve Lombard for sports who announces that there’s going to be a new member of the Hall of Fame, but first, it’s time for the all-important Little League bulletin: 

If you thought the news being filled with human interest pieces was a new phenomena, you clearly weren’t paying attention. 

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Via Hardball Talk comes a RichDubroff story for CSNBaltimore.comon Orioles outfielder Steve Pearce and his use of an electric skateboard to get to Camden Yards. Most of my extremely cursory knowledge of Pearce comes from the fact that, for several years, I lived with a certain Pittsburgh Pirates fan who went on to start this very blog. 

While Pearce has hit .236/.311/.373 over 700 Major League at-bats, he can at least highlight the fact that he’s now literally that 30 year-old dude you see hanging on to youth and hanging out with the younger, 18 - 22 year-old skate boarders…while playing for an MLB team.

Influenced by his new found narliness, Pearce has introduced a number of new slang words into the baseball lexicon:

• Bailing: when the runner abandons a stolen base attempt halfway through when it looks like failure is almost guaranteed
• Shred the save wave: striking out the side to earn a save
• Batting goofy: occurs when a hitter steps into the opposite side of the plate
• Gnarl Carl: when a team hits back-to-back home runs off of Justin Verlander
• Sweetside Method Flip: actually just the name of Buck Showalter’s cat
• Ham Run: skater slang for home run
• Radical ERA-: pretty self-explanatory
• Stokeworthy: used to describe a Yasel Puig at-bat

Last week OTFB brought you the first in what could very well be a recurring series of posts dealing with baseball and literature (however forced the connection might be). Because if you look hard enough, or just happen to read something that has even a tenuous connection to baseball, why not blog about it?

While we already know that Robert Coover was prescient in how his The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. anticipated baseball culture and the state of the game today, today’s installment will take us to the pulpy streets of Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles in his short story “Trouble Is My Business:”

She tipped the key of her call box again. “Have Mr. Jeeter come in, honey.”

Let me quickly set the scene. Phillip Marlowe, Chandler’s hardboiled private eye, has been called to a business acquaintance’s office. Mr. Jeeter is a wealthy investment banker looking to reign in his son, who’s wracked up $50,000 in gambling debt, and to drive off the sultry woman who has her eyes set on young Jeeter’s trust fund and inheritance. Skulking, murder, and verbal barbs follow in the next 60 odd pages.

Could the predicament that the elder Jeeter finds himself in be a comment on Derek Jeter’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and lavish farewell treatment of the women with whom he hooks up? 

The answer, of course, is yes. And just in case you attribute all of this to coincidence, consider Chandler’s description of a hotel lobby several pages after the introduction of Mr. Jeeter:

A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as Yankee Stadium. It was floored with blue carpet and sponge rubber underneath.

Here, Chandler opts for a Yankee Stadium reference and even carpets the lobby in what can only be imagined as “Yankee blue.” Derek Jeter’s career slash line comes in at .316/.362/.429. He’s racked up 3,304 hits and five (perhaps questionable) Gold Gloves. His playboy smile has captured countless hearts. If there’s any player whose actions could alter the very fabric of time and influence a piece of literature written in 1934, then I think it could be Jeter.

And let’s not ignore the description of Mr. Jeeter, who represents the older version of the real Jeter, who will haunt our ESPN Sunday Night Baseball telecasts and New Yorker profiles long after he’s retired from the game:

He was a tall white-blond type in pin-striped flannel of youthful cut. There was a small pink rosebud in his lapel. He had a keen frozen face, a little pouchy under the eyes, a little thick in the lips. He carried an ebony cane with a silver knob, wore spats and looked a smart sixty, but I gave him close to ten years more.

A perennially youthful fashion sense, deceptive physical looks, debonair swagger - is that not Derek Jeter at the age of 70?