Category Archives: All-Encompassing

The clever baseball reference in the “Parks and Recreation” book

Posted on by
4

In 2009, Parks and Recreation first aired. A spiritual spin-off (but not an actual spin-off) of The Office, it follows the life of the Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the rest of the staff of the Parks and Recreation Department in the fictional, Springfield-like city of Pawnee, Indiana.

In 2011, Knope released a book on Pawnee in the show, entitled Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. NBC released the book in the real world.

In 2013, as part of a Netflix/Hulu binge to get caught up on Parks and Recreation before the next season starts, I also read Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. I got it from the library (thankfully, my local library is not run by Ron Swanson’s second ex-wife Tammi). In doing so, I was able to catch a clever baseball reference in it during a section on Pawnee’s school board- which is filled with people who have lots of A’s at the start of their names in order to be at the top of the ballot, helping them win simply through the laziness of the voters of Pawnee. I’ve put the page up below the jump*, can you spot it?

*(Please don’t sue me, NBC!)

Continue reading →

Famous for Something Else: Max Patkin

Posted on by
1

Max Patkin was a famous “baseball clown” during the second half of the 20th century, even making an appearance in Bull Durham. But before he became the Clown Prince of Baseball, he had a brief minor league career that was interrupted by WWII:

Year Age Tm Lg Lev Aff W L W-L% ERA G CG IP H R ER BB SO HBP WP WHIP H/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
1941 21 Wisconsin Rapids WISL D CHW 10 8 .556 3.94 27 13 178.0 170 94 78 95 134 9 13 1.489 8.6 4.8 6.8 1.41
1942 22 2 Teams 1 Lg D CHW 3 4 .429 3.74 13 65.0 59 32 27 39 1.508 8.2 5.4
1942 22 Green Bay, Wisconsin Rapids WISL D CHW 3 4 .429 3.74 13 65.0 59 32 27 39 1.508 8.2 5.4
1946 26 Wilkes-Barre EL A CLE 1 1 .500 5
3 Seasons 14 13 .519 3.89 45 13 243.0 229 126 105 134 134 9 13 1.494 8.5 5.0 5.0 1.00
D (2 seasons) D 13 12 .520 3.89 40 13 243.0 229 126 105 134 134 9 13 1.494 8.5 5.0 5.0 1.00
A (1 season) A 1 1 .500 5
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/17/2013.

John Philip Sousa once wrote a Baseball March

Posted on by
Reply

John Philip Sousa, the man who wrote such patriotic standards as The Stars and Stripes Forever, also wrote a march for baseball, entitled The National Game. I’ve heard it performed at Orchestra Nights at the ballpark (yeah, Rochester has orchestra night every year), but I just found it on YouTube, so, well, here it is.

Feel free to imagine 19th century baseballers taking the field to this, dressed in uniforms for the Providence Grays or the Boston Beaneats, perhaps while also getting into drunken saloon brawls and going into second base with sharpened spikes. It’s what Old Hoss Radbourn (or at least @OldHossRadbourn) would do.

There exists a baseball card of Cal Ripken in an Iron Man Suit

Posted on by
Reply

Found this online. I must one day buy it and then have it framed and placed upon my desk:

calripkenasironmanYes, that’s a baseball card of Cal Ripken wearing an Iron Man suit.

Your mind… is now blown.

In honor of Friday the 13th: My Greatest Baseball Fears (mostly humor)

Posted on by
Reply

It’s Friday the 13th, so here are my greatest baseball fears (these are mostly meant to be humorous):

  • I go to a ballgame, have to leave early due to some external circumstance, miss a no-hitter, and get ticked off at whoever it was that caused the external circumstance.
  • Some family member or friend schedules a wedding, Bar Mitzvah, funeral, or other major event during an elimination game of the World Series. Had the 2008 World Series gone to Game 7, this would have happened and I would have probably ruined the Bat Mitzvah of a family friend.
  • Even worse than that: the power goes out during the playoffs. The horror…. the horror.
  • Or even worse than THAT: a blackout brought about by a dispute between the TV station and the cable provider. A torch and/or pitchfork would probably be involved.
  • Another work stoppage. I was four when the last one happened so I had no clue. I have a hard enough time getting through the off-season. A work stoppage would probably cause me to enter a grief-coma or something. Is a grief-coma a thing? I don’t know.
  • I miss a walk-off play in deep extra innings because of my bladder.
  • Line drive to the face.
  • Line drive to the groin.
  • Really, line drives in general are terrifying.
  • Hard enough grounders, too, especially if they are bouncing.
  • Somebody other than Andrelton Simmons wins Gold Glove for SS in the NL this season, causing the baseball-related internet to enter a conflagration that would make the Trout-Cabrera WAR debate of last year look like a campfire.
  • No, seriously, he’s had one of the best defensive seasons in history. If he doesn’t win, the baseball-related internet will probably cease to exist. The center will not hold, the falcon will not be able to hear the falconer…
  • Finally: I’m somehow managing a major league team, my team is down in the ninth, and Mariano Rivera is coming in.

Random Thing: Captain Marvel meets the 1944 Cardinals

Posted on by
Reply

Miss Bizarre Baseball Culture? Don’t worry, it’ll be back soon, but to hold you over, here’s a bit from Captain Marvel Adventures #36, from June 1944, in which Billy Batson (who transforms into Captain Marvel with one cry of SHAZAM!) meets some of movers-and-shakers at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, including Dizzy Dean (who was an announcer for the Browns at the time) and HOF Cardinals manager Billy Southworth.

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 2.36.21 PMIt’s not quite teaching baseball to Martians, but maybe it’ll hold some of you over.

Random Thing: Former Major League Stadiums That Are Still Standing

Posted on by
Reply

The (exhibition) return of Olympic Stadium got me to thinking for no real reason: What are other former MLB stadiums that are still standing? I don’t mean cases where they knocked down almost the whole thing but kept the diamond there (as has happened at Tiger Stadium), or cases where they demolished most but not all of the stadium and then it was made into something totally different (as with what used to be Braves Field).  I’m talking about actual former stadiums that are still standing and could, in theory, still be used for baseball.

I came up with this list:

I can’t think of any others… can you?

George Carlin: Baseball and Football

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve posted this before, but it’s still a classic, and in honor of the start of the NFL season, I’m posting it again: George Carlin on the differences between baseball and football.

The last time the Pirates won 81 games…

Posted on by
Reply

September 9th, 1992. At the end of the day, after a 13-8 victory over the Cubs, the record of the Pittsburgh Pirates showed that they had 81 wins.

It never happened again. Until yesterday.

How long ago was 9-9-92? Well…

  • Bryce Harper hadn’t been born yet.
  • The United States still was doing nuclear bomb testing.
  • The Colorado Rockies, Florida/Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks did not exist.
  • Two players from the September 9, 1992 game- Joe Girardi and Ryne Sandberg– are now MLB managers (although Sandberg is an interim manager).
  • Three participants in the game (Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and umpire Doug Harvey) are now in the Hall of Fame. A fourth, Barry Bonds, would be if not for, well… you know.
  • Speaking of Bonds, at the end of the 1992 season, he had 176 HR and in 1992 he hit a then career-high 34 HR.
  • The top movie at the box-office the weekend before was Honeymoon in Vegas. The top movie in the weekend after was Sneakers.
  • Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” was the Number One single.
  • George H.W. Bush was president and was facing both Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in the presidential race.
  • Nickelodeon was only a few weeks old, the Sci-Fi (Syfy) Channel and Cartoon Network were a few weeks away from premiering.
  • The first Mario Kart game had only been out for about two weeks.
  • Gerald’s Game by Stephen King was the number one best-selling book at the time.
  • The Russian Federation had not yet taken part in the Olympic Games- the 1992 Olympics had the “Unified Team” of Russia and former USSR countries because they hadn’t formed Olympic Committees in time.
  • A Canadian Team had not yet won the World Series.
  • Only Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, Anaheim (Angel) Stadium, Kauffman Stadium, Skydome/Rogers Centre, New Comiskey Park/US Cellular Field, the Oakland Coliseum and Camden Yards remain in MLB use from that season. Tropicana Field had been built, but had not yet hosted a Major League team.

In other words: It was a long time ago.

Great Stuff from the B-Ref Japanese Data

Posted on by
Reply

With Baseball Reference adding Japanese stats, it’s time to look at some of the coolest stuff from it.

First off, of course, there is arguably the greatest Japanese player ever and one of the greatest hitters on any continent: Sadaharu Oh. You probably know about his 868 HRs, but you probably didn’t know about his impressive 2786 hits. Going on a tangent here, I remember reading somewhere that, after statistical conversions between the leagues, it’s thought that Oh would have had a career in MLB similar to Mel Ott.

Much like how Babe Ruth had Lou Gehrig behind him, Oh had Shigeo Nagashima, who formed the N in what was called the Yomiuri Giants’ “O-N Cannon”. Together, they helped the “Yankees of Japan” win nine straight titles.

However, had you looked hard enough, you probably could have found their statistics elsewhere, and the same probably goes for Americans and other westerners who spent time in Japan since the 1970s, like Charlie Manuel and Randy Bass and recent Japanese imports like Yu Darvish. What makes the Baseball Reference data awesome is that it goes beyond that to Japanese baseball’s earliest professional seasons.

For example, I can’t ever remember seeing the stats of Wally Yonamine, the first American to play in Japan post-WWII. Nor do I ever remember seeing statistics for Eiji Sawamura, the ace pitcher (Japan’s Cy Young Award equivalent is named for him) who once struck out Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx in succession during one of Ruth’s famous tours of Japan, but whose career ended premature when he died during WWII.

As a third example of a early-years Japanese player who has interesting stats to look at: Victor Starfin (sometimes spelled Starffin). The first pitcher to win 300 games in Japan, Starfin was able to (mostly) avoid WWII’s effects on Japanese baseball. Well, until he was released in 1944 due to “security concerns” and thrown into a detention camp for being a foreign national. That, by the way, is like the fourth most interesting thing in his SABR biography. Seriously, it starts with his family fleeing the Russian Revolution and ends with him tragically dying in a drunk-driving accident in January, 1957- not long after his final season (1955).

Those just scratch the surface of the treasures in Baseball Reference’s new Japanese pages… go check them out.