I guess he isn’t working out so well in Florida, much like he didn’t work out as my bf’s Mike Stanton Birthday present in 2009:

I used to think of him every time I crossed the Third Avenue Bridge, as there is a giant sign that says Vazquez visible nearby. But just as Ron Weasley tries not to think about Dragomir Gorgovich and his record for most dropped quaffles in a season, lately I’ve been taking the Willis Ave instead.

Which is why this year, even though I was wrong about Andy coming back …

I just finished rereading Bang the Drum Slowly for the first time in at least ten years and right now I am obsessed. If anyone else has read and loved this book and wants to talk to me about incidental minutiae like whether or not Sid Goldman is based on Hank Greenberg or the mix of American and National league cities on the Mammoths’ schedule, you should hit me up.

I always assumed the Mammoths were based on the Giants, since they play in Manhattan and the Moors family reminds me of the Stonehams. But Wikipedia said they were based on the Yankees. Their schedule includes Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, but also Washington, Cleveland and Boston. At the beginning of the book I assumed that Boston meant the Braves, but then they mentioned the All Star game being held in Milwaukee. This is the one piece of the evidence that seems to indicate that the Mammoths play in the equivalent of the AL, since Wiggen mentions that they had never seen any of the Milwaukee players before. Then again, if Brooklyn is in the same league as Cleveland in this book, I suppose that nothing is drawn strictly along true league lines.

The first three Henry Wiggen books were literary staples for me in late middle school/ early high school. In the past few weeks, Henry Wiggen has managed to sneak back into my rereading repertoire in between Becky Bloomwood and Kilgore Trout.  It makes me sad that it is hard to find Mark Harris books in stores these days, although apparently all of the Henry Wiggen books have been rereleased by the University of Nebraska Press (who is distributed by Longleaf, aka University of North Carolina, for those of you who are keeping score at home.) Until I was reading the liner notes I didn’t even know there WAS another book in the series, since my dad had the first three as one book, and that’s how I read them as a kid.

I don’t know how many of my associates have read and loved Henry Wiggen, but every time I read one of these books, not only do I get excited about baseball, but I get excited about writing. Not necessarily by Wiggen’s charmingly malaprop-laden prose, but rather by the carefully crafted small details: the intricate roster listing each player’s hometown and birthplace and nickname, the off-field antics, the description of opposing players. When I was in 8^th grade, I came home from school one Friday and started designing a roster of my own. I distinctly remember sitting on my red-yellow-orange-brown kitchen carpet and selecting hometowns for my players out of the atlas. I don’t remember the characters that got assigned to Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Quogue, NY, but I specifically remember that someone did.

I quickly abandoned the project when I realized that I needed events to happen in the book, and as a 13 year old I didn’t really know about anything but baseball. I think that’s why I get so excited by my phantom writing projects now: because I actually have events all lined up, and characters for them to happen to, even though I haven’t laid them down on paper yet. Who knows, maybe after rereading BTDS, I will. That is, if I’m not too busy rereading the rest of the series and/or watching the movie. I didn’t even know there WAS a movie of Bang the Drum Slowly until my coworker told me about it this summer. Trust that no one in my bibliocentric household even thought to mention the existence of a movie. But perhaps it was better that they did not: as I have fabricated the whole thing in my mind’s eye, and am not sure how I will feel about my imagination being corrected by the real thing.

My favorite thing about Doug Drabek is his taste in haberdashery:

Since “Doug Drabek And His Fancy Hat” would be a catchy name for a children’s book, or perhaps a cover band in which one member dressed like Doug Drabek and the other dressed like his hat, I got to thinking of the next best thing … Doug Drabek And His Fancy Cat. The following was the first Google Image search result for “Doug Drabek Cat” to actually contain a cat:

I was curious what, if any, was the connection to Doug Drabek. Is Google really smart enough to pick the first picture involving a cat and a baseball and relate it to Doug Drabek? Upon perusing the website, I discovered was taken at an animal adoption event involving the Angels (notably Howie Kendrick). One of the other people in attendance was OC Animal Care Director Ryan Drabek. No word on whether he is related to Doug, although I will have to check that out further on Wikipedia.

This all started when Old Hoss Radbourn’s birthday (December 11) was right around the corner, and people on the internet were petitioning to make it a national holiday. Since I have always been obsessed with the worst dudes ever, I looked up Cap Anson’s birthday to see if that would also make a good national holiday. After discovering that he and Ty Cobb were born three days apart, I vowed to graph the birthdays of disturbing baseball personalities to see if I could glean any numerical insights. After running out of disturbing people, I decided to look up the birthdays of the first 365 players I could think of, and graph the results:

All of my data came from Wikipedia, except for poor Kip Yaughn, who does not HAVE a Wikipedia, as I mentioned in my previous entry. So I learned all kinds of other exciting details about the subjects of my list, such as: Ellis Burks’s middle name is Rena! Jay Buhner once posed (fully clothed) with a copy of A Lesson Before Dying! Steve Jeltz was born in France! And apparently my boyfriend shares his birthday with multiple people named Steve (Garvey and Carlton.) I also found all kinds of good pictures and personal details about the players involved. I now know what softball team currently features Shawn Chacon, and that if Jose Mesa is not lying about his age, he fathered a kid when he was 13.

While the birth dates are available online for anyone to peruse, normal people probably do not spend time analyzing this stuff. So I suspect I have drawn some original conclusions, some of which the players themselves may not be aware of. Johnny Evers, Mark Lemongello and C.C. Sabathia were all born on July 21, which was also the date of the Next Step Up reunion in 2006. (How indeed did Johnny Evers and his plain moniker get to share this day with the latter two and their fabulous nomenclature?) Or, while facing Edgar Martinez in the 1995 ALDS, was David Cone aware that not only were they born on the same day, but in the very same year? Former teammates Joe Girardi and Pat Kelly probably knew they shared a birthday (October 14), but is that why Pat Kelly wore number 14? Someday I would like to interview Pat Kelly and ask him. Although on my list of potential interview subjects, he is somewhere below Sean Taggart and above Rick Honeycutt.

At first I thought that November 17 was some sort of magical relief pitcher birthday, as I had Mitch Williams, Jeff Nelson and John Rocker all down for this date. Upon fact checking I discovered that Rocker was actually born on Edge Day (October 17) and I must have transposed a digit when entering it into Excel. (More like Over The Edge day based on his reaction to the populace of the 7 train.)

Hank Aaron’s birthday (February 5) and Babe Ruth’s (February 6) fall one day apart. If Barry Bonds’ birthday was February 4, that would be even better, except not really, since “Barry Bonds” and “better” should never be used in the same sentence. Except as in “what do Supertouch-Better and Barry Bonds have in common? They’re both overrated.” Disclaimer: I fucking love Supertouch but Better is not one of my favorite tracks. This will be extrapolated upon in the next issue of my paper zine I Question Not Me #2, due sometime in 2011.

How I compiled the list: I wrote down the names of the first 365 players I could think of, over the course of three days. Mathematical calculations aside, this list is probably disturbing enough on its own merits, considering which players came to mind, and for what reasons. Some are inextricably linked by esoteric details, such as John Kruk and Jim Mecir (it’s good that Mike didn’t let me name a cat after John Kruk, that misinformed disparager of club feet), and some people that just popped into my head, like Alejandro Pena. Others earned adjacent listings due to bitter rivalries, like Johnny Mize and Freddie Fitzsimmons. (My joke about Freddie Fitzsimmons demanding a DMS band called DFITZSIMMONS totally went over everyone’s heads on Twitter. Although DFITZSIMMONS is a bit too long to shave into the back of anyone’s heads and they probably wouldn’t have a catchy intro that would get subsequently covered by Bulldoze.) Still others ended up after each other because they rhymed, like Alvin Dark and Chan Ho Park, or I got on a roll and listed an entire family, like the Alous, Boones or Molinas. I refused to list Curt Schilling even though he did come to mind at various times because I dislike him for a variety of things, mostly for wanting to leave the Phillies in the mid 90’s. Also I hesitated about putting Jim Rice on the list because I’m still mad at him for saying mean things about Derek Jeter.

Originally I was doing a hand-drawn chart that plotted the birthdays but with each player’s number from when I looked them up (from 1-365). This was a logistical nightmare when drawn by hand, and I couldn’t figure out how to accurately represent it in Excel either, so I ended up plotting the dates without attaching them to names. If anyone is curious about the identities of the players included, or who corresponds with which numerical spot, a table is included at the end of the article.

The very last person to make the list was Tomas Perez. For some reason I started thinking of that dude on the Brewers who caused an epic mid 90’s collision at 2^nd base, and cannot remember his name. (Jose Valentin perhaps?) A google search of “Jose Valentin Epic Collision” did not yield any useful results, but one of the first hits did remind me of the existence of Marlon Anderson. My sister and I had once concocted a fake feud between Marlon Anderson and Tomas Perez, so I had to let Perez get the last word by giving him the final birthday spot. To be fair, I would have included Anderson as well as Marlon Byrd if we still had room. And then Paul Byrd for good measure, if I hadn’t added him earlier.

I realized afterwards when going through the list that Brien Taylor had never played a major league game. I still decided to count him since he was a first round draft pick. If you take umbrage at his inclusion, Marlon Anderson’s birthday is January 16. Also, I discovered that I had Jose Valentin twice, but ended up changing the second entry to John Valentin, the son of Mineola. One of the unintended consequences of this study was that I also found out where a lot of these dudes were born, and have nicknamed them accordingly, such as Jamie “The Sellersville Riot” Moyer. Sadly, I doubt he was in attendance at the Blood For Blood show in 2002 where the riot occurred.

I had so much fun doing this project, so even though I am done with the first set of 365, I want to keep looking up baseball birthdays until I have at least one player for every day of the calendar year. Although for this next step I will allow myself to look at rosters and box scores for player ideas, since completing the list might require some dude on the 1914 Reds or 1933 Browns who I otherwise would have never heard of. More graphs coming soon (or not so soon, as I might get distracted by an equally ridiculous task.)

Orange you glad there’s only two of these? Also, in 1 hour it will be WORLD SERIES HERO DAMASO MARTE’S BIRTHDAY!

Since I am a huge weirdo, I currently have this Baseball Digest cover from May 1997 taped to the door of my hall closet. I have always been a big Albert Belle fan, so this was one of the best BD covers of my childhood. But now that I walk by it on a daily basis, I have a whole new perspective on this picture. First, Albert looks really skinny in comparison to Frank Thomas*. By 1997 he wasn’t quite as svelte as he is in my framed 1990 card of “Joey” Belle, but then again a lot of people might look skinny in comparison to Frank Thomas, including Freddie Fitzsimmons.

Besides the fact that Albert had to add an extra 8 to his number upon joining the White Sox, the most interesting part of this picture is the game going on in the background. The game is in the 6^th inning, and the time on the scoreboard clock says 3:12 PM. All of this seems plausible, except for the fact that Albert Belle and Frank Thomas would be having a photo shoot high above the stadium during the 6^th inning at Comiskey. So I originally suspected the entire thing was photoshopped, or whatever the equivalent of photoshop was in 1997. All you can see of the batter on the scoreboard is that he is number 7, and that his last name is Martin. As a snob from Yankeeland where almost all the single digit numbers are retired, I immediately wondered if the #7 was photoshopped in and such a player did not really exist.

Yet 5 seconds later, with only the question of “who was #7 on the White Sox in 1997 with a last name of Martin” to go on, my boyfriend had identified him as Norberto Martin (no relation to Pepper.) The name did not immediately ring a bell, so I have either never heard of Norberto Martin, or forgotten all about him. I am going to bet that I never heard of him, since when I read the first Harry Potter book a few years later, I would have thought of him upon reading about a dragon named Norbert. When I looked him up on Baseball Reference.Com, all signs point to an unremarkable career. He doesn’t even have a very thorough Wikipedia page. (Compared to pages that list what softball team Shawn Chacon currently plays for, or the extensive discourse on whether or not Jose Mesa really had a son when he was 13, this page is paltry indeed.) I wonder if he even knows that he lives in infamy on a Baseball Digest cover.

So for those of you with old issues of Baseball Digest lying around, they may be worth a second look. Who knows what has-beens and never-will-be’s you might spot in the backgrounds of the covers? Excuse me while I go re-read the saga of Denny McClain being in jail from the March 2002 issue.

*This might be a good place to plug my future Frank Thomas themed band The Big Hurt. So far it is only me and my penpal Dylan C., who lives 2000 miles away, so we are in need of a few members who live somewhere in between.

Ellie Howard repping the Staten Island Yankees

I spotted this dude wearing Nike hard plate track spikes at Yankee Stadium last summer. These are the Zoom Rival D (or maybe a later version) in the Bowerman Series U of Oregon colorway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with running, you would only wear hard plastic racing shoes like this on an outdoor track, because they are too slippery and flimsy to be worn for a cross country race, on a wood floor, etc. I guess it was briefly cool to wear racing shoes as everyday footwear in 2003-2005, but I only ever saw people wearing cross country spikes, which at least have a rubbery sole, so I never witnessed any wipeouts on indoor flooring. Compared to regular trainers, racing shoes have zero support, so most normal humans would not select them for a trip to Yankee Stadium.

I guess this guy was either a) trying to impress his date with his choice in footwear, b) an actual runner/ real life troll who wanted to see people like me getting agitated c) displaying a misguided style tribute to Ty Cobb. Sadly, Ty Cobb did not wear THOSE kinds of spikes, as he played a different sport altogether and he was even older than Bill Bowerman. Also, Connie Mack probably would have sold them.

However, this wasn’t the weirdest Stadium style statement to be spotted last summer. That honor goes to the Eddie Sutton-esque character in a Hawaiian-inspired all over print Shea Stadium shirt who wandered up into our section on July 1, looked around dazedly, was told “Shea is that way!” and departed in equally dreamy fashion.

I got these from a vending machine in the Nanuet Mall … in July 2010. When was the last time you got a Rickey Henderson card and some 22 year old bubble gum from a vending apparatus in a deserted mall?