Belatedly

Yesterday, Cole Hamels turned 28. I had no idea! I'm too tired to post an appropriately apologetic photograph. I did enter it into my phone so that this will never happen again.

Did you know that Cole likes to read fantasy novels in his free time? Yeah...don't we all.

Happy Birthday, Cole. Let's have another nice year of Fantasy Baseball together in 2012.

POST-SCRIPT: I FOUND A PHOTO.



HOW SEASONAL.

Why Casey, WHY?

WHY DID CASEY BLAKE SIGN WITH THE ROCKIES?

I DO NOT LIKE COLORADO.

I DO NOT THEIR UNIFORMS.

These are pictures of Casey Blake on Dodger's 70's night and a magical mountain.

I will now resume daydreaming about Cole Hamels in a Yankee hat.

Photos of Matt Kemp; My Plan to Buy the Dodgers (with Your Money)

Instead of dwelling on my mixed-because-they-were-never-positive-but-I-still-don't-want-him-to-have-taken-performance-enhancing-drugs-because-that's-not-good-for-baseball feelings about NL MVP Ryan Braun, let's just look at nice photos of Matt "he-really-should-have-won-that-MVP-award" Kemp. I don't know why I hyphenated his nickname.

Matt Kemp's mom must be really proud of him. I wonder what he bought her for Christmas.

I've never seen these Casey Blake t-shirts before! I cannot believe that something Casey Blake-related happened on the internet and I MISSED IT.

The Dodgers are my second favorite baseball team. Someday, I'm going to go to Chavez Ravine (with John Chavez) and get Casey Blake's autograph. I hope he doesn't retire before then.

John and I were talking about making a Kickstarter page to buy the Dodgers, but we had a hard time coming up with worthwhile rewards. Give us $250,000.00 and we'll make you a print out of this blog. And gild the edges. Okay no, give us $500,000.00 and we'll make a golden-edged print-out of this blog with your name substituted for every other occurrence of the words "Derek Jeter." Give us $50 million dollars and we'll name some seats after you and FedEx you a bag of frozen Dodger Dogs.

Buns included!

How Things Make Me Feel

This depresses me:

But this scares [the shit out of] me:

Those are two things that I feel.

I'm Going to Talk About Cole Hamels Even More Next Year...Get Ready

Cole Hamels, thank you for being a good person. Thank you for having a Twitter account.

I...I...I just love you. Please be a Yankee next year.

MIAMI

December 4, 2011

Dear Kei,

I am very excited about the prospect of becoming a Miami Marlins fan this baseball season. I think that you, Mordecai, Mitsu and I should begin our baseball pilgrimage in Chicago and drive to New York with detours to Detroit and Philadelphia. Then, you can leave your car in Long Island and we'll fly to Miami. It only takes a few hours and we can probably bribe a stewardess to let Mitsu fly in coach class.

We might as well pick up David Wright on the way.


Let's petition Jeff Loria to let all of us run in the mascot race.

Sincerely,
Jenni

Thank You Baseball

For good times, great times, bad times, all times...thank you, Derek Jeter and thank you, Yankees and thank you, baseball.

Does DJ spend Thanksgiving in Florida?

I Love Matt Kemp, But This Might Be Too Much

Matt Kemp is in a class of his own when it comes to defining baseball celebrity. Is there any other actually glamorous Major Leaguer? But this photo goes too far. You're announcing a new deal with the Dodgers, not accepting an Oscar!

Okay fine, I'd probably really like this picture if it had been taken from a different angle. Because this...I have no problems with this.

SMILE, YOU'RE FAMOUS. Congratulations!

Extreme Feelings

The Phillies came to some sort of agreement with former Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon tonight, instantly making themselves the team that encapsulates the widest range of my baseball feelings. A photo essay follows.

The above photo is the #2 Google image result for "Cole Hamels ugly."
The first result had a watermark and therefore does not fit into the aesthetic landscape of this blog.

I'm not sure I believe that that's really Jonathan Papelbon. I mean, why would it and how could it be? Why and how? But, also, why not?

Bye George

I read in the New York Times that Jorge Posada believes that there is "not even a percentage of chance" that he'll be back with the Yankees next year. No numerical representation of the likelihood of him retiring from baseball was given. Regardless, this is some sort of goodbye.

1996: Young Jorge and Jeter with a shiny, unevenly spaced sign.

Listening to team mates admit to using
performance-enhancing drugs: Andy and A-Rod editions

Wow, they'll never win another World Series together.
This is sad.

Growing old

Old in sports is not even that old.

DJ3K: A Celebration

Derek Jeter's going to be so lonely. Goodbye George.

Baseball Life After Baseball

Now that we're one football Sunday past the baseball season, it's time to accept that baseball is over and that winter is here. Tony LaRussa made a very grandiose acceptance gesture by retiring from managing forever. A beautiful team of Budweiser Clydesdales escorted him into eternal peace.

Just kidding...he's still alive! Doesn't Lance Berkman look like the ultimate Casual Dad?

In other news, Robbie Cano and some other MLB All-Stars flew to Taiwan this week.

According to his Twitter, he's having a great time.

I have NO IDEA what this photo is! Asia is wild!

Congratulations, Birdies

Congratulations St. Louis! Your team won its 11th World Series championship. If only you'd waited until 11-11-11. I hate it when baseball is over!

There were a lot of babies on the World Series podium this year, which felt new. Should we blame/credit Drew Brees? Lance Berkman got to carry the trophy because, despite having four daughters, he was childless through the awards ceremony. Babies are taking over the world and it scares me.

Most World Series championships are bittersweet-- they mean that baseball's over for the year and that we have to do other things, like play Fantasy Football and read books. Thanks very much for another memorable year, baseball. I love you. Thank you. Goodnight.

Cold as Ice Redux

I can't afford to hold grudges against teams who beat teams that aren't the Yankees, which is why I still hate Texas but I don't hate the Cardinals.

Before Game 7 starts, let's look at more photos of David Freese:

Well-defined eye lashes make people look famous.

You may think this is a Target ad, but it's not!

To reinforce the notion of Freese as wholesome,
here's a photo of him handing out a turkey. On Thanksgiving? Unclear.

I googled "David Freese little league" because
what would be more wholesome than helping children?
This photo is so small that I can't tell if it's
really him, but I think it's okay to assume that it is.

It's okay to have a DUI when you're still a teenager, right?
I mean, it would be unwholesome to not go through
a phase of generic teenage rebellion, right?
This is still pretty cute, as far as mugshots go.

Man, I still kind of hate the Cardinals when I think about how we could be watching Cole Hamels pitch game 7 of the World Series tonight. It's also difficult to argue that bare-bones "I'm just watching this game because I like sports drama" fan should root for the team who's won the championship more times than any other club besides the Yankees over the team who's won no championships since their inception 50 years ago. (There are A LOT of "Texas Ranger" wikipedias, but this is the one that's relevant to baseball.)

As I implied in the opening paragraph, I'm not that kind of fan, so those rules don't apply to me. It's not spiritually healthy just to root against one team based on irrational grudges, though, so I'll be transforming those negative feelings into something positive by rooting for the Cardinals tonight.