A 2014 Cole Hamels Hair Update

Another year has passed, another summer has ended. After many, many long months of being completely fixated on dogs (my dog specifically, but all of the dogs in the world additionally), I've been trying to reconnect with the things that I loved before I loved only dogs, i.e. baseball, fantasy baseball, football, fantasy football and Bill Simmons.  It's been pretty good so far, despite my baseball thoughts being dominated by fretting over when I'll see Derek Jeter for the last time and why there are Snoopy dolls in the Mets Team Store. This morning, however, I pushed the anxiety aside to indulge in another of my all-time favorite baseball hobbies: taking blurry MLB.tv photos of Cole Hamels on my iPhone.

Congratulations on your combined no-hitter, Cole! Are you wearing that titanium-infused necklace for style or for POWER?

While these photos testify to the fact that Cole Hamels does know how to smile, they don't provide any information about the current state of his hair. To save you the trouble of asking Google (don't bother asking Siri, she only wants to talk about Heidi Hamels' hair), here are some 2014 Cole Hamels Hair Updates:

So, basically, nothing new to report. Although I guess I missed a mustache phase in 2013:

via ...but I'd say more AMAZING than EMBARRASSING.

Yes, I found this by Googling "Cole Hamels dog 2014."  And no, there weren't any new photos of Cole carrying his dog around in a back pack.  

This is Not Good

This is the kind of picture that populates the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery these days:

Disorienting cropping, static straight-ahead camera angles, noticeable lack of Derek Jeter.  Who is this person?  Evan Longoria.  What does his hair look like? Indiscernible.  After all, what else could anyone possibly want to know about Evan Longoria? Nothing!

My quality of life directly correlates to the quality of the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery. I may never know what anyone looks like again.  What will I put on this blog? Acrostic poems about my favorite athletes, I guess.  Here's my first two:

1.
Day after day,
Even when I am
Reasonably happy, I spend at least one minute thinking about how in-
Evitably, Derek Jeter is getting older.  It
Keeps happening.  There's no reason to take it personally. It's

Just something that is happening.
Every day,
The past gets larger and larger, like a floating yak that can't stop
Eating.  Someday this insatiable ghost yak, or whatever it is, will consume you.
Realistically, thankfully, I doubt that Derek Jeter has considered his spirit animal of death.

2.
Please be good at football this year.
Eli has already won two Superbowls.
You deserve another one,
Two, three, four
Or five...just kidding. You're probably too old for four.
Not that I know anything about the lifespans of professional athletes.

M
A
N
N
I also don't know why you're in that boring car commercial.
N
G

Someone please fix the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery. Writing poetry is stupid and hard.

Great Job, DJ

Tonight, the internet is talking about whether or not Derek Jeter can amass 1,001 hits and break Pete Roses's all-time hits record.  People say that he would have to play until he's in his late 40's. Go for it, DJ! You're already the world's best person. You might as well try to become the world's-best-person-who-has-also-hit-more-baseballs-than-any-other-person.  By then, I'll also be in my 40's and will have hit no baseballs in any context.  That's okay. We all have our own paths in life.

Something I would like the internet to tell me: what happened to the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery?  Where else can I go to see hundreds of unsorted photos of unfamous MLB players? I had to use this un-new photo of Derek Jeter that Google unearthed from some unknown corner of the universe.  Oh well. Who cares about representing things as they are? Who really cares about the truth?

Congratulations to the Derek Jeter of today, yesterday, 10+ years from now and forever.  Thanks to the internet, you'll always be our one and only timeless Jeter.

Derek Jeter Living in and Against Time: 2012 Has Begun

One year ended and another one began. The beginning of a new year means that more time has passed, that more time is coming and that the time that is coming will pass. Time just keeps happening! And as time happens, it changes us. You get where I'm going with this? Time is happening and Derek Jeter is getting older. The New York Post reports that he was in Paris with ex-girlfriend Minka Kelly this weekend. Wearing a black hooded jacket, no less. We're all getting older. Time is happening to everyone.

If W.G. Sebald wrote a book about Derek Jeter living in and against time, it would probably include these two photographs with no captions:


The New York Post article claims that Derek and Minka "were spotted Thursday walking through the Musée d'Orsay art museum," which is a detail that W.G. Sebald most certainly would have included in his hypothetical book about Derek Jeter living in and against time. After describing them strolling around the galleries, he would have talked about the particular sadness that emanates from different not-particularly-sad-looking paintings from the collection. Although he doesn't (yet) have his own museum, there's a lot of art about Derek Jeter that can be seen on the internet. Here's a selection:

via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Art is one way to try and stop time. But really, nothing stops time! Just as that would be the inevitable conclusion of W.G. Sebald's book, so is it the conclusion of this blog post. Nothing stops time.

Don't be scared, though. It's just normal.

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.

Time Keeps Happening

"Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers."

We're all getting old. Come back soon, Peyton.