I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is awesome and all. But it does seem at least a tiny bit like monkey torture. You’ve got to assume there’s something those monkeys would rather be doing, like flinging feces or something. Via Dustin Parkes:
Here are some select quotes from a Daily News Yankees feature. Joe Girardi:
You see that early in the season a lot of times. Guys don’t have a lot of at-bats, so you can have three days where you don’t get any hits and all of a sudden you go from swinging the bat really well to being under .200. You have a couple good days and you’re back above .300.
Mark Teixeira:
The first nine games, you’re going to have some funky stats – you have guys who you’ll say he’s going to be the next MVP and he’s sent down a month later. You’ll have guys who are hitting .050 and then he wins the MVP. It’s such a small, small portion of the season and it’s raining and it’s cold and you can’t get into a rhythm sometimes. I’d love to be able to hit .300 from day one, but that’s just the way baseball is.
Kevin Long:
Almost every team in baseball probably has a few guys hitting under .200. It’s common this time of year. We have a couple guys that need to get on track, but I’m not worried about any one of them. Things are always magnified at the beginning.
In the comments section earlier, Justin mentioned Alfredo Griffin, which reminded me of one of my favorite baseball cards ever. Why does the 1987 Topps set obliterate every other year and brand? (Answer: Because I was six years old and getting into baseball for the first time, almost certainly.)
The Daily News has a photo gallery of the “World’s stupidest inventions.” About half of them somehow involve the toilet, and of the remaining half, about half of those are not stupid at all but actually remarkably awesome. This, for example:
Troy writes for the Denver Post.
Luke O’Brien at Deadspin points out that a Wall Street Journal article claiming that Phillies fans no longer consider the Mets a rival used doctored photos of Phillies fans holding up innocuous signs.
First off, anyone who thinks that Phillies fans no longer hate the Mets should go to Citizen’s Bank Park dressed in Mets attire. You’re talking about deep-seeded and very likely Freudian animosity toward the whole city, not the type of fleeting distaste that’s going to pass after a couple years of the Phillies being good.
Second, I have uncovered the original undoctored* photo of the Phillies fan that the Journal Photoshopped. Here it is:
*- Obviously I didn’t really. In reality this man may not endorse vomiting on children. Also, I originally had the sign say “SOMETHING HOMOPHOBIC!” but I decided that there are unfortunately plenty of Mets fans that yell homophobic things at games and I probably should avoid vaguely accusing the entire city of Philadelphia of homophobia.
In what must be the best example yet of straight-up TedQuarters bait, artist Jeremy Scheuch creates a collection of 1986 Topps cards for notable baseball zombies. Via Craig Calcaterra.
What better way to celebrate the Golden Age of the Sandwich than with the Big New York Sandwich Book. A gorgeous collection of more than 99 delicious sandwich recipes from a “who’s who” of talented chefs, such as Dan Barber, Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongherichten, Mario Batali, and beloved restaurants in New York City, it is a virtual map–in sandwiches–of New York’s diversity. From the classic deli-style sandwich to the exotic haute sandwiches, there is a sandwich for everyone.
– Amazon.com product description, “The Big New York Sandwich Book.”
OK, accuse me of jealousy all you want, but I’ve got some beef with this book before I even buy it and crack it open (as I almost inevitably will). “The Golden Age of the Sandwich”? What’s that supposed to mean?
The sandwich is timeless! Nearly every civilization ever has wrapped protein in starch. Every age of the sandwich is the Golden Age of the Sandwich because sandwiches are inherently golden. I don’t know who’s responsible for that product description, but if you think this right here is the Golden Age of the Sandwich you might as well go pee all over the grave of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Do you know about him? He didn’t even really invent the sandwich but just lends his name to it because he liked them like basically everyone in history does.
Link via Brad.
Fresh on the heels of Patrick Flood’s list, the good fellows at Amazin’ Avenue reboot their unfinished version after a long hiatus. Our man Bob Ojeda comes in at No. 50 even though that was Sid Fernandez’s number. Alex Nelson provides a good and thorough writeup of Ojeda’s path to the Mets.
Fun fact, for what it’s worth: Ojeda started and got the win in the first baseball game I ever attended, Opening Day 1987. That means the first pitch I ever saw in a big-league game was thrown by a guy I now talk to with some regularity. And the first hitter I ever saw in a Major League game was Barry Bonds, to date the best hitter I’ve ever seen in a Major League game.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that Fresca was the favorite drink of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk in the White House’s Oval Office which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.
There are a ton of hilarious anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson but this might be my favorite. Dude was way too awesome to pick up the phone or use the intercom or heaven forbid, actually get up and walk out of his office to grab a Fresca. He had a special Fresca button installed so he didn’t have to bother with all that.
Fun fact: Fresca happens to be my favorite soda, too. I stopped drinking soda with sugar in it at some point in high school and by now a full serving of any non-diet soda makes me feel almost sick from the sweetness. I know that diet soda is also not good for me, so spare me the lectures. Fresca is delicious. It’s one of our very few grapefruit-flavored things, and I feel like supporting it is a good way of letting candy-developers everywhere understand that I would purchase more grapefruit-flavored things if they became available.
Also, I like drinking Fresca because it is inherently hilarious for reasons I can’t really define. You’ll have to ask Judge Smalls I guess.
Unfortunately it is surprisingly hard to find Fresca other than in 12 packs in supermarkets, and I rarely find myself moved to buy a 12 pack of soda in the supermarket. The other flavors of Fresca that came out a few years back pale in comparison to the OG Fresca. Don’t water down my grapefruit flavor with peach, please. No disrespect to peach-flavored stuff.
On my campus television show in college we used to say the show was sponsored by Fresca and drink it on air all the time. Often that Fresca was spiked with 99 Bananas, a ridiculous liquor. That was the first but certainly not last time I was scolded for drinking on camera. And I’m really not much of a drinker.
The news about LBJ and Fresca comes via Dan Lewis’ Now I Know newsletter, which you should probably check out.
Tedquarters 
