The ORG Baseball Stream of Consciousness Thread

[jojo]

For your baseball pleasure, this is the Old Red Guard Baseball Stream of Consciousness thread. Kick off your shoes, forget the troubles of life and let your mind wander with thoughts of baseball. The ORG is a diverse place with lots of baseball intellect. Each post represents the next thought. Lets see where the mind of the ORG goes….

Here’s a start. What if ballplayers were really just individual cells of the entity “Mr. Baseball”? What would his slash line look like?

Using major league historical stat totals from 1876 to the present via BR.com, Mr. Baseball is currently hitting .262/.329/.456 with a wOBA of about .340ish. In other words, Mr. Baseball very fittingly would look an awful lot like Jim Lemon (.262/.332/.460), the right-handed, power hitting corner outfielder of the Washington Senators.



Here is a great baseball biography for Lemon:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Jim_Lemon

Combining power, speed, and an exceptional arm, Lemon was part of the power group with Roy Sievers, Harmon Killebrew and Bob Allison that made the transition of the Senators to Minnesota a successful one. He spent a total of 26 seasons in the Senators/Twins organization as a player, coach, scout, Minor League instructor, hitting instructor and manager.

Some of you may have grown up watching Lemon on “Home Run Derby”. He was the epitome of a baseball man and an individual universally respected throughout the game. An apt face for Mr. Baseball for sure….

If you wonder what a modern face for Mr. Baseball might look like, our very own Ryan Ludwick (.259/.330/.452) is a good statistical candidate.



He is still currently writing his biography which hopefully will include post season heroics in a Reds uni...

[Dan]

What's Mr. Baseball doing if pitchers are taken out of the equation?

[jojo]

Mr. Baseball's pitching face isn't so easy to peg.

Using major league historical stat totals from 1876 to the present via BR.com, Mr. Baseball is currently pitching to the tune of an ERA= 4.57, a FIP= 4.17, a k/9=4.81 and a BB/9=3.21. In other words, Mr. Baseball’s pitching face is one that only a mother could love.

Fittingly this face was once traded for himself:



Having broke in with the Phillies, Dickie Noles, a righty who was used both as a starter and out of the pen is a good statistical candidate given his career numbers (ERA= 4.56, FIP= 3.98, K/9= 4.76, BB/9=3.54). What’s more his back story fits so well for the job too. Noles famously threw a brush back pitch to George Brett in Game Four that is often considered the turning point in the 1980 World Series. But it was an incident in Cincinnati during 1983 while he was a Cub that might have galvanized his face in the memories of Reds fans. Following a game at Riverfront, Noles assaulted a Cincinnati police officer during a drunken brawl and ended up serving 17 days in a Cincy jail-a strike Noles threw that he credits with being a turning point in his life.

Reliever Dickie Noles, who made some friends during the time he spent in a Cincinnati jail in 1983 following a barroom brawl, left them tickets for Tuesday night`s game at Riverfront Stadium.

Like Mr. Baseball, Noles has weathered the storm and is now a born again christian who counsels baseball youth against drug and alcohol abuse.

[Yachtzee]

I always thought Mr. Baseball looked like this.

[FlightRick]

Somebody needs to hijack this thread with a complete Non-sequitur of Randomness.

Because, otherwise, all we got here is a thread about "Mr. Baseball," and honestly, how has nobody stream-of-consciousness'd a Bob Uecker reference. His "Studio 42" was just on again recently, and you can't be my friend unless you've seen it. Everything you could ask for, Belvedere and all.

Well, except for one thing: a noticeable glossing over of the fact that Ueck is one of only 4 or 5 celebrities to be involved in more than one WrestleMania. HOW DO YOU NOT MENTION THAT?!?!? Especially you, Costas, who did Vince McMahon's bidding in the 80s?!?!?

You know who else is a celebrity that appeared at more than one WrestleMania? Pete Rose. Uecker only did 2. Pete did 3. Suck it, Uecker.

Did somebody say Stream of Consciousness? I hope so, because that's what just happened....


Rick

[FlightRick]

yoink

[757690]

Originally Posted by Yachtzee

I always thought Mr. Baseball looked like this.

I thought he looked like this...

[gilpdawg]

Originally Posted by FlightRick

Somebody needs to hijack this thread with a complete Non-sequitur of Randomness.

Because, otherwise, all we got here is a thread about "Mr. Baseball," and honestly, how has nobody stream-of-consciousness'd a Bob Uecker reference. His "Studio 42" was just on again recently, and you can't be my friend unless you've seen it. Everything you could ask for, Belvedere and all.

Well, except for one thing: a noticeable glossing over of the fact that Ueck is one of only 4 or 5 celebrities to be involved in more than one WrestleMania. HOW DO YOU NOT MENTION THAT?!?!? Especially you, Costas, who did Vince McMahon's bidding in the 80s?!?!?

You know who else is a celebrity that appeared at more than one WrestleMania? Pete Rose. Uecker only did 2. Pete did 3. Suck it, Uecker.

Did somebody say Stream of Consciousness? I hope so, because that's what just happened....


Rick

What a shock that you'd bring that up.

[757690]

Donuts.

Pretty much sums up my constant stream of consciousness.

[mth123]

Speaking of Wrestlemania, the late Macho Man was once a minor leaguer in the Reds system who finished his career with the Tampa Tarpons in 1974 at age 21.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/mi...d=poffo-001ran

[Razor Shines]

Originally Posted by 757690

Donuts.

Pretty much sums up my constant stream of consciousness.

You better have Delonte's donuts - YouTube

[919191]

Why is a strikeout a K if swinging but it is a backward K if looking and not the other way?

[757690]

Originally Posted by 919191

Why is a strikeout a K if swinging but it is a backward K if looking and not the other way?

Why is "k" the letter we use for noting a strike out? I never understood that,

[oneupper]

Originally Posted by 757690

Why is "k" the letter we use for noting a strike out? I never understood that,

This comes from Latin America. When a batter would strike out on a questionable call, he would invariably shout "Que?" (meaning What?).
"Que?" sounds like the english letter "K".
It stucK.

[Caseyfan21]

Originally Posted by 757690

Why is "k" the letter we use for noting a strike out? I never understood that,

Here's an explanation that seems to make sense from http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...rked-with-a-k:

From Neil Cohen's article "How to Score a Game," from John Thorn and Pete Palmer's Total Baseball, we discover that Henry Chadwick, one of the first newspaper journalists to take a literary interest in baseball, built upon a scoring technique devised by fellow New York journalist M. J. Kelly. "Chadwick created a minutely detailed scorecard so he would have a point of reference and recollection when he wrote his articles about the game," Cohen writes. He adds that Chadwick invented the modern boxscore.

Chadwick also invented the system we use to indicate fielders (pitcher=1, shortstop=6, right field=9, etc.), and the abbreviations we use for events (HR, HBP, BB, so on). Chadwick needed S for sacrifice, so he chose K for strikeout - K being the last letter of "struck," which was then in more common use than the term "strikeout."

Some people carry it further, using a K for a swinging strikeout, and a backward K for being caught looking. Some folks go with the more intuitive "SO," but this creates confusion with the abbreviation for "shutout," so "K" has remained the abbreviation of choice.