Tag Archives: baseball

Baseball, For-Real Interviews, Literary Endeavors

For-Real Interviews: Craig Robinson

In America, baseball is, sadly, often seen as the brussels sprouts of sports: something that must be consumed because it’s good for you. Many people view the sport as obligation rather than entertainment, something you are required to take your kids to during the summer because, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Those who wax poetic about the game’s virtues can sound a bit like enthusiasts of quaint hobbies, like scrimshaw or silhouetting. The game is so fraught history and tradition and baggage that it seems impossible to say anything new about it.

Or maybe it just someone with a fresh perspective to say them. Enter Craig Robinson, an English illustrator whose love affair with the game was kindled by a trip to Yankee Stadium while in New York on business back in 2005. Not long after that, as his baseball fandom grew, he began to ponder questions that may not have occurred to someone who grew up with the game. Like, what is the actual monetary value of all the bases “stolen” during a major league season? Or how would A-Rod’s salary look if dispensed in pennies and stacked on top of one another? Or how long did it take to assemble, then disassemble, the 1986 Mets? Or what would the box score look like in a playoff game between the Wu Tang Clan and the E Street Band?

Robinson decided to answer these questions and many more at his site, Flip Flop Fly Ball, in gorgeously streamlined infographics. They are elegantly simple, packing enormous amounts of information into their space while not appearing remotely cluttered. They are works of art that beg to be seen write large, and that’s just what’s happened with the release of Flip Flop Fly Ball, a fantastic book that collects some of Robinson’s best work from the site, along with new items and essays on his evolution as an unlikely baseball fan. It is the kind of book that justifies the invention of the coffee table.

The author was kind enough to answer a few of my queries about his path to baseball fandom, the Mexican League, and what he would do with his favorite team. Answers to those questions and more after the jump.

Continue reading For-Real Interviews: Craig Robinson →

Baseball

Discoveries from MLB’s Origins Committee

  • The earliest form of baseball was played in ancient Mesopotamia. Called Dak-tar, the object of the game was for the players to project their own personal failings and fears of death onto their children.
  • At various times, the game has been known as bases-ball, based-ball, basted-ball, butter-ball, churn-ball, hide-the-goblin, flip cup, Sacajawea, and water polo.
  • Early incarnations of baseball required every square inch of the playing field to be covered by a person. By the late 1700s, rosters for each team were whittled down to a lean 85.
  • Alexander Cartwright was considered the father of baseball not because he codified the game’s modern rules, but because he sired enough illegitimate children to field an entire league’s rosters.
  • Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in Cooperstown, NY, as legend has it. The West Point graduate was given the honorary title of the game’s inventor in recognition of his service when defeating The Great Child Labor Rebellion of 1871.
  • George Will is a total weiner.
Baseball

Here’s the Score

Yes, I am one of those dorks who scores baseball games. Or at least I was until fairly recently, as I explained in this lengthy post. There were many reasons I stopped, but one of the biggest was because my enormous Modell’s scorebook was cumbersome, conspicuous, and just a bit too scholarly for the stadium experience. Yes, there are some times when I do feel self conscious about my appearance.

However, I’ve come across a scorebook that would completely make me rethink my abandonment of scoring. Eephus League has developed a scorebook that is both compact and elegantly designed. It is seriously a work of art, as you will see from the pics in this post. The font choice and layout is nothing but perfect. It’s small enough to fit in a messenger bag or even a coat pocket (if you have biggish pockets), yet still large enough to have enough space for all your scoring needs. Plus, it comes with stickers, and who doesn’t love stickers?

The scorebook’s designer, Bethany Heck, has started a Kickstarter page to get these books printed. I will definitely donate to this cause, as I must have one of these, and I’d suggest you do the same. Everyone who donates gets a scorebook, and there are some awesome prizes at different tiers, like some retro-iffic posters and t-shirts that celebrate the art of scoring. I’m particularly enamored of one that depicts the bottom of the 10th of game 6 of the 1986 World Series in scored form (seen to your right). Even though I’m sure I’d have to explain it each time I wore it. No, scratch that–because I’m sure I’d have to explain it each time I wore it.