Baseball

I was just sitting here, surfing and following Twitter, and thinking, man, this is a slow day for baseball. We’ve had a few slow days for baseball. They haven’t been completely empty days - Yuniesky Betancourt signed, for example, and Sean Marshall was traded - but they haven’t been packed with action. We’ve hit a lull. It probably has something to do with the holidays.

Those of us here at Baseball Nation have access to a searchable photo tool, containing images from Getty and the AP. All of those photos that you see on the Baseball Nation front page - those were pulled from the tool. It is an awesome tool. I cannot remember what it was like to blog before that tool existed.

Because we’ve hit a lull, for this post I am going to search the photo tool for the word “baseball”, import some of the most recent results, and talk about them a little bit. It was either this or a post about how the Cardinals could replace Albert Pujols with a healthy Adam Wainwright. I apologize in advance.

This isn’t a very good start. After searching for the word “baseball”, this is the most recent result, and I have absolutely no idea who this man is. He looks sharp, but I don’t know what Southern Miss has to do with baseball. I guess Southern Miss probably has a college baseball team. I’ll cheat and look at the official photo caption. This is a football coach who is putting on a baseball cap. You don’t see baseball coaches putting on football helmets! Football coaches shouldn’t get to wear baseball caps. It would be funny if football coaches had to wear the same uniforms as their players during games, like baseball coaches do.

Result number two is a picture of Michael Cuddyer, because Michael Cuddyer just officially signed with the Colorado Rockies as a free agent. Understanding that this could be a bad angle or simply a misleading photo, look Cuddyer up and down and then consider that the Rockies signed him to play defense in their giant outfield. Cuddyer has Nick Punto’s chin, and he looks like a complete slob who’s so disgusted by his own armpit that he has to scratch it with a bat.

And result number three is another football picture. Baseball is so slow right now that searching a photo tool for the word “baseball” turns up two football pictures in the first three results. I’m beginning to think that I should be a little more selective with what I import. Of interest is that the football player pictured here is like a way more handsome and blond Justin Long.

It’s Yu Darvish! Yu Darvish has to do with baseball! It’s interesting that the Nippon-Ham Fighters appear to have a baseball for a logo. It would be funny if all 30 Major League teams had baseballs for logos. They’d all have their current nicknames, but their logos would be baseballs. Maybe you extend it to the minors, too. It would be very appropriate advertising. “They’re called the Pirates, but their logo is a baseball because they play baseball.” For the record I’m open to the possibility that this picture is an illusion, and that Darvish is actually wearing that whole giant logo backdrop on his head as an unwieldy cardboard ornament.

Here’s Jason Kubel holding his bat like a penis and making a face like he’s holding his penis. Can I type that here? Can I publish this? I guess we’ll find out together.

Why don’t we close with Jimmy Rollins? This is a picture taken during a news conference in which the Philadelphia Phillies officially announced that they’d re-signed Rollins to a three-year contract worth $33 million. Previously, all offseason long, Rollins was holding out for a five-year contract. He was visibly devastated by what he wound up having to do. What an uncomfortable news conference that must have been, with a shortstop crying behind a microphone.

I’m done now. I’m sorry for all this.