New posts resume next week.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you haven’t wasted nearly enough time in your life.  Here are the rules.

Someone get the Elias Sports Bureau on the phone.

Another “repeat nerd,” Mr. Garrelts has become eligible for the lifetime achievement award.  You can check out his first appearance here.

Mr. Garrelts had several good-to-great seasons for the Giants, including 1989, in which he led the National League in ERA.

I like how the glare on his glasses makes his eyes look as if he’s “powering-up” Teen Wolf style.

Wrong.  The article is amazing, in an absurd, mind-boggling kind of way.  I’ve posted some highlights below:

It’s been an amazing ride for Phillies fans over the last few years, but not for Mike Cybularz. He got off a few stops back when the road was still bumpy and marked with potholes, and the final destination – a championship and a long-overdue parade – was still off in the distance….The 28-year-old East Norriton native grew up backing all the Philly teams, but he was most smitten with the Phils. His dad took him and his two little brothers to games when they were kids. He remembers watching a lot of bad baseball at the Vet, but he was young and confident his favorite team would become a winner, or at least a contender.

At this point the story sounds like it could be about the childhoods of about 20 different fan bases.  But don’t worry, the table is just being set.

In 2004, when he was older and had some money in his pocket, Cybularz and friends bought partial season tickets for the Phils…During the ’04 campaign, as the Phils fought to find their form, Cybularz vowed that if the Fightin’s didn’t make the postseason, he’d be done with the team forever since that would mark a decade of waiting for the club to make the playoffs.

The Phillies finished 86 – 76 in 2004.  No playoffs.  No more Phillies for Mike.  Oh, and guess what?  if my dinner isn’t ready in the next five minutes, I vow to never eat dinner again.

…Cybularz hasn’t supported the Fightin’s since. Not when the Phils went on an improbable run to steal the NL East from the Mets in ’07. Not when they did it again in ’08 and then tore through the National League and the Tampa Bay Rays to secure the city’s first championship in 25 frustrating years. Not when the Fightin’s caravanned down Broad Street and Cybularz’s loved ones left him behind and joined countless other Phillies fans in celebrating the long-awaited title.”I would have loved to go to the parade,” he said, “but I didn’t – to prove a point.”

I love this.  Mr. Gonzales’s only failing in writing this article was his failure to ask the follow-up question, “What, exactly, is that point?”  This story reminds me of a kid I knew in elementary school.  In order to convince his mother to buy him a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt, he promised that he would “like the ninja turtles FOREVER!!!!”  If he had the resolve of Mike Cybularz, he would still be wearing that shirt.  Totally tubular.

…his brother Kevin [asked] Mike to be his best man and organize a bachelor party involving a Phillies game, followed by a trip to Atlantic City for the entire crew…Instead of seeing the Phillies and then heading to A.C., Mike planned a different getaway to an even less-exciting city.

“We’re going to Baltimore,” Mike said, “to watch the Orioles play the Indians. What a terrible game.”

I think this is where we cross over from “personality quirk” to “mental disorder.”

Kudos, Mr. Gonzales, on a job well done.

Mr. Brown seems to be in competition with Scott Garrelts and Tom Hume for the title of “largest glasses in baseball history.”

Mr. Brown appears to have played part time for 5 seasons (never more than 358 AB’s in a season).  Considering he put up average to above-average OPS+ numbers in part time work, I don’t know why he didn’t have a longer career as a 4th outfielder.

Dale Hunter, who is apparently a prominent sportscaster in Dallas, objected to his channel’s decision to air the Jones video. He had this to say:

“Our business now, too many times, is a fat kid in a T-shirt in his mother’s basement, eating Cheetos and writing his blogs — and we make it news.”

When I watched the clip on Deadspin, I wasn’t shocked to find that Hunter is an old white guy. It’s incredible how much alternative forms of media scare the hell out of old media dinosaurs like Hunter. With newspapers closing across the country, does this guy really want to be on the wrong side of the sea change?

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We’ll tweet every time a new nerd is posted.

As I was halfway out of a third floor window, a co-worker shouted that the Angels were set to pay $21.5 million of the $23 million remaining on his contract. So I shimmied back off the ledge, and ran over to this computer. I had to figure out if maybe this wasn’t that horrible. I mean, $1.5 million over two years could be good, right?

Nope. Just wishful thinking. According to Fangraphs, Matthews has been worth NEGATIVE $5.2 million over the first three years of his contract. He has contributed 1.1 wins WORSE than replacement level over the past three years. He has performed 10.8 runs WORSE than replacement level over the past three years. He’ll turn 36 during the season. Oh wait, and we gave up a leage average releif pitcher for him.

OK, Well, maybe he can just split some time with Angel Pagan in center field, but just until Beltran comes back in May….and if his career trajectory doesn’t turn around, they can dump him with minimal financial loss??? What do you think Omar???

“The fact that we have him for the next two years at a very reasonable price — I think the key for him is just going to be playing time. … I think he might be able to get more playing time here as the year goes on.”

Is there some Matrix-type device I can hook myself into where my body is being used as a battery for alien robots, but in my mind the Mets aren’t incompetent? If not, I’ll settle for the “Eternal Sunshine…” method where the Mets are completely erased from my memory…but I’d prefer not to have to go that far.

Anyway, I’ve only posted once about the ongoing steroids saga, providing links to what I consider the best available reflections on the steroids era. Nerdicus Finch has also posted once. Basically, for good or bad, I believe that I’m beyond shock in terms of “who did” and “who didn’t.” And after the congressional hearings, only the most hard-core and/or delusional Big Mac fans could have still been shocked by today’s statement. If I had a vote for the Hall-of-Fame, I would have voted for McGwire, as well as the other “no brainers” like Clemens, Bonds (when they become eligible), et al.

So I was interested in what Mr. McGwire had to say, but while reading his statement, one segment stuck out:

“I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”

Mr. McGwire went on to state that he took these drugs for health reasons–that he believed they were helping him prevent and return from injury. He seemed to suggest that no steroids could help him hit more home runs, that home run hitting comes from genetics. Lets throw out the analysis of the steroid era statistics as a whole and take these claims at face value. If this is true, why would Mr. McGwire wish that he hadn’t played when he did? He made more money than he would have in any other era. If the steroids helped him heal, and nothing else, then he hit more home runs just by staying on the field than he would have in any other era. And while it doesn’t make it cheating right, a LOT of other people were doing it.

Mr. McGwire may be sincerely sorry. Like Tony LaRussa said, “the one thing he did not do is lie,” so he’s got that going for him. Which is nice. But I find myself agreeing with Rob Neyer’s excellent post from this afternoon:

I just wish that players like McGwire didn’t feel compelled to apologize, when we know that many of them would do exactly the same thing again, if they were in the same position. Most of them — and I don’t mean this as an insult — are sorry about getting caught, but not sorry about doing what they had to do (or thought they had to do) to get healthy or gain a competitive edge.

As THE major story of about fifteen years of baseball, the steroid era needs to be mentioned in the Hall of Fame. Maybe it puts some records out of reach…but hitters were on steroids. Pitchers were on steroids. Was your favorite player on steroids? Chances are probably the same as rolling a die… By condemning only the players who have been caught or admitted it, we give countless others a free pass. The only players who should be saying, “Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era” are the ones who remained clean.

I’ve said it before, and Bill Parcells said it before me, but sometimes you are what you are.

The steroids era is what it is.

What do other nerd card appreciators think?