Baseball in the Happily Ever After

When I was young I had a strange fascination with the baseball career of a player named Richie Scheinblum. At the time he was playing right field for the Cleveland Indians, tho later in his career he played for the Washington Senators, the Kansas City Royals, the Cincinnati Reds, the California Angels, & the St Louis Cardinals—an 8-year career, counting his brief stay with the Indians in 1964, with the 8 major league seasons occurring over the span of 10 years. During that career his “triple slash line” of .263/.343/.352 for a .695 ops. 

Now that’s a lot of numbers for the readers here who aren’t baseball aficionados, so in brief: his batting average was just “ok” (he played during a time when pitching was dominant); despite that, he got on base quite a lot (taking walks), but his power was lacking, especially for a corner outfielder. Richie Scheinblum was, taken all in all, at best an average major league ballplayer.

But put Richie Scheinblum back in the minor leagues & watch out! In 1970 in Wichita his line was .337/.424/.576 for a 1.000 ops, & the next year in Denver he put up the following mind-boggling hitting stats: .388/.490/.725, 1.215 ops. People will rush to say that he was old at the time for the minors (true) & that the Denver stats were inflated (so to speak) by the altitude (also true), but as a teenager in the early 1970s, who paid attention to that?—what you knew was what was on the back of the bubble gum card (which, of course at that time only gave a player’s batting average & “counting stats” like home runs, runs batted in & so forth.)

 Nonetheless, from relatively early in my baseball fandom I had a concept of the so-called “4-A” or in the current parlance “Quad-A” player—the player who could dominate the highest level of the minor leagues (Triple A), but whose dominance there doesn’t carry over into the major leagues.  This concept has been applied to a number of players over the years, fairly or unfairly. There’s a notion nowadays that the “4-A” player is essentially a myth, & that either his minor league statistics were misleading (see my note on Scheinblum) or his development was mishandled by his team.

Of course, minor league players—“prospects”—have come much more to the forefront of fans’ consciousness over the past 25 years or so. Somewhat hand-in-hand with the fantasy baseball industry, there are now (& have been for some time) numerous publications & websites (many of these being pay subscription-based either entirely or in part) devoted to minute analysis of young players potentially on their way to the major leagues.

There are many narratives, but in general, the frog is always a prince before the kiss—otherwise, there would be no kiss. The sleeping beauty & the prince charming are always already destined for happiness before the waking; prospects are indeed the fairy tale happily ever after of professional baseball. & unlike the frog or the sleeping beauty or the prince charming, there even seems to be evidence of their happily ever after potential: look at what he did in Fresno or Wheeling or Pawtucket—he will be a dominant hitter or pitcher, there’s no question, & he will be integral to bringing the team to a championship happy ending.  The fan tells himself/herself this narrative again & again: this is not a knock on the fan; this is what fans do—this sort of narrative is part of the very definition of fanhood.But the story doesn’t always go like that—in fact, given the number of prospective players who are inhabiting these narratives at any given point, only a statistical minority even become average major league players, let alone the Frog Prince. But there’s a more interesting question perhaps: when does one recognize that the Frog Prince was actually a frog after all? When does it become clear that the marriage of Prince Charming & Sleeping Beauty is not the ideal match we all imagined, but at best a typical marriage with ups & downs; at worst, a romantic match made in hell. This reminds me of the great fantasy novel, The King of Elfland’s Daughter by the redoubtable British peer Lord Dunsany—to my mind one of the best novels in that genre. Dunsany tells the story of how Alveric, the Prince of Erl, travels to Elfland & brings back Lirazel, the transcendently beautiful daughter of the king, to be his bride in the mortal lands. Thru the first several chapters we have the usual happily ever after fairy tale: but then the tale turns grim: heartbreak, alienation, the power dynamics of marriage, exile; tho fantasy, we learn something real about “romance.” But the baseball fan is always a romantic….

Which brings us to current Giants first baseman, Brandon Belt, the “Baby Giraffe.” As the nickname suggests, Belt is a gawky young man (& there has been some criticism of him based on what he calls his awkwardness that, in my opinion, is unwarranted)—but look at his minor league stats! At three minor league levels in 2010, he put up a .352/.455/.620/1.075 line, & in two levels in 2011 he was only slightly less dominant at .320/461/.528/.989. Last year in 63 games with the Giants his stats were underwhelming: .225/.306/.412/.718, but he was only 23 & 63 games is a small sample; in addition, his playing time was inconsistent—something that has driven certain San Francisco Giants fans to distraction.  Their watchword is “Free Brandon Belt!”—i.e., provide him with consistent playing time, don’t bench him after a poor game, try to put him in positions to succeed.

This year so far, Belt has also produced mostly pedestrian numbers—.238/.344/.379—but look at the middle number: a .344 on-base percentage is quite good, & if you look back at his minor league numbers, you’ll notice that this has always been a strong part of his game. High on-base percentage is highly valued, especially amongst the sabermetric folks, & with good reason: to score runs, you have to be on base.

There are more characters in the Belt fairy tale, of course, most notably the Giants’ field manager Bruce Bochy & to a great extent the Giants’ general manager Brian Sabean. In many of the Belt narratives, Bochy in particular plays the role of “Tyrant Holdfast,” the symbol of the old order who tries to keep the hero from his destiny: the King Minos to the heroic Theseus.  Bochy does fit the role rather well: he is an “old school” manager who is not known to place a high store in the more complex statistical analyses favored by the sabermetrics folks & many baseball fans; he has a decided preference for older, veteran players over younger players, even when there is some strong evidence that the younger players may have the potential for significantly better performance.

Of course, “potential” is the frog; the sleeping princess. Will the frog become a prince, the princess wake, if kissed? Bochy’s position seems to be that Belt isn’t productive enough to be a full-time player. Earlier in the year, he platooned at first with Brett Pill, another prospect, tho one who is less highly-regarded; Pill usually played against left-handed pitchers, despite stats indicating that Belt actually hits left-handed pitching well, despite the fact that he bats left-handed. Later, Belt was given the first base job outright when Pill was sent back to the minors, but despite a brief hot streak earlier in the summer, he has not produced in two specific areas which, one assumes, Bochy holds in high regard: batting average & runs batted in. Of course, these are stats that are held in low regard by the sabermetric community—hence, back to the “Free Brandon Belt!” notion.   
 

For instance, although first base is traditionally a power hitting position, why not bat Belt higher in the order, where his on-base skills, his ability to take a walk, would be an advantage? There’s a theory that Bochy actually sees Belt’s propensity for taking walks as a lack of aggressiveness, & since Bochy has generally batted Belt in line-up spots that should be driving the ball to move runners & score them, the walks lose some of their value—after all, runners move more bases as the result of a hit, & especially an extra base-hit. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the players hitting after Belt generally are not potent offensive performers, so his walks don’t result in runs as much as they would were he batting ahead of more formidable hitters. However, Bochy & Sabean don’t seem inclined to act on this.

What will become of our potential hero? Some think Belt may be traded to another team—his supporters feel that with better handling he might indeed flourish. Alternatively, he could begin to hit more & go on to a glorious career with the Giants. Some folks have compared him to first basemen like John Olerud & Will Clark, both exceptional hitters who excelled both at batting average & on-base percentage, but whose power was, by first baseman standards, moderate.  A hitter like that would go a long way toward improving the Giants chances not only for reaching the playoffs, but indeed having a legitimate chance at a championship run.


Or Belt may stick with the Giants & continue more or less on the same trajectory—the story of The King of Elfland’s Daughter, in which the happily ever after becomes all “too real.” After all, this is the final narrative for most prospects. The fact that the beauty woke up, that the frog became a prince, in the end didn’t mean what we thought it would.


I have no way of knowing; as a Giants fan, I hope that Belt will stay with the team & become a very good player; but for me to say that will happen—no, I’m no prognosticator as I’ve said before. But the narrative will continue to fascinate me—& continue to make me remember Richie Scheinblum.

All photos link to their source
1. Brandon Belt: bleacherreport.com
2. Richie Scheinblum: mlblogsroyalshof.files.wordpress.com
3. Marianne Stokes (1855-1927) - "The Frog Prince": Wiki Commons
4. The King of Elfland's Daughter dust jacket: Wiki Commons
5. Brandon Belt:  Wiki Commons; image is by Wiki/Flickr user SD Dirk & published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
6. King Minos in judgment, from Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré from Wiki Commons
7. La Belle au Bois Dormant by Gustave Doré from Wiki Commons
8. Will "the Thrill" Clark from examiner.com
9. Richie Schienblum from ootpdevelopments.com

Mark Trumbo: the Morality of Walks & the Place Beyond Heaven

Mark Trumbo is an outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels. Originally he was their first baseman, but since they signed the great Albert Pujols to play that position over the winter, Trumbo has been displaced. The Angels wanted him to learn to play third base, & he was scheduled to do that in winter ball, but suffered a foot injury that kept him from playing. When the Angels tried him at third base at the beginning of the season, his fielding there was brutal.

But when given a chance to play early this season, what Trumbo did was hit—for both average & power. At first his playing time was sporadic, but as it became clear that he was hitting as well or better than anyone on the team, he became a regular starting outfielder, acquitting himself well enough defensively to more than justify keeping his potent bat in the line-up.

Of course, if you follow baseball at all, you know this story, as well as others associated with the Angels team: Pujols’ grim early season slump, the emergence of rookie baseball culture hero Mike Trout, & more. But thru it all, Trumbo has maintained excellence at the plate, leading the Angels in home runs, runs batted in, & slugging percentage, while trailing only the nonpareil Trout in batting average.

Questions remain about Trumbo, however. Last year was his rookie season, & tho he hit 29 home runs & drove in 87 runs, his batting average was so-so at .254, & more importantly, his on-base percentage was below .300—an anemic .291. Reaching base only 29% of the time is poor performance, & a number of statisticians & analysts consider on-base percentage the most important of the traditional baseball numbers. 

 Since some of the regular readers here aren’t familiar with baseball statistics, I’ll explain: batting average is derived from the number of base hits divided by the number of official at bats. A base hit is a single, double, triple, or home run, & is differentiated from a fielding error (in those cases where there is a gray area) by being a ball that can’t be turned into an out by a normal effort from one of the fielders. In most cases, this is a moot point—the ball lands untouched in the outfield where no fielder could have reached it—but there are certainly ambiguities thru the course of a long season. Also, since fielders vary in their level of skill quite widely even at the major league level, a ball that may be a base hit against one team with a given set of fielders may not necessarily be one against a different team. 

So while batting average has long been considered the foremost offensive measure, it has shortcomings; & even more than variances in fielding abilities, its biggest shortcoming is that it doesn’t account for other ways a batter has of reaching base, especially his ability to take a walk.  On-base percentage attempts to correct this latter failing by adding hits, walks, hit by pitched ball & dividing this by the total plate appearances (including sacrifice fly balls—which personally I think is a minor weakness of the stat, because it essentially penalizes the batter for something that's a positive result.)  Official at bats differs from plate appearances in that at bats only counts hits, errors & outs, & doesn't count walks, hit by pitch or sacrifices one way or the other.

The walk—a humble thing: reaching base because the pitcher throws four pitches outside of the strike zone. As some of us remember, there are taunts in youth baseball specifically aimed at a batter who seems to prefer to take a walk over trying to swing the bat & get a hit. At various times in baseball history, the walk has been eschewed as something the pitcher did wrong rather than something the batter did right. In Jules Tygiel’s excellent Past Time: Baseball as History, he describes the scoring & statistical systems developed by Henry Chadwick in the late nineteenth century—in fact, most of Chadwick’s systems are still in place today. Chadwick essentially invented batting average & the concept of earned versus unearned runs, & also developed the system of keeping a scorebook, with standardized numbers assigned to each fielder; he also invented the box score.

Chadwick, as Tygiel tells us, was British by birth—in fact, his older half-brother was a member of the peerage. Originally an ardent cricket player at a time when cricket still was a popular sport in the U.S., especially among British emigrants, Chadwick became enamored of baseball & championed the sport throughout his life. Interestingly, Chadwick was also much involved with the Reform movement which, as Tygiel reminds us, was as a whole very focused on statistics as a way of improving people’s lot, & there appears to be a moral code behind Chadwick’s statistical system, especially in the concept of “unearned runs,” but also in batting average, since it negates the pure value of putting a ball in play allowing the batter to reach base if a fielder misplays the ball.

 Of course, Chadwick’s system also gives the batter no reward for taking a base on balls. In fact, Chadwick was firmly convinced that issuing a walk was solely a black mark on the pitcher & didn’t reflect favorably on the batter in any way. Chadwick developed the concept (long since abandoned) of the “battery error,” in other words, a “misplay” by the pitcher & catcher, & walks were foremost in this category.  Chadwick even considered runs that resulted from walks to be “unearned,” tho this particular idea has long since fallen by the way. Of course, Chadwick’s “earned” versus “unearned” runs, while remaining a valid concept to this day, in his formulation was much more of a reflection on the hitting team—thru much of baseball history, including contemporaneously, “unearned” runs have been considered those for which the pitcher isn’t responsible (because they occur due to a fielder’s misplay.) Chadwick’s earlier conception is no doubt due to the fact that cricket statistics are very much focused on runs to the exclusion of other information.

 

 

But to return to Mark Trumbo: in 2011, Trumbo couldn’t “take a walk.” He walked a mere 25 times (while striking out 120.) Such a performance, despite his good figures for home runs & rbis, point to two things: first, reaching base only 29% of the time, he was not in a position to score runs as often as he could have been (he only scored 65, which is mediocre, especially with that many home runs); second, a low walk/high strikeout rate typically suggests a player who will be prone to streakiness & inconsistency.

Now it’s a new season, & a season that is now more than half completed. Trumbo’s average as of today stands at .303, almost 50 points higher than last year; his 27 home runs are only two shy of last year’s total, & he still has 67 games left to play—he could conceivably hit 40, which is a total that suggests hitting dominance.  His on-base percentage stands at a more than respectable .354—with those 67 games yet to be played, he has drawn one less walk so far than he did all of last year.

But people remain unconvinced. Is this the “real” Mark Trumbo? Of course, the fan is an idealist in the philosophical sense of the word, & the fans who are most involved with statistical analysis are the most intense idealists of all: a study of the numbers will reveal the “real” player behind the transitory player of today, this week, or even this half season.  It will reveal the player as he exists in a “world of forms,” in that “place beyond heaven,” to bring Platonic concepts to bear on hardball.

The “problem” with Trumbo then would be that while his walks have certainly increased, his on-base percentage is still largely driven by his batting average—there’s barely a 50 point spread between the .303 average & the .354 on-base percentage. A spread of at least 70-80 points is considered more desirable, & there are hitters whose performance will yield a spread of over 100 points (10%); for instance, the Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto has a current batting average of .342 & an on-base percentage of .465—he reaches base in nearly half of his plate appearances!

When the spread between the two percentages is wide, it’s always driven by walks of course—being hit by a pitch in most cases doesn’t happen frequently enough to have a major impact on the stat. This benefit of being on base is great, of course: you must be on base to score, & reaching by a walk can advance other runners if there's already someone on first base. If the bases are loaded when the batter draws a walk, it will even drive in a run.

For these reasons, the walk has come to be highly valued in contemporary baseball, especially in the sabremetric community, & on-base percentage (as well as fine-tuned reformulations of the same) is considered the offensive stat amongst stats, to the devaluation of batting average. Interestingly, this isn’t entirely a new thing: in fact the National League players, spearheaded by star player John Montgomery Ward, mounted a successful movement for counting walks as hits in 1887—much to the horror of Henry Chadwick; to his relief, this innovation lasted only a single season.

Is the walk given too much positive value these days? In the Simpson’s parody of Moneyball (which I referred to in my earlier post here), Lisa kicks Bart off the team for hitting a home run when he should have taken a walk, because it’s a higher percentage play. Statistics love a sure thing & abhor chaos—the walk tends toward the former & the ball that’s hit in play certainly carries great potential for the latter; this is in part the underlying concept behind the “Three True Outcomes,” which I wrote about in my The Myths of Strikeouts post. In many senses, the walk has moved to a point diametrically opposed to Chadwick’s conception—rather than being an example of the pitcher’s “error,” or even moral lapse, it’s now an active good on the part of the hitter—a sign of his righteousness.

Will Trumbo continue his dominance? I’m not a prognosticator, & tho I love statistics (& value walks!) I think the answer, like the place beyond heaven, lies beyond the ken of us mere mortals.

All images link to their source
Mark Trumbo about to hit a home run [from SBNation]

graph showing increased runs as a factor of on-base percentage [from baseballprospectus.com]

Henry Chadwick [from Wikipedia]

Yours truly with a very good book

Medieval woodcut depicting man looking beyond the temporal to the eternal [from abyss.uoregon.edu]

Illustration of Platonic Theory of Forms [from scandolon.co.uk]

John Montgomery Ward 1887 baseball card [from Wiki Commons]

Lisa & Bart discuss "moneybart" strategy [from images.wikia.com] 

The Poetics of Worry

Fans of the San Francisco Giants baseball team are worried.  Their team is designed so that its pitching staff is its strength; in fact, as baseball fans know, the Giants parlayed this strong pitching into a World Series title just two seasons past, when they defeated the Texas Rangers in the 2010 Fall Classic.

But now, they are worried, & not necessarily in the ways they’ve worried in past seasons, many of which featured outstanding pitching performances that couldn’t be converted to wins because of a weak offense. It’s true, the offense still has deficiencies; the fans still worry about the hitting at second base & shortstop, & there’s quite a brouhaha about who’s playing first (in a take-off on the old Abbott & Costello routine)—this latter issue is too complicated to address in the current post.

& yes, they worry—with justification—about the team’s defensive abilities (after all, a team built on pitching needs to have reliable fielders at the very least); questions in that regard surround much of the infield &, depending on who you ask, either one-third or two-thirds of the starting outfield.

But that isn’t the worry: the worry is Tim Lincecum.

Now I realize that Beer League Box Score’s select group of readers includes people who actually know very little about baseball, so I’m going to include some generally we3ll-known background. Lincecum is one of the Giants three ace starting pitchers (along with Matt Cain & Madison Bumgarner.) Since he broke into the National League with the Giants in 2007, Lincecum has been one of the most dominant pitchers around. He won the Cy Young award as the best National League pitcher in both the 2008 & 2009 seasons, & he was a crucial player in the Giants 2010 championship year. Last year, for the most part, Lincecum continued to be a formidable pitcher in a season the overall proved disappointing for the Giants.

& then came 2012.

The season is now just over half completed, & Lincecum’s traditional stats read as follows: 3 wins, 10 losses, a 6.42 era (worst among all regular starting pitchers in the majors); he’s giving up 1.583 walks & hits per inning, which means he’s pitching with baserunners on a lot. Generally speaking, any figure higher than 1.40 in the WHIP category (walks/hits per innings pitched) is not good, not good at all; his statistic barely ranks him among the top 100 pitchers in this category (obviously, the lower this figure is, the better.) He’s thrown 10 wild pitches, which lead the league (not a category in which you want to lead the league), & he also leads the league in earned runs allowed. Only six of over 550 pitchers have walked more batters than the 50 base on balls Lincecum has allowed. 


 
Fans by their nature require that their passions be fed & watered. In the traditional construct of the fan there needs to be elation & unreasoning hope & rage & blind faith & devotion—& the worry of a lover. The lover wonders in what state of affection he/she stands with the beloved—all future hopes & reveries are posited on this question, & countless reams of sonnets, canzones, odes & various lyrics of every shape & size are predicated on this question. & this is true whether the lover is a poet in the sense of writing the poem or reading the poem (& true whether the “poem” is a poem per se or a film or photograph or drama or dance.)

But even as worry opens up a poetic vista for the loving poet or poet-reader, so it opens up for the fan a poetic vista of statistics & comparisons & arguments & debates. The team is her/his beloved; the player, too, insofar as he is a beloved embodiment of the team. This is very true of Lincecum: not only has he been a major player in the Giants’ recent success (& also has not contributed in any significant negative way to recent failures), but he’s also a player just made for San Francisco: nicknamed “the Freak” because of his unorthodox pitching mechanics & also because of his ability to throw very hard despite being more or less the size of an average Joe (baseball pitchers are notoriously big & tall), Lincecum also earns the nickname with his long hair, his endearingly goofy look, & as evidenced by one “bust,” an apparent affinity for marijuana.  


 

Lincecum is also the underdog: when he came up in 2007 a number of scouts said he was still small to be successful at the major league level, at least as a starting pitcher—there was some talk that he might ultimately make it as a relief pitcher, & that he might even be successful in that role. There was talk that his unorthodox throwing motion would lead sooner rather than later to arm injuries of the most dire sort—of course, all pitchers hurt their arms—the torque on the joints caused by throwing baseball pitches is beyond what the human arm can sustain over the course of years. But in Lincecum’s case, the scouts & experts suggested he’d burn out prematurely.

& he beat those odds, winning the highest honors & a world championship.

But now? He’s a liability to the team. They have a record of 4 wins & 14 losses in his starts this year. While his fellow aces Cain & Bumgarner have performed up to expectation, while a fourth starter, Ryan Vogelsong, is in the midst of a second consecutive strong season, & while even the often vilified fifth starter Barry Zito has pitched well given his overall role, Lincecum has not been himself.

& why? Ah, here’s the worry, here comes the torrent of contradictory statistics, visual evidence, opinions & predictions. Because Lincecum’s pitching has been “confusing.” He will look as dominant as ever for an inning or two, or even three, & then dissolve. Occasionally, the progression works in the opposite direction: a horrifying start, then settling down. But for the most part, when the damage is done, it’s done for good—as you can see from the won-lost records, the damage is usually fatal.

We read advanced statistics that suggest he may be getting “unlucky”—these statistics have to do with the number of batters Lincecum strikes out per nine innings (a complete game, tho he has yet to pitch a full nine inning game this year), the percent of balls that are struck by the batters that become base hits, & even some sophisticated adjustments of more basic stats like earned run average. In general, these statistics tend to be effective at predicting performance.  But we have the visual evidence too. I’ve watched several Lincecum starts, & tho I’m very much a layman, I have watched baseball for almost 50 years, & I can testify that a high percentage of the hits he’s giving up aren’t “lucky”—they’re hit solidly (& in many cases, “solid” is an understatement.) 

The current theory is that the problem is exclusively mental, which in fact may be the most disturbing possibility of all. Speaking of baseball & poetry: the most lyrical of baseball writers, Roger Angell, wrote about Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve Blass in Angell’s fine collection titled Five Seasons. The essay (titled “Gone for Good”) on Blass is beautifully written, based on time spent Angell spent with Blass right after his career came to a premature end when he became inexplicably able to pitch effectively following the 1972 season. At this point Blass had pitched eight years in the majors & while not a dominant pitcher of Lincecum’s stature, he’d been quite successful, & had pitched with noteworthy effectiveness when the Pirates defeated the favored Baltimore Orioles—just one year removed from their dismantling of the vaunted Cincinnati “Big Red Machine” Reds—in the 1971 World Series; in fact, Blass finished second to the great Roberto Clemente in the most-valuable player voting. But a year & a half later, he could barely throw strikes, & by the 1970 season, he was out of baseball.   Some have referred to this collapse, which has affected a few other pitchers in recent memory (Mark Wohlers, Rick Ankiel & Dontrelle Willis) as “Steve Blass Disease.”

It’s a mystery, a true mystery. It’s interesting as I watch Lincecum’s season to think of Angell’s writing in “Gone for Good”; Angell in a sense poeticizes the condition—he makes it lyrical, the story of a good man beset by forces beyond his control; currently, Lincecum’s condition is quantified: statistics are brought to bear from all angles: he’s completely lost it, & figure x proves this; he’s just unlucky, as demonstrated by figure y; etc. Of course, as the season has progressed, the continued visual evidence & traditional statistics, with all their shortcomings, are more & more brought to bear on the situation.

But there is no answer—there’s only worry.  This worry builds a world & a narrative. The next episode in that narrative—not counting the banter that will continue on various Giants blogs, chat groups & other forums in the interim, is his next start on Saturday in San Francisco against the Houston Astros. The Astros are a weak team; San Francisco’s ballpark, with its generous dimensions & its relatively cool summer climate, is forgiving to pitchers. An effective start on Saturday won’t end the worry—that has a life of its own, & in fact may complicate it. What does it mean? After all, it was only the Astros. Contrariwise, if he pitches ineffectively, it was also only the Astros & in favorable conditions. The worry narrative morphs again—like the most dire La Belle Dame Sans Merci poem, its lyricism turns to the macabre & the dark.

All images link to their source

Initial image of Tim Lincecum pitching in 2009 is from Wiki Commons, & is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Wiki user Acordova.

Fans Cheering at the Ballpark by Leslie Jones, from the Boston Public Library. More info here.

Image of Petrarch & Laura is from Wiki Commons; photo of  Affresco di Petrarca e Laura, Casa del Petrarca by Wiki users Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Second photo of Tim Lincecum (also from 09) is is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license by Wiki user SD Dirk on Flickr

A graph showing Lincecum's percent of pitches in the strike zone over time; as I understand it, this originated on the Fangraphs site, but later showed up both on SBNation & the McCovey Chronicles

Photograph of Steve Blass from the Sports Illustrated Vault

Five Seasons by Roger Angell

Frank Dicksee The Redgirl & the Knight, 1890, from Wiki Commons