Xavier Nady's Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, no-hitters and Brian Wilson's beard are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

Your laptop dies for a week and you miss 15 golden sombreros. The golden sombrero used to be special but in this new era of terrible hitting and Charlie Morton, there's just a ton more guys swinging and missing. For full coverage, my good friend Mike does a great job of tracking these at The Golden Sombrero but I'll still try to make fun of as many as possible.

Xavier Nady was Wednesday night's lone giant hat wearer. It would have taken me at least 5 guesses before I got to Diamondbacks as Nady's 2011 team. Nady had a 3.2 WAR in 2008 but has otherwise been basically a replacement level guy. Slight tick above replacement level because his name is awesome. I like him because he strikes out a quarter of the time. Which eventual leads to this...

Bottom 2nd: Nady struck out looking against Madison Bumgarner. He took 3 straight balls before the 3 straight strikes. This might be my new favorite type of plate appearance.

Bottom 4th: Nady struck out swinging against Bumgarner. Nothing fancy about this one.

Bottom 6th: Nady struck out swinging against Bumgarner again. He fouled a pair off just to see what contact was like. He didn't much care for it.

Bottom 9th: Nady struck out swinging against Brian Wilson. 3 pitches. Fear of the beard is a real thing.

Off Base Crashes The Baseball Show

My good friends Clint from Diamond Hoggers and Mike at the The Golden Sombrero have a podcast called The Baseball Show. It's a great show with two guys who love baseball and are very knowledgeable about the sport. But for some reason, they keep having me on it. I was on back in February and this time I was joined by Derwood, making his long awaited podcast debut.

So if you have 90 minutes, you too can now know the story behind the forming of Off Base, the Off Base t-shirts, and Derwood's hilarious The Bobby Classifieds. We also listen to Derwood eat Cheez-Its and find out if his car catches on fire. There's also a little conversation about Jose Canseco, Yankees, Reds, Braves, Angels (more Vernon Wells!), high school versions of Jason Heyward and Buster Posey and a whole lot more...



It's always a blast talking to those guys so go check out their sites and follow them on Twitter @DiamondHoggers and @GoldenSombrero. You can usually finds us hanging out at the virtual bar.

The One Where I Hang Out At The Baseball Show

My friends Clint from Diamond Hoggers and Mike from The Golden Sombrero were kind enough to let me come hang out at The Baseball Show podcast this morning. I warned them that I could derail just about any topic they wanted to discuss and I'm pretty sure I backed that up. Here's the description from Diamond Hoggers...

Topics for discussion include but are not limited to the following:

*MTD’s baseball blog Off Base Percentage
*His following the Anaheim Angels
*Edinson Volquez electing a short term contract with the Cincinnati Reds
*The Albert Pujols contract extension
*Will Angels ‘prospect’ Brandon Wood ever pan out?
*We talk about Bo Jackson
*Rob Neyer’s move from the SweetSpot Network to SB Nation
*Who are the most frequently read baseball bloggers?
*The sponsoring of a Baseball-Reference Page
*We give some discussion time to Eric Chavez, Francisco Rodriguez, Nick Markakis, Johnny Cueto, and many more players

And they let me ramble on and on about plenty of other nonsense. The two hours flew by and I'm pretty sure those guys are never going to talk to me again. I'm just kidding, I hope. I think I'm addicted to podcasting now. You can jam my appearance into your ear hole right here...