The WGOM

Mugshot Purgatory: Intro

March 6th, 2007 by AMR

AMR would like to thank SBG for the opportunity to post this half-baked crap here.

Different people have different details about the game that they pay special attention to. CarterHayes has shared his focus on cards. Paul Lukas loves the uniform. Pat Neshek loves autographed stuff (including cards). Lots of people get deep into stats. Me? I love the mugshots.

Since I returned to baseball fandom in 2001, I have probably "watched" more games through mlb.com's "gameday" play-by-play than I have watched on TV. So these are the pictures I've seen of nearly every player, that I remember from these games. When Matthew LeCroy hit that grand slam in Toronto, when the Twins were down by three runs in the 9th, the picture in my mind is of Matt's mugshot:

As far as I understand, these photos are taken durng the first week or so of spring training, but players have to live with them all year long, for good (Chris Heintz, 2005) or bad (David Aardsma, 2006). And so do gameday users. Sometimes, players who didn't have mugshots taken make the roster and they either get their photo taken separately (Matt Garza, 2006) or not at all (Alexi Casilla, 2006).

(Heintz '05, Aardsma '06, and Garza '06; Casilla had no '06 mugshot)
(That's the best I could find of the fantastic Heintz '05. Sorry.)

One problem I've noticed is that there is no decent repository of mugshots from years in the past. Once the next team photos are uploaded, the new ones are lost in the ether of the internet, (apparently still hosted by mlb.com), but without any links. To combat that, I have now started compiling the mugshots from the full Twins roster onto my harddrive. (I only started last week when the '06 photos were still up). This week, the 2007 mugshots have been posted to the Twins' official roster on mlb.com.

My plan is to go over a few mugshots a day (hopefully) until the season starts, with snarky comments as appropriate. I'll start with the '07 vintage of those I've mentioned in this post.

(Garza '07; Lecroy '06, '07)

Garza has the biggest natural smile I have ever seen in one of these (as opposed to Aardsma '06). I'm feeling really good about Matt's season now, despite the stiff neck.

Something doesn't look right with LeCroy. The sparkle is missing, the goatee is shaggy, and it looks like he didn't shave that day (the parts of his face that he does shave). I'm now resigned to not seeing him until September. (2006 didn't look right either... maybe it was the "W" on the cap?)

(Heintz '06, '07; Casilla '07)

Chris Heintz has a bit of that '05 lip curl back, and that makes me happy, and Alexi Casilla finally has a face.

Another note about these '07 photos: you will notice they feature the new (mandatory?) black underbill. MLB wanting to be devious no fun leagues, my theory is that it was done to reduce the player "personalization" that had been growing in the past few years on that real estate. (Which did look a bit bush league, but who sees underbills?) Perhaps Selig's minions had failed to inform him of silver sharpies and wite-out pens. Black underbills may look good on some caps, but navy+black=ugly; I would prefer a darker grey or the color of the top of the bill if something had to change. Also, they do not photograph well.

My last photos of the day will be from one of the guys that made me notice mugshots in the first place: Dustin Hermanson. His ever-changing chin designs captured my attention when he was in St. Louis, and I could never keep track of what goatee he had when. Injuries in 2006 kept him to 6 innings, which kept me from learning his position on nuclear disarmament until this spring.

(Hermanson '01 or '03, '06)

Hermanson is currently a non-roster invitee for the Reds, and does not have a '07 mugshot available yet. I hope that Cinci takes photos for NRIs.

This entry was posted by AMR on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 12:41 am and is filed under Guest Writers, MLB, Mugshot Purgatory. It is one of 42 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.