An Illustrated Guide To The 2016 Home Run Derby

Hello! This is a recap of The 2016 Home Run Derby, prepared by the author during the contest. He would see something happen, draw it, and then watch again until something else happened. He noticed and drew a lot of things, but missed many others. The drawings are presented in chronological order.

"Get ready to see some baseballs fly!" Here's a baseball flying under its own power.

Someone's dad watches Fall Out Boy, a band from 2005. He is nonplussed.

Chris Berman is in the house, speaking into a corn dog.

Everyone is sitting around the desk, spending an inordinate amount of time talking about the clock, and time. I suspect that these baseball announcers are so used to tracking things event-by-event that their new introduction to the very concept of time has blown their minds and created a religious fervor for the very concept of inevitable forward progress. A new religion is imminent.

A DJ is in the house. He has baseballs for hands and he uses them to spin records.

The contestants stand on a round platform and inch forward towards the cameras. Some fireworks go off behind the,, but it's five o'clock on the west coast and you can barely see them through the sun, which is a lot brighter than any firework. Here, the sun mocks these pathetic fireworks and, on a certain level, mocks the players and the crowd and us, for living such tiny and pointless lives compared to ANY star.

On their way to bomb Phoenix AZ, several jets surprise the crowd by flying over the stadium.

Dave Winfield, wearing the biggest, blousiest, must untucked collared shirt imaginable, throws the first pitch. Here's the shirt, floating to the mound in a hundred years, possessed by Winfield's ghost.

One of the players is asked about strategy. His answer is about the timed format. He seems confused, because, realistically, everyone's strategy is to try and hit those slow-moving baseballs hard enough that they become dingers.

Corey Seager is booed by the crowd. It makes him sad, and he sheds a single tear. Why can't we love our enemies?

Several savages in the stands fight for a flying baseball. Cruelty reigns.

Berman: "That one looked a little funny." He had a point, the ball was doing stand up comedy.

Mark Trumbo, here playing the role of Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo, that movie where Brian Cranston spends all of his time writing scripts in a bathtub, steps up to the plate. Unlike Cranston, Mark is bathing in the blood of slaughtered baseballs.

A bald guy with sunglasses and a tiny little mustache subtly moves his head while he tracks a ball that has just been hit.

Mark Trumbo, a flying elephant, hits eight dingers in a row with his big trunk.

Giancarlo Stanton hits like a hundred balls in ten seconds, the cameras can't even track them. This is what baseball would be like with a clock.

The announcers are begging Giancarlo to hit a ball into the Padres' giant screen. One of them even taunts the staff electricians, suggesting that he wants the board to suffer and die. I felt bad for the board at the time, but on further reflection I believe that big screen is a monstrosity and that human beings, as representatives of nature [for we are born from nature, though we may deny it] should destroy it and allow plants to recolonize the monster.

Robinson Cano, having been beaten by Stanton, kisses his son on the cheek. I am not good at capturing family tenderness with my pen.

A bunch of people are watching the derby from a hotel deck. Everything must seem impossibly small from that extraordinary distance.

Robinson Cano is going very slow and not hitting very many balls.

A little dazed baby is wearing an Arizona hat. The child is magic and he will grant you wishes!

Turtle-ass Cano gives up and falls asleep. How did this slowpoke even hatch on the beach and outrun thepredatory divebombing birds?

The little pink dots in the field run for fly balls.

Wil Myers has the most facial hair someone can possibly have without having a proper beard. The subtlety is masterful.

The solid plastic breastplate makes the catcher look like a catching robot that could feasibly be reprogrammed by a backup to kill the team's star player so they can finally get playing time. The robot is blamed and executed in public.

Adam Duvall has a beautiful post-hitting leg cross. Very elegant. I tried to capture it a few times, here.

Chris Berman keeps saying Todd Frazier's name in a Howard Cosell voice.

Carlos Gonzalez has his hat flipped all backwards, because he is a cool skateboarding dude who is blowing bubble gum, baby!

Everyone is calling him "Cargo."

The Skateboarding Cargo Container Man hits a pop fly that lands on the grass with a big ol' fart

Todd Frazier, looking like a depressed dad, heads to bat.

Chris Berman says "Back" like a thousand times. I tried to figure out how his pronunciation is spelled. I think "Bwack" comes closest.

Mike Trout, who is AWFULLY square, gives some dap to Todd Frazier. Or was it Trumbo? All caucasian hitters look the same, subtle variations on Mike Trout The Square Fishman.

A closeup of Giancarlo's face reveals stress and power coursing through his head veins.

We see Trumbo watching Stanton, then for a split second he is watching Trumbo watching Stanton, watching Trumbo, watching Stanton, watching Trumbo, watching Stanton, watching Trumbo, watching Stanton. The camera cuts away before we can see how deep it goes.

Berman yells "YIKES!" as a ball leaves the field. Is Berman secretly scared of balls, and his life in sports broadcasting is just a form of extensive exposure therapy to cure himself of all fears? What IS Chris Berman afraid of? How does he regard death?

One of the pink kids in the outfield sniffs out a ball and gets a catch like a million miles away from the closest pink kid. He seemed completely nonplussed by his accomplishment. What took this young baseball robot away from the world of the feeling?

Mustache sunglasses man appears to have added a bucket hat to his ensemble. I cannot draw bucket hats.

Giancarlo Stanton takes a big, heaping gulp off a bottle of red sports drink, unaware that somewhere in the infinity of space and time, a bottle of red sports drink is competing in a home run derby and drinking a Giancarlo Stanton.

One of the kids who competed in the high school Home Run Derby is named "Nick Bruiser!" As far as I remember, he was covered with thousands of spectacularly bruised muscles. Do not fuck with Nick Bruiser!!!!!

A pair of multi-colored sunglasses appears to have built itself a little home on top of Adam Duvall's hat bill. The sunglasses are sitting in front of the TV with a TV Dinner, watching the Home Run Derby on a mid-sized TV.

Todd Frazier wins his round, slaps hands with everyone in sight. If you could get Fraizer in a room with a million people all offering high fives, he would starve to death before he denied anybody the five they wanted.

The PR guy for the company that is sponsoring the Home Run Derby [no free ads] announces a charitable gift. Every time I see one of these dudes at a sports event, I am taken by how happy they are to be there in contrast with how nonplussed an entire stadium full of people are while watching theses men, who are important to no one but their families and MAYBE their subordinates. Congrats to that dude I guess.

I start to think about the number of visual metaphor I can get out of dudes hitting dingers over and over. I realize that the number is surprisingly small. I also think about what a weird disaster this broadcast was. Why don't they use split screen so you can actually see all of the swings? Why don't they have cameras trained on the outfield so you can watch kids run into each other? I guess I understand Berman, but what if, instead of Berman, you programmed a fun robot to do his job instead?

Stanton hits the ball so hard it leave the solar system and flies into a pink gas giant orbiting around another star. I decide that this is a suitable metaphor for a long home run and continue drawing the event without regarding my responsibility to explain dingers with weird metaphors.

Giancarlo breathes in and out super deep while a tiny child offers him red sports drink.

I swear to god I saw one outfield kid dive for a ball and fall like 10 feet short, then another kid tripped over that kid and stumbled into the catch himself. This might have not actually happened, but it will live in my heart and head forever.

The camera catches sad dad Todd Frazier in a moment of despair as he tries to overcome Giancarlo's torrent of dingers.

Todd Frazier collapses before he can catch Giancarlo in the finals. This is a finish line ribbon strung between two poles as seen from the side. I know a good drawing would give you enough information to figure that out without written context, but I am merely a flawed but enthusiastic drawer.

Giancarlo, a hydroelectric dam made from human concrete and spitting baseballs into the world like a goddamn river full of baseballs, has won the Home Run Derby! Congrats to him and his benefactors on this wonderful day!