CollettiSoul: Joe, I think I'm going to start considering a player's OPS.

Torreumon: you're just now getting around to that

CollettiSoul: Yeah, the Colletti Index, as I've found out, poses shortcomings.

Torreumon: What is the Colletti Index?

CollettiSoul: A player's effectiveness on the field, measured by a happy face or sad face.

Torreumon: that's not an index at all.

CollettiSoul: Maybe not. But I'm really hot on this OPS thing.

Torreumon: You mean OPS+? Like, adjusted OPS?

CollettiSoul: Ugh, no. I don't even know what that is. Whenever I visit Baseball-Reference I drag my Buddy List to obscure the right half of the stat lines.

Torreumon: Well I mean, OPS is a solid indicator of a player's performance, but it's kind of superfluous unless you're going to then calculate it into OPS+. If you're not, there's not much reason for it.

CollettiSoul: What? Of course there is! You just hate stats, don't you, you old-money son of a bitch!

CollettiSoul: I bet there are several times in which regular old OPS has come in handy for you.

Torreumon: sigh

yeah true

Torreumon: there was that time i was almost completely blind and my field of vision was so tiny that i could only read one number at a time, so i couldn't look at on-base percentage and then look at slugging percentage

Torreumon: and then there was that time that a guy held a gun to my head and said, "if you do not take these two stats and lump them counterintuitively into a single statistic, i will pull this freaking trigger, you freaking creep"

Torreumon: there was also the time that there was a crippling paper shortage, and instead of sheets of paper we had to scribble on strips of confetti, and there was only enough room to write a player's name and a single three-digit statistic

Torreumon: oh, and who can forget the time i was kidnapped and freighted to a gulag in kamchatka

Torreumon: my fellow prisoners and i had to communicate through the wall through morse code via banging a wooden bowl against the wall

Torreumon: we were talking baseball stats, and it proved tedious to actually morse out a player's on-base percentage and then his slugging percentage, so we simply shared OPS

Torreumon: oh man

and also

Torreumon: there was the time i did shrooms and decided that i wanted to be able to stare at a fixed point and comprehend as much as possible without moving my eyes at all

Torreumon: i re-arranged my living room furniture, shoving the sofas, end-table, coffee table, and entertainment center into one corner of the room, then just sat and stared at it, and yelled, "LIVING ROOM"

Torreumon: then i took andruw jones' on-base percentage and slugging percentage and added them together, and stared at it, and screamed, "HORRIBLE BASEBALL PLAYER"

Torreumon: oh oh oh

Torreumon: and the time i was attempting to pack as lightly as possible for a series in atlanta

Torreumon: i bought one of those shirts that are compressed into tiny shrink-wrapped packages, the ones that expand when you pour water on them

Torreumon: then i took a stick of deodorant and a putty knife and shaved off the exact amount of deodorant i would need for three days

Torreumon: then i managed to scrawl the OPS of every batter on both teams onto a single index card

everything i packed fit neatly into a small ziploc bag, which i pinched between my gum and left cheek

i walked through concourse c of hartsfield airport without any luggage to carry, i felt like a free man, it was tremendous

CollettiSoul: Wow, that really does sound great!

How about this. /looks up Andre Ethier's statistics

CollettiSoul: okay, hold on

CollettiSoul: Finished! I present to you...THE INFALLIBLE NED COLLETTI FORMULA OF UNIVERSAL TRUTH AND COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING,
or "tINCFoUTaCU"

CollettiSoul: It is the sum of a player's age, height, weight, batting average, home runs, stolen bases, fielding percentage, on-base percentage, doubles, triples, hit-by-pitches, Cartesian coordinates of birthplace and current residence, and number of cavities filled.

CollettiSoul: If you apply the proper algorithms to this statistic, you will not only be able to accurately gauge Andre Ethier's merit as a baseball player. You will not only be able to gauge Andre Ethier's measure as a human being, or glean every detail of his anatomy and his experiences, and things he does not even know about himself.

CollettiSoul: You will wholly understand one man, and can then extrapolate this understanding into a comprehension of mankind, then mankind's place in the universe, then the universe itself.

CollettiSoul: Prepare thyself.

CollettiSoul: Andre Ethier's tINCFoUTaCU is...

202.637.

Torreumon: oh my god

I SEE EVERYTHING

I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING

Torreumon: I AM KNAWING ON THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

I AM GAZING INTO THE EYES OF THE LORD GOD HIMSELF

Torreumon: /is stricken dead

CollettiSoul: you do it to yourself, it's true, that's why it really hurts, you do it to yourself, it's true, you and no one else