Lewie Pollis — of both Wahoo Blues and our very own Community blog — has written a post at the first of those two sites in which he does his best to find comparables for the cast of 1989’s smash-hit comedy Major League among the actual current squad of his Cleveland Indians.

That in itself is a commendable-enough undertaking. What raises his effort to Totes Delightful status, though, is that the videos Mr. Pollis has found to illustrate his selections happen to be in the Italian language.

At the risk of sounding boastful, allow me to announce for the benefit of the readership that this (i.e. Italian) is a language in which I happen to possess some expertise. And, as I have some time on my hands and am the sort of person to help his fellow man, allow me — once again, for the benefit of the readership — to present this brief, but important, Italian lesson.

Below are are three Italian phrases that you will almost definitely find yourself using within the next 24 hours — with the corresponding time-elapsed marks for the embedded video.

Now, learn!

0:21
Ecco Jake Taylor.
Behold, Jake Taylor.

1:30
Gioco come Mays, corro come Hayes.
I play like Mays, I run like Hayes.

2:19
Questa squadra mi piace blah blah blah blah.
I like this team blah blah blah blah.

Men’s fashion — it’s so often a rich union of the awful and the too clever by half. The same, of course, goes for the male sports fan, who seems to take preternatural delight in assaulting good taste about the head, neck, shoulders, and groin. This enduring truth places before us a challenge, a bejeweled gauntlet if you will: what’s the greatest possible fan outfit that can be concocted using items presently available through the bellwether fashion portal that is MLB.com?

Since my professed loyalties are to the St. Louis Cardinals, I’m going to restrict myself to the fetching threads available at their designated Internet haberdashery. Come with me, won’t you? And don’t forget your Player’s Club cards!

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The Diamondbacks will wear these ancient uniforms for three days next season.

Via MLB.com:

The Arizona Diamondbacks will turn back the clock Sept. 9-11 when they officially celebrate the 10th anniversary of the club’s World Series championship with the “2001 World Championship Reunion Weekend.”

The weekend will begin with the D-backs wearing throwback jerseys for the Sept. 9 game against the Padres. The club will wear the traditional home white top with purple pinstripes and the “A” logo. That was one of the uniform tops the club wore from 1998 through 2006, when its color scheme was purple, turquoise, copper and black. In 2007, the team switched to its current color scheme of sedona red, sonoran sand and black.

Seeing this bit of news made me think of two things.

First off, we never really acknowledge just how insane it is that the Diamondbacks won a World Series in their fourth year of existence. My Brewers took 13 seasons just to reach a World Series and haven’t been back since. The Rangers just made their first World Series in their 51st season of existence (including their time as the second Washington Senators). It took the Arizona Diamondbacks all of three seasons from their very first game to bring home the Commissioner’s Trophy, an accomplishment we may never see again in professional sports.

On a second note, how bad were those first Diamondbacks jerseys? Green pinstripes with purple undershirts? The fact that the Diamondbacks have to use throwbacks for those jerseys – jerseys a youngster like myself can actually remember seeing a team play in on TV – really tells us how bad they were. The Diamondbacks only used them for nine seasons before realizing a redesign was completely and totally necessary. Now, I think the Diamondbacks have one of the better color/uniform combinations in the game. Back then? It was an interesting attempt at reproducing the look of the Diamondback, but in the end, these uniforms deserved their early retirement.

Today, February 21st, is the feast day for two notable figures, as follow.

Life: Over a career that spanned 20 years, Trammell compiled 69.5 WAR, appearing at shortstop for the Tigers — for whom he played the entire time — in over 2000 games. Beyond his on-field accomplishments, which include a 1984 World Series ring and MVP trophy, he’s also widely praised for his leadership abilities and currently serves as the bench coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Ritual: To recognize the life of Trammell the Sinewy, practice a Stoic gaze in the mirror.

Prayer of Trammell the Sinewy

Alan Trammell!
It’s impossible to imagine you
in any other pose
besides the one you’re assuming
on your 1978 Burger King baseball card:
hands on hips, the brim of your cap raised,
as you stand and survey a field
littered with Confederate dead.

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Major League Baseball wants you. No, really, they do:

Major League Baseball is casting for an innovative new experience, which will require one lucky fan to eat, sleep, and live baseball for an entire season. If you’re a baseball fanatic and have an engaging, fun personality, this is the dream job for you.

Your new full-time job will be to literally follow baseball non-stop, as you will be charged with watching every single game of the 2011 season, blogging about all your thoughts and opinions, and discussing the hottest topics in baseball.

Let’s be honest: It does sound pretty goddamn dreamy. By my math, which is not very good, “every single game of the 2011 season” means 2,430 games. Plus the playoffs. Dreamy, indeed. There’s no such thing as too much baseball.

A couple of necessary qualifications for the “job” of note:

Must be a baseball expert.

Check. A huge check mark.

Must be comfortable in front of the camera and be able to present a positive public image.

This is going to rule out alot of nerds.

Must complete a background check to the satisfaction of MLB.

This is going to rule out alot of baseball nerds with criminal records.

In a nutshell: Watch an obscene amount of baseball, blog about it, tweet about it, put on a ton of weight, and get paid. Apart from actually playing the game for a living, it likely doesn’t get much better than that. At least for one year of your life.

One caveat:

Must reside in a location picked by MLB in New York City for the entire baseball season.

I almost want them to pick a basement apartment. A really nice one.

Godspeed, yo.

I’m not quite sure who deserves credit for that image. I found it on Reddit, where I scour the depths of the internet for anything and everything related to baseball. That’s love.

Owing to how she’s so humble and deferential a mademoiselle, it’s likely that NotGraphs’ own Bethany Heck would feel uncomfortable sharing with the wide readership the latest development in her march towards baseballing ephemera superstardom. Luckily, the present author possesses no such compunction.

The thing to know is this: Ms. Heck has made available, via a website called Kickstarter, the very same scorebooks that she featured in these pages earlier in the month.

If you’re not familiar with it, Kickstarter is the most heartwarming iteration of capitalism possible. A Kickstarter project begins when a duly motivated person (in this case, Ms. Heck) submits a creative project. Said person also establishes a funding goal and deadline. Then people out there, in the cyberspace, make backing pledges in exchange for the promise of dollar-appropriate good in return. If the the funding goal is met,

I’ve made it sound impossibly complicated, I’m sure, but it’s actually simple: you give-a-the money, you maybe get-a-the thing.

Today, February 20th, we acknowledge and celebrate the life of Hernandez the Prolific.

Life: A Cuban emigre, Hernandez received national attention very early, starting and winning Games 1 and 5 of the 1997 World Series and winning the MVP trophy for same. Noted for his durability, Hernandez led the league in innings pitched for three consecutive years, from 2003 through 2005, and has thrown more innings since 1998 (his rookie season) than any other active pitcher, leading the second player on that list (Javier Vazquez) by 200 innings. An above-average pitcher at his peak, Hernandez has become merely serviceable, relying more on guile and something called “pitchability” than actual stuff.

Ritual: To remember Hernandez the Prolific, either (a) invent a pitch with a mysterious name or (b) read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and ask yourself, “Am I the old man, the sea, the tireless marlin, all of the above, none of the above?” (Hint: you are not the sea.)

Prayer of Hernandez the Prolific:

Included among the many pitches
you’ve introduced to this country
since your debut in 1996
is one called Rice with Mango
another called The Eleven-Yard Shirt
and a third, The Melancholy Peanut Vendor,
that’s only possible to throw
on the day of a loved one’s funeral.
Hail!

Today, February 19th, we remember and celebrate the life of Stewart the Menacing.

Life: Stewart is known for his intimidating mound presence and durability. With the Oakland teams of the late-80s, he posted four consecutive 20-win seasons. While not necessarily exceptional on rate basis — never, for example, leading the league in ERA or ERA+ — he led all pitchers with 1061.2 IP over his four-year peak.

Prayer

On August 1st, 1987, you killed
a career-best 14 batters against Minnesota.
Your personal record for killing batters
in a season is 205, also in 1987 —
i.e. the same year you killed an average
of 7.1 batters per nine innings.

You maintain that your greatest regret
is killing Reggie Jackson,
with whom you famously co-managed
an Oakland-area Salvation Army.

The world will never forget
the time you killed Ernest Riles
in the ninth inning
of a World Series shutout,
his body twisting grotesquely
yet comically
like in an actual game of Twister.

This evening, I’m extremely pleased and proud to announce that, after an exhausting and extensive appeal, the NotGraphs Highly Reputable And Totally Real Think Tank has approved, for these very electronic pages, the canonization of active baseball players. It’s a great day to be alive. (Pun intended.)

Now, don’t for a split second think that I can do one of these as well as world-renowned poet – and baseball scholar – Carson Cistulli. But I’ll give it my best shot.

Today, this 18th day of February, 2011 years after the passing of Jesus Christ, the second soul we canonize — and first active — is celebrating his 30th year on the planet.

St. Alexis the Enigma

Life: Born in Coffee, Alabama, and hailing from the island of Puerto Rico, Alex Rios tickled Toronto Blue Jays fans for five and a half years with his potential, accumulating 17.7 WAR from 2004 to August 2009. Until the fateful day he was given –- nay, stolen –- by the Chicago White Sox. Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

Prayer:

Hola Alex Isreal Rios!
Proficient with the bat,
Yet you always left us wanting more.
Graceful in the field,
The reason we called you the Gazelle.
When model helicopters fly in center field
Our thoughts invariably drift to you,
And to the good times.
Who gives a f*ck?
We do, Alexis. We do.
Chicago, the south side, does too.

Image courtesy the Alex Rios Fanclub.

Today, we canonize and remember just a single figure.

Note, per canon law, that this does not necessarily mean that other candidates from this day won’t be added in the future, but merely that this is the only player we’ve seen fit to add at the moment.

Life: A native of the Dominican Republic, Mota played in the majors for part of 20 seasons. For the last six-plus of those seasons, he served as a pinch-hitter almost exclusively, and, in fact, is third all-time with 150 pinch-hits (which was the record when he retired). He finished his career with a lifetime batting average of .309.

Prayer

No less a personage than Vin Scully
once said you “could wake up on Christmas morning
and hit a line drive to center.”
In conclusion, it’s a fact:
I wish Vin Scully were my grandfather.