Hard to argue with one Mr. Aron Bender’s bestowing of the title “Balk of the Year” on this little gem:

That’s Mike Pelfrey pitching for the Mets in Saturday’s game against the Phillies, with Dom Brown batting. The balk moved runners to second and third, but luckily for Pelfrey, he got Brown to ground out to end the inning. If Brown singles in one or two runs there, I’m sure Pelfrey hears about it the next day from Mike Francesa. Instead, it’s just a harmless (albeit hilarious) balk.

Eddie “The Brat/Muggsy” Stanky

Eddie Stanky is among the many illustrious players to have two nicknames: The Brat and Muggsy. You, dear acned reader, do not need me to explain the obvious superiority of the Muggsy nickname (for the clean face’d aristocrats who have mis-browsed here: Eddie “Muggsy” Stanky — all “ee” endings!).
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“I’m looking for pythons.”
“Right this way, sir.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. I’m looking for the kind of pythons you can’t buy in a pet store.”
“Then you’ll need to see Ted Kluszewski.”

Image, which, upon being clicked, embiggens, swiped directly from the Internet web site pages of the Cable News Network.

What follows is a screenshot from the home page of my fantasy league, from maybe about 11:30pm CT last (Friday) night.

The bit in red there represents my inner monologue upon loading/gazing briefly at said page. (As always, clicking = embiggening.)

Note: if the reader is curious about which team belongs to the author, it’s actually the only one you can’t see there, on account of it (my team) is the first place one.

The New Yorker’s most excellent Jeffrey Toobin is astride the current baseball news cycle because of his lucid piece on falling but not yet quite fallen Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Indeed, when, in the course of the same dispatch, you get Sandy Koufax to go on record, have an email conversation with the incarcerated Bernie Madoff and do such a masterly job of teasing out Wilpon’s insecurities that he plaints, “We’re snakebitten, baby!” you’ve got reportorial chops. But as great a scribe as Toobin is, let us recall that he’s also a baseball fan in outstanding standing …

That, readers glistening from hard-won sweat, is an image of Toobin’s laptop when he was on set and empaneled by CNN during the tedious run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Yes, Toobin — rather than listening, in rapt admiration, to Anderson Cooper’s handsome ruminations — was checking in on postseason base and ball. Since politics is a lodestone for all that is miserable about the stinking human animal, we should praise Toobin for this most righteous decision.

History teaches us that Paul Bunyan skipped out on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he had Marlins tickets, so it should be no surprise that Toobin, a distant cousin of Bunyan’s, is similarly inclined. Accruals of power helped along by vacant stares and scripted outrage or green, grassy baseball? Toobin chose correctly, and may all the gods bless him for having done so.

Nicasio reacts to news of his promotion.

Colorado Rockies’ prospect Juan Nicasio will make his major-league debut Saturday against the St. Louis Cardinals. As the above photo indicates, he is very, very surprised by the news.

Image courtesy Ed Andrieski – AP.

While attending a few garage sales in my hometown in Kansas, I seemed to have come across a relic that is many miles from its home: Jeff Francoeur’s little league bat, a PRO-LINE Little League SUPER-LITE Georgia Cracker, made in Atlanta, GA, Size 9.

It is the fabled bat that Jeff used to swing at pitches in the Atlanta area. It didn’t matter if he missed the ball or hit a warning track pop up, he always loved his Georgia Cracker. It was rumored lost when his parents had a garage sale after he joined the Braves in 2002. It was spotted a few times, but no one knew for sure of its location or owner.

I feel fortunate to have found the bat and hope to make a pilgrimage up I-35 to return the bat to its iconic owner soon. I will enjoy having it in my possession for a little while and maybe, just maybe, go take a few swings with it.

What follows is apparently not entirely new to the Internet, but it’s new to me, which is why I’m bothering conjuring this image. It is a personalized jersey, which is a thing about which I’m not entirely sure how I feel. Is it silly-britches? A sign of arrested personhood? Utterly harmless? Actually, yes, it’s utterly harmless, but I don’t indulge in the practice, which is tacit disapproval of a kind, no?

But whatever my feelings about the larger rubric, the personalized jersey below, by whatever standard or measure you wish to apply, is something that warms the cockles of hearts like a puppy made of sunshine who is holding a scalloped-edge, rose-gilded porcelain serving tray filled with delicious gooseberry muffins …

Gooseberry muffins! Nom, nom, nom!

Seriously, just click to make larger first.

Thoughts upon inspecting this excellent newspaper graphic from the San Francisco Chronicle:

1) Man, I haven’t picked up a print newspaper in a while.
2) I haven’t gone outside in a while.
3) Yeah it’s impossible.
4) At the last game I went to, my cousin and I wondered why nobody charted foul balls so that we could get a heat map of foul balls, maybe one where the color is decided by just sheer number of balls and then one where it’s measured by catchability because you wouldn’t want one to take your head off.
5) What the heck is a quarter second? What’s a millisecond?
6) Is there anything I can do in 150 milliseconds?
7) Dirty.
8) Does the bat literally deliver the power of nine large horses upon the ball?
9) It’s probably right when people say Mike Stanton delivers destruction upon balls, then.
10) Gotta find this book.

Webcomic xkcd cuts us all to the quick.

Total bro hug to Twitter-er Patrick McCaw for link.