Dan Reichert is and always has been a trendsetter.  In 1997, he was the first of eight consecutive first-round picks deployed by the Kansas City Royals on starting pitchers.  In 2008 he became the first Southern Maryland Blue Crab to have his contract purchased by a major league club.  (He never made it back to the bigs.)  And now Dan Reichert is at the head of a new fad: abandoning one’s own name, likely because of espionage.

The 34 year-old righty, who hasn’t been in the majors since 2003, signed a contract with the Uni-Presdient 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League of Taiwan (league motto: Nice Play).  He was cut before the season, but renegotiated a week later for a reported $9,000 a month.  Thus far in the 2011 season, his Lions are in first place (out of four teams) and he leads the league with 8 wins and a 2.39 ERA.  He also sports a 62.8% GB% in 83 innings.

But what’s interesting about Dan Reichert is that he’s no longer Dan Reichert.  The CPBL, in an effort to acclimate foreign-born players to the local fan base, provide these gentlemen with new monikers on the back of their jerseys.  Reichert, for reasons that do not officially exist, goes by “Robert 38”.

I searched for Robert 38’s performance on the CPBL website, enlisting the feckless aid of the Google Chrome translation feature.  Doing so provided me with the greatest box score of all time:
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Think of the great miseries of humankind — war, famine, disease, Delta Airlines, Kid Rock — and how we as a people coped with them. Yep: witticisms on shirts. Even our hairy, slope-headed forgoers transferred their ironic cave etchings to the wrinkled pelts of the gomphotheres. They said things like, “My Milkshake Brings All the Homo Neanderthalensises to the Yard,” and “I Caught Crabs at the Patagonian Ice Cap During a Brief Respite in the Sub-Continental Permafrost.”

Fast forward to the current day and time, and you’ll find that Dodger fans, crippled by the misdeeds of America’s Worst Businessman^TM, are turning to the shirt to help them through the various stages of grief and spittle-flecked rage. First came this, and now comes a more direct assault on the author of their miseries …

My only hope is that in 25 years, these will be the Dodgers’ throwback jerseys.

(Shirt tip: Biz of Baseball)

Observe the following Hot GIF of Wily Mo Pena, courtesy of Drew Fairservice and Bill Baer:

Now, NotGraphs readers! Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

It is obvious to me that when this forearm bash occurred, the world exploded. I am asking for some brave soul to somehow reflect that in this hot GIF action, turning it into exploding GIF action. Alas, despite my great talents, I do not have the know-how (nor the technology, I think) required to put an explosion into this GIF when Wily Mo Pena’s forearm makes contact with Gerardo Parra’s. But maybe, just maybe, one of you can.

Not even Picasso during his very famous Blue Period was able to capture the sort of angst that the above-pictured Red Sox fan was caught emoting during the fourth inning of a game at Wrigley Field yesterday. That said fan is surrounded by rows of empty seats — very obviously a metaphor for Conditions, Human and Otherwise — only heightens the feeling of isolation.

There’s a strange thing about this scene, however — which, let’s see if an Annotated Photo brings to light what I mean.

Regard:

Indeed, our fraught subject appears to be at a game between two teams not his own — one of which (the Cubs) is superbad in the least Judd Apatow-y of ways, and the other of which (the Giants) won a World Series, like, 24 hours ago (using Venus hours, I mean, on account of that planet’s days are much, much longer than Earth’s).

Apropos the point you’re forming in your head this minute — the one that goes something like, “Cistulli, don’t you even know that it’s possible to become emotionally involved in a game not involving one’s own favorite team?” — allow me say, “N’doy.”

Apropos the second point you’re forming — the one that’s more like, “Cistulli, is it possible that you’re making a mountain out of a molehill?” — allow me say “Anything is possible” and also “Please excuse me. I have to return some videotapes.”

Did you see the Cirque first pitch below? Impressive. And hosannas to the young man who is orders of magnitude more athletic than I am, even in the dreamscape of my mind.

In the interest of balance, however, I’m duty-bound to remind you of this, the unpleasing polar opposite of what we witnessed earlier …

I’m not going to say something crass like, “This is why the terrorists hate us.” I am, however, going to say that this is why we can’t have nice things.

If anyone has ever said of Carson Cistulli “That guy’s impossible to push around,” then that anyone is wrong. No fewer than all/two of our faithful readers have demanded Hot GIF action of Cirque du Soleil’s Gabryel Nogueira da Silva throwing out the first pitch at PETCO Park before Monday’s Royals-Padres game — a.k.a. a critical mass (of readers, that is). The GIF you’ll find after the jump, then, comes to your computer screen courtesy of electronic bullying.

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It’s time for another installment of “Shorter Baseball Columnists,” in which we read mainstream baseball columnists and marginalized bloggers like Murray Chass so you don’t have to! Let us begin!

Shorter Jim Souhan: Joe Mauer would be a lot tougher if he had Jim Souhan muscles instead of Joe Mauer muscles.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: I don’t care what anyone else says, but Frank McCourt did not, under cover of darkness, murder Vin Scully and Tommy Lasorda.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: You might think that what’s going on with the Dodgers has nothing to do with the Red Sox, but please remember that everything has something to do with the Red Sox.

Shorter Wallace Matthews: I just looked at Jorge Posada’s splits for this season.

Shorter Murray Chass: Tyler Kepner of the Times interviewed Roberto Clemente’s biographer on the subject of Clemente. I interviewed a buddy of mine from junior high. Advantage, me.

Shorter T.J. Simers: This is quite possibly Jamey Carroll’s fault.

The “Shorter” approach to Internetty commentary traces back, as best as one can tell, to Daniel Davies.

As if God smiled upon the diamond that day.

Lighting is an integral yet understated part of baseball. Sandlot ball depends on daylight, and the major leagues are bathed in fluorescence. The journey from one to the other is graded in a way that might just be unique to the sport. Basketball is forever indoor, and even a rec league can play on a well-lit court. Hockey requires an indoor space most of the time, and even my high school’s three-walled court was all up in the lights. Friday Night Lights might suggest that football has some things in common with baseball, but most football games are still day games.

Looking at this picture, it seems that the graded transition that the professional baseball player undergoes throughout his journey mimics the same transition that the sport made as a whole. Ted Williams played in the first decade after the first night game on May 24, 1935, when the Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 at Crosley Field. His time produced these dusty and dark images dripping with nostalgia. The angles and the shadows recall the chiaroscuro of black and white films. Call it the Noire period, about a decade early.

Fast forward to our time and our iconic, stark and well-lit images. Just a couple weeks ago, a game between the Giants and the Cardinals was delayed 14 minutes when merely one of the many banks of lights at Busch Stadium went out. Though the field looked well-lit to any sandlot player, the players had to wait, confused, as the stadium tried to rectify the issue. The play-by-play men joked that everyone could see fine and was ready to put this extra-inning game to bed. Conspiracy theories of icing the closer were bandied about. Most any whiffle ball player would have shrugged and thrown the next pitch.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Right?

Thanks to Brendan Bilko and his tumblr that pointed to 90 Feet of Perfection

We have a category called “Jersey Edit.” I speak with a Puritan’s certainty when I say it is now safe to retire the category “Jersey Edit” …

(High-interest loan of thanks to the Dodger Divorce Twitter feed.)

There are things in this world that Joe West will not abide: bad clams, people talking over his Artie Shaw records, barmen given to ungenerous pours of the Maker’s Mark, use of the Single-Windsor knot when everyone knows the Double Windsor gets the dame, kids who won’t pull up their damned pants. And that’s but a partial listing.

Here’s something else: the dark ways of Cobra Kai, especially when employed against God’s own Roy Halladay …

Jon Gruden, you and your nefarious dojo are outta here!

(Roundhouse of gratitude to Twittersome reader Adrian.)