In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

Today’s episode: Gay Talese’s penetrating study of Joe DiMaggio and seminal work of the New Journalism, “The Silent Season of a Hero.”

He was then 39, she was 27. They had been married in January of that year, 1954, despite disharmony in temperament and time; he was tired of publicity, she was thriving on it; he was intolerant of tardiness, she was always late. During their honeymoon in Tokyo an American general had introduced himself and asked if, as a patriotic gesture, she would visit the troops in Korea. She looked at Joe. “It’s your honeymoon,” he said, shrugging, “go ahead if you want to.”

She appeared on 10 occasions before 100,000 servicemen, and when she returned, she said, “It was so wonderful, Joe. You never heard such cheering.”

“Yes, I have,” Dick Allen said.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

The only thing I know about marketing is that if you use each letter of your company’s name to spell out a positive attribute, it’s golden gold. Thankfully, the Chiba Lotte Marines, to cite but one example, know more about marketing than I do. I introduce this into evidence …

As Zig Ziglar teaches us, cast the opposition as giant, spiteful golems who destroy urban infrastructure and endanger children, and you’ll sell tickets. The Chiba Lotte Marines have taken this lesson to heart, and that heart is beautiful and mighty.

By all means, collect the whole set.

Dave Cameron, everybody.

As the reader might very well know, this past weekend-plus witnessed the descent upon Long Beach, California, USA, of the membership of the Society for American Baseball Research, for their 41st convention.

Malcolm Gladwell lookalike and Citizen of the World Eno Sarris has already provided some critical details of the FanGraphs event held Thursday night in conjunction with SABR 41. In what follows, I’d like to utilize that most helpful of typographical symbols, the bullet point, to provide as breezy and superficial an account of the Convention as possible.

To wit:

• Did I witness Dark Overlord David Appelman kill a man? No. Did I witness David Appelman order a man to commit suicide in front of him (i.e. Appelman)? Hmmm… Next question, please.

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A while ago I engaged in some sharing of my personal life, insofar as that personal life involved the Jason Kendall jersey in the back of my closet.  I’d like to continue that discussion in a direction that contains fewer Jason Kendall references toward a more broad consideration of how, exactly, the jersey relates to the fan experience.  I’ll predicate the conversation with two unassailable tenets:

• 1. Fans who remain fans during the lean years are truer, better, and are ethically superior to bandwagon fans.

• 2. Clothes make the man/woman.

Given that most of us lack the disposable income to purchase more than a couple of jerseys, it’s easy to understand why fans want to play it safe.  However, the jersey is an instantly identifiable opportunity to not only express individuality, but to dictate the extent of one’s fandom.  Carson touched on this concept in his recent essay on sabermetrics as hipsterism, presenting the hipster as cultural vanguard.  In this scenario, however, we are less interested in predicting and promoting what will be valuable in the future, but instead grounding our fandom in historical perspective.  The ironic jersey eschews popularity, instead celebrating the aspects of a team that a mere few would understand and appreciate.  It encapsulates the entirety of a franchise, the elation and the suffering, in a single terse word.

Today, we’ll begin our foray into fabric and collective sporting identity with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  Candidates are presented below; opinions and intolerable snubs are welcome in the comments.

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The thrilling snake juice investigation concludes with the unbelievable Part 4! Click here for Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3.

Dr. Supplies spun the van down Addison and slammed on the breaks in front of Wrigley. Justin Smoak, Eliezer Alfonzo, and Billy Beane all jumped out of the side door, running with their rifles at the ready. I took a swig from Eliezer’s snake juice and then followed them, dashing through the rain to the main entrance, where Smoak was unlocking the gate with a hand held device that looked like alien technology.

The gate flung open as the snake juice began to make my head began spin like a kid in an office chair.

“You’re going to feel a little nauseous,” Eliezer said, cocking his M4, “but you should be able to see the portal now.”

We stepped into the main concourse with our eyes down the barrels of our guns. The stadium was empty and dripping. My eyes began losing focus and I shook my head. Suddenly, like some desert-warped mirage, I saw a black figure — a shadow — moving towards us.

“Here they come!” Billy yelled as she began firing.
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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 Steve Rosenbloom: Carlos Zambrano will soon fly to Guatemala to adopt a young boy. What an asshole.

Shorter Gregg Doyel: No one can stop me from voting, on the Internet, for the All-Star candidates of my choosing.

Shorter Murray Chass: Know who’s a big, fat coward? Bob Gibson. Yep. Bob Gibson is a big, fat coward.

Shorter Ian O’Connor: The subject is Derek Jeter, and I am about to make love to the reader.

Shorter John Harper: Shame on the Rays for not making Jeter’s 3,000th hit more of a priority.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: Roger Clemens used to pitch for the Red Sox.

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

Observe the following Stadium Club card of former Yankees and Padres outfielder Oscar Azocar:

Click to embiggen, of course.

Azocar is seen here having what appears to be an intimate moment with his baseball bat. And that’s just fine. I’m sure Azocar and his bat have been through some very emotional times together… the good, the bad, you name it. But, it’s important to remember that bats are not truly able to consent. And we’ve seen what can happen when these relationships go too far.

Yes, I’m looking at you, Gloria Allred:

Remember, loving your bat is OK. Loving your bat physically is not.

The bespectacled reader is assuredly familiar with that phenomenon known as the double entendre. Fewer, but still a sizeable portion, of the readership will have a working knowledge of the single entendre, utilized most recently/notably by Dirty Southerner Lil’ Wayne. In addition to these two, my grandfather claims to have once encountered, when he was serving in the Philippines, an instance of triple entendre — although he admits readily that it could’ve just been something on his glasses.

For all that, though, there have been no instances recorded by modern man of however many entendres Logan Morrison was able to capture in a single tweet this past Thursday. Scientists, in conjunction with the ghost of Milton Berle, are working round the clock to determine the specific number, but the general consensus is that Morrison’s tweet contains no fewer than four — and perhaps as many as seven — entendres.

It’s truly a shining moment, I think we can all agree, both for humans and sexy sex jokes.

This Maury Brown dispatch from the All-Star Game warmup party yields this photographic image …

I’m no expert on such matters, but I believe that’s a gas-powered macho scooter festooned with images of our fair game. If you would like to see additional images of said gas-powered macho scooter, then please click on the link above. Vroom to the vroom.

Fangraphers are of course familiar with the work of Keith Law (or Klaw as he is known affectionately). Since 2006, Klaw has been doing a bang-up job as the scouting writer at ESPN.com where his annual “Top 100 Prospects” column is highly anticipated by prospect nerds the world over. Before moving to ESPN, he was employed in the Toronto Blue Jays front office. And before that, he worked at Baseball Prospectus. Again, these are things the average Fangrapher knows very well.

What is perhaps less well-known (though likely still well-known by Fangraphers) is that Klaw maintains a personal blog that is home to his ruminations on food, books, and other cultural topics. One of those “other cultural topics” is music. Today it was revealed (to the moderate surprise of some) that one of the kinds of music Klaw enjoys is pre-1996 hip hop. Given, also, his fondness for Top-100 lists, it was only natural that he combine the two into a comprehensive “Top 100 old-school hip-hop songs” blog post. It’s a fun read if you are a fan of hip hop feeling a tinge of nostalgia for “the good old days.”

To me, the mere thought of Keith Law rocking out to some old-school hip hop is endlessly amusing. “Can you imagine early 90s KLaw with his walkman (or a boombox) bumping Poor Righteous Teachers?” I asked on twitter. “Someone needs to photoshop him into a picture of Radio Raheem ASAP,” I added.

And indeed, my internet friend and talented photoshopper @Phylan did just that:

Keep fighting the power, Klaw, fighting the powers that be.

UPDATE: Now accepting stage name suggestions in the comments!