Jazz hands.

It can’t be that easy being good-looking. You get your garden variety jealousy from the men, and the fawning (oh the fawning!) from the women must get old at some point too. You have to spend so much of your hard-earned cash on beauty products (like Pomade!). You have to worry about things that your co-workers don’t even think about (cuticles!), liking losing your luscious locks or what sort of accessory goes best with your shoes. You get asked to do events that you just aren’t well-suited for (runway?). Your tiny flaws get magnified. Everyone laughs.

Then again, the alternative is not that easy either.

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While I have only the most tenuous grasp over cricket and its rules/strategies, I’ve been compelled of late to acquaint myself with the game more closely owing to how P.G. Wodehouse’s excellent Psmith books require some knowledge of it.

The game, I will concede, is still mostly mysterious. Still, I think we can all agree, bespectacled readership: any sport that is routinely played in a sweater vest and calls for a tea break — well, there’s something in that.

Furthermore, some cursory internetting has revealed the Daniel Bard of cricket bowlers — namely, former Australia international Shane Warne. Despite his regrettable “face” and “whole being,” Warne’s deliveries are irrefutably pleasing.

I present here three readily available YouTube videos of Shane Warne’s consummate leg-spin bowling. I don’t present here what you might call “context” of any sort — because, again, I don’t know what’s going on.

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Via the championship Twitter feed of Erick William comes this, which is Carlos Gonzalez, nickname of “Cargo,” doing his finest imitation of actual, real-live cargo. Please click, embiggen and enjoy!

Hosannas! My only complaint is that this is more “dangerous payload” than mere cargo. We have a giant and possibly menacing baseball-ist rising from the sea and, from appearances, about to unleash misrule on the nearest unsuspecting port city. You take it from here, Bruckheimer.

I don’t consider myself a GIF wizard, but I certainly don’t need a Tome of GIF Spells to know when an event is GIF-worthy. Dayn Perry’s recently analogued fan interference play involving Justin Upton was just such an event. All that was missing from the scene: An exhortation to deal with said scene.

Cue GIF:

Apologies, apologies all around, for the long load time, but majesty is ill-rushed.

The year is 1987.  The nation is reeling from a combination of Iran-Contra hearings and Cold War-induced deficit crisis.  Toni Morrison publishes Beloved, depressing the hell out of everyone. Vince Coleman becomes baseball’s new darling, and Full House appears on television screens for the first time.  Patrick Swayze has not yet recorded “She’s Like the Wind”, but he is about to do so.  Clearly, American morale is foundering, and the baseball card manufacturing companies are needed to revive the spirit of America.  No longer was one set per brand enough; we need more.

They fill this demand by selling small, forty-four card individually boxed sets.  These cards were sold, through exclusive retailers, on the premise that if people liked to collect pictures of baseball players printed on small pieces of cardboard, they might want to collect pictures of baseball players printed on different pieces of cardboard.  To increase jubilance, these cards were given red, white and/or blue borders and exciting names. They loaded these cards with as much Gershwin-esque bombast as they could scrounge.

Essentially, they lied to us.  They lied to America. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Mike Lupica: The Yankees won’t win the World Series unless they do.

Shorter Kevin Kernan: Derek Jeter has confirmed that the Yankees would like to win the division.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: Televising the Little League World Series is bad for children. With that said, it would be fine if they televised it on the hit program, “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

Shorter Gregg Doyel: The MLBPA should defend only players I like.

Shorter Jim Souhan: Not many have the guts to say this, but the Tigers are better than the Twins.

Shorter Joe Cowley: I have decided to accept Starlin Castro’s apology.

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

Jim Thome mashed his first tater since rejoining the Cleveland Indians last night. There’s just something kind of special about seeing Thome back with the Indians, as he was one of the guys who has really been a part of my entire baseball watching life and this whole full-circle thing he’s done brings me back to the days of my youth. Or something like that.

Anyway, you should watch the video, and see if you feel how I feel:

For comparison’s sake, Thome’s 200th homer, also at Progressive Jacobs Field back in 2000:

I feel like these two videos could evoke very different things in very different people (such as: nothing), but I had at least a few thoughts pop in to the old skull:

One thing I’ve noticed people do on the internet sometimes, is they write a post and title it the title of something else that’s on the internet — something that’s current and/or popular. This way, the writer makes it clear to everyone how he or she knows about this current and/or popular event.

Like if a player left his team because the team didn’t win a World Series, you could maybe title a post about him “[Team Name] Should’ve Put a Ring on It” — which, on the one hand, refers to a World Series ring but, on the other, also refers to this song by Beyonce I saw one time. I bet a lot of people would like that and then read the article.

Anyway, I mention it because yesterday I saw how Aramis Ramirez walked away as his manager Mike Quade was being ejected from the Cubs-Brewers game. It reminded me of this video I saw (below), which, given the 23 million views, I’m guessing is pretty popular. I got the idea: “I should title the title of my post something similar to that video.”

The video I’m talking about is below, in case you haven’t seen it. I’m pretty sure that’s not the real Neil Diamond, but whatevs.

PS: if you guys are into this post, you should totally like it on FaceBook!!!

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Please enjoy as a certain Padres fan announces his presence …

Consider these facts:

– Playable ball!
– Potentially meaningful game!
– Embroidered cap as vehicle for taunting!
– Road game, where a certain deference is expected!
– Humiliated lady-friend!

Does this display make the nobleman in question the worst fan ever or the greatest fan ever?

Management thanks you for your time.

(Loving embrace — loving to the point of awkwardness — for handsome, handsomer, handsomest reader Tony.)

Other things that are likely fun with Joe Maddon:

• Turkish Bath
• Cricket Analysis
• Double Dare