The heinous act above — the silencing of Tony Campana — was captured by a brave Getty Images photographer last Thursday. Naturally, as you’ve by now come to expect, we sent one of our correspondents, part of our award-winning Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, to, well, investigate.

When asked over the weekend about what exactly happened in the dugout at Great American Ball Park last week, all the color, all the joie de vivre, as Chairman Cistulli would say, left Tony Campana’s face. He wouldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. Campana shook his head, from left to right.

“Is that a ‘no comment’?” our intrepid reporter asked.

Campana, again, said nothing. He shook his head once more, this time up and down. No comment.

Our investigate reporter pressed on. (This is why we’ve won awards.) Finally, after looking to his left, and then to his right, Campana motioned for our reporter to move in, to get closer. Then Campana whispered:

“… I see Carlos Zambrano.”

As soon as Campana had opened up to us, had let NotGraphs in, Alfonso Soriano walked by in the clubhouse, and stopped to the right of our reporter. Soriano then took two fingers, pointed them at his eyes, and pointed them at Campana. The interview was over.

Tony Campana’s been through a lot in his young life. He’s forever been told that he was too small to play in The Show. He’s battled, and beaten, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now he’s in for the toughest fight of his life: Being a Chicago Cub.

Image courtesy, as mentioned, the one and only Getty Images. Via Daylife.

Until last night, a confluence of circumstances known for centuries as “The Gentleman’s Whoops-A-Daisy” was presumed to have been lost to history. Here, for instance, is proof of its diminishing cultural footprint.

Time was when a man of high breeding would often swing for the downs against a tailing pitch and somehow konk it off his own top story for the amusement of all those assembled in the parlor, particularly chaste maidens who seemed likely to birth sons. But, for reasons sufficient unto those scoundrels who oppose things like monarchies and legacy admissions, The Gentleman’s Whoops-A-Daisy has fallen out of fashion. That is, until Mr. Eric Thames of Toronto, Ontario, U.S.A. revived it last night. Bear humble witness:

Thankfully, Mr. Thames was not seriously injured by his curator’s efforts. And solely because of Mr. Thames’s toil, no one in the world will ever die again.

We’re always trying to search for meaning here, even (especially?) among the Joe West ejections and hot GIF action posts. So when we hit this next picture from a Mets game, it was clear that the search must continue. Why? Why?

Can you spot the second meme?

Well, so, yeah. Why? I mean we can find the original Banaphone song by Raffi and there’s little that seems to predict the explosion of an internet meme. The word ‘ring’ might make up half of the lyrics, and the topics, yeah he sings for children:

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Your Daguerreotype of the Evening? Courtesy of Mark Topkin, it’s the Tampa Bay Rays — clearly hail-fellows-well-met, all of them — about to board a Pullman car bound for New York City. Click and embiggen for a dose of Varsity Sweater Loveliness …

Contrary to appearances, the Rays are not about to waltz into a leafy campus novel centered around the sons of Connecticut gentry and the submerged angst of same. Still, not pictured is team captain Aspen D’Iberville, whose honey-colored bangs and social polish hide the tempests within. Is it possible that his perfect-seeming life is something less than perfect?

When we last checked in with Red Sox paterfamilias Terry Francona, he was making comedy jokes during an in-game interview with NESN broadcasters Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy.

If the above video — from another mid-game interview, from the very next day — is any indication, it appears as though mixing bidness with pleasure is not so uncommon for Signor Terry.

In this instance, FOX broadcaster So-and-So notes that Francona has decided to utilize the Fashion Hoodie made popular by footballing evil genius Bill Belichick — to which Francona responds that he’s always cold. In a different context, we might mistake his comment for a Natalie Imbruglia lyric, but Francona knows what all good comedians know: comedy is tragedy, plus time.

Nathan (aka: Adrastus Perkins; aka: Splendor, the Automaton of Handsome Pictorials; aka: Nate) recently shared with us the following dagger… daggeroh… picture of Ichiro Suzuki:

Not only does Ichiro looked good in the Mariners’ uni, he also works a suit and tie like a pro. And what can be more inviting than handing us, the viewers, a frosty Japanese beer whilst apparently standing just outside a posh golf course clubhouse?

Consider the above picture now in conjunction with the previously swoon’d of picture of Justin Verlander:

Regard: poll (refresh may be required).

So who would you pick: That debonair, cigarette-toting Justin Verlander, or the beverage-sharing, dressed-to-impress-yet-out-of-doors Ichiro Suzuki? Tie, or no tie? Dark, mysterious room, or bright, blinding landscaping?

When the internet’s Aaron Gleeman talks, people listen. And when that same Aaron Gleeman tweets, about 9,000 people read those tweets.

One of those people is the present author, who, seeking the approval of someone both more important and wealthier than himself, has endeavored in this post to begin the meme that Aaron Gleeman believes should exist.

Specifically, Mr. Gleeman is referring to the following quote, which comes to our eyes courtesy of Vernon Wells (and also courtesy of Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register) with regard to the opt-out clause that Wells will absolutely, in-no-way be exercising:

Why would you waive your no-trade clause [to accept a trade to the Angels] and then opt out one year later? I never really thought about using it. You do a contract and you ask for certain things. That happened to be one I asked for and got. To be honest with you, I think about it as often as I think about the money.

Maybe it’s just society, but people put too much on struggling. All of a sudden, everything is negative — you’re a bad guy; you’re unhappy. It’s a struggle, yeah. But that’s all it is. I’ve struggled before. Baseball is such a different game. You can be an All-Star one year, struggle the next year and become an All-Star again. It is what it is. This is a great place to live, a great place to play. I’ve got a lot of good years left and I look forward to having them there.

The author would be remiss not to announce sans haste that Wells should certainly take the money. Wells and another party — in this instance, the Toronto Blue Jays — entered into the agreement entirely of sound minds and bodies. The Blue Jays and a third party — in this instance, the Los Angeles Angels — entered into a separate agreement, theoretically of sound minds and bodies (although one wonders, certainly).

Having said that, invoking society is a practice better left to college undergraduates in their respective Intro to Composition courses — and to those same undergraduates, later on that evening, in their respective dorm rooms after smoking marijuana cigarettes.

More to the point, Aaron Gleeman has asked for, and is now receiving, the beginnings of the aforementioned meme.

Below, please find five images — all precisely 420 pixels in width — including the words “Maybe it’s just society” and:

1. The saddest possible ice cream cone.

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It’s the zenith of human folly to assume that mankind has reached perfection. This is especially true of baseball, which could be described from a perspective divorced of context as being a rather silly activity. Personally, I can’t think of a better forum for evaluating the various elements of baseball than at NotGraphs, where such discussions can be undertaken seriously and inconsequentially. But first, an aside:

This week, and I allow the reader to conduct their own amateur psychological analysis of the fact, I attended a Seattle Mariners game. I arrived early and found a spot in left field to watch the Yankees take batting practice. Rather than the hitters, though, my attention trained on a clutch of players, including C.C. Sabathia, Bartolo Colon, and Nick Swisher, shagging flies out in left-center. They began humbly enough, but soon they were throwing their gloves up to deflect the ball, and then at each other in order to distract them. It’s a boyishness buried deep in the genetic code of baseball, something every little leaguer does in practice, and it never really goes away.

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Today’s instance of baseball-related found poetry comes to us courtesy of a Reddit thread on the subject of whether a wooden bat or an aluminum bat is preferable for purposes of defense of self, home, God, and country. So, with editorial discretion and copy-and-paste functionality, let us begin …

I like the wooden bat. It feels more manly.
Bonk!
Break wooden bat over head, now stabbing weapon.
Don’t put nails in it. That will raise a lot of questions and ill will in court.
But … A spiked wooden bat is better …

Slamming someone in the head with an aluminum bat …
An aluminum baseball bat is a good back up in case your gun misfires.
Makes a better clang when you brain someone with it.
Bonk!

The wooden and the aluminum bat would fit up an intruder’s ass just the same.
Slamming someone in the head with an aluminium bat …
Trick r Treat. Yes.
Bonk!

The body …
Do you chop it up or incinerate? Bury it?
Where?

Thank you for helping keep poetry alive.

Enclosed, one will find a photograph of Chewbacca, the gentle, hairy first mate of the Milennium Falcon with R.A. Dickey, the gentle, hairy knuckleballing pitcher for the New York Mets.

Does anybody else smell a spin-off? Or is that just Chewie’s fur?

(Shamelessly grabbed from Eric Nusbaum’s tumblr, where he declared he had “no words” to describe this picture, which is only slightly fewer words than I had.