What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, Zack Greinke narrowly edged out Sam Fuld for the honor of being called “Science or Bravery?“. So Mr. Greinke has been added to our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling …

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Kenesaw Mountain Landis… you are not the father.

Update: The voting is closed.  Old Hoss Radbourn, quite properly had the most votes with 94.  We’ll use that as a baseline, assuming no one could be foolish enough to not vote for him.  75% of 94 is 70.5.  We’ll round down to 70.  Which means that our inaugural Ron Swanson Baseball Hall of Fame class is as follows:

Old Hoss Radbourn, 94 votes

Ty Cobb, 89 votes

Nolan Ryan, 80 votes

Jeff Bagwell, 70 votes

Lou Gehrig, 70 votes

Frankly, that seems reasonable.  You win this round, John Locke.

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When our country was born, our founding fathers mistakenly bestowed upon us a republic, in which the will of the people would determine the course of our nation, rather than an enlightened despotism based on the whims of Ron Swanson, as Thomas Hobbes had been advocating all along.

And so, since our Belovéd Swanson is barred from ruling by decree due to the Constitution and the fact that he is indeed fictional in nature, it falls to us, the multitude, to choose for him who belongs in his Baseball Hall of Fame.  I don’t like it any more than you do, but such is the will of John Locke, who fricking ruins everything.

Yesterday, you recall, we proposed several candidates.  Today, we will choose the introductory class for the Ron Swanson Baseball Hall of Fame.  Everyone on the original list I proposed, as well as those players and managers both nominated and seconded in the comments section are available for your vote, and you can vote for multiple candidates.  As with the regular Hall of Fame, a candidate requires 75% of the vote to make it in, unless no one achieves that threshold, at which point, we’ll just give it to the top three vote-getters or something.  It should be chaos…glorious chaos…which will demonstrate once and for all how stupid John Locke was.

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Hey, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, nice pants.

I went to the unveiling of this mural here in Austin on Saturday, installed next door to the historic home of Willie Wells. Tim Kerr is a local artist who enjoys baseball, jazz, and skateboarding. I am a long time fan and I got a chance to meet him in a backyard full of hot dogs, mexican cokes, chickens, and towering over us all, this beautiful painting. The ‘signature’ on the mural reads “your name here,” which felt incredibly appropriate as I stood with my neighbors, honoring Wells’ legacy.

Wells played one season for the Austin Black Senators of the Texas Negro League before entering the big show, The Negro National League. He also played in Mexico, where he was nicknamed “El Diablo,” and eventually ended up in Canada where he was a player/manager for the Winnipeg Buffaloes. He often won batting titles and was elected to multiple all star games, as well as setting a Negro Leagues single season home run record in 1926 with 27 home runs in only 88 recorded games. He was also an excellent defensive shortstop – he was also known as the “Shakespeare of Shortstops.” He is credited with mentoring a young Jackie Robinson, and being among the pioneers of the batting helmet (his was a construction helmet he wore after suffering a concussion). He eventually returned to his childhood home in Austin, before passing away in 1989. He was elected posthumously to the Hall of Fame in 1997.

Wherein I take the easy way out and post this video, which, among other things, is the best Atlanta Braves advertisement ever, and probably NSFW (unless you work at a strip club).

There’s no more expedient a means for announcing to the world that one’s lovemaking is, like the mesquite plant of the Southwestern desert, both capable of puncturing a tire and delicious when combined with barbecue sauce — there’s no more expedient a means to this desirable end than the donning of a bolo tie.

That’s reason enough, of course, for celebrating this important article of decorative neckwear in these pages. However, in addition to these True Facts, there are also three baseball- and bolo-related images on the internet!

Let’s look at them, before mom finds out.

Here is a young man celebrating freedom with Hall of Famer Ted Williams:

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There exists a modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi, and that analog is Yahoo! Answers, where wisdom is dispensed like rubbers from a truck-stop vending machine. So what were baseball fans wondering about four years ago? This, natch:

And what sayeth the Oracle? Many things, actually, all of them varying shades of inane. It turns out that the modern analog to the Oracle at Delphi is stupid and unhelpful. What else will disappoint on this hollow, purposeless day?

This is Vic Tayback’s grave:

Whether you know it or not just yet, you are a devotee of the greatest of men.  No, I’m not talking Wally Moon.  I’m not talking about Dick Allen.  I’m not even talking about Vin Scully.  I am talking, dear friends, of Ron Swanson.

Swanson, the heavily-mustachioed dynamo whose presence elevates NBC’s Parks and Recreation from sublime to divine comedy, is equally skilled in woodworking, meat preparation, hoarding gold, saxamaphone, avoiding his job, and dispensing warm and sincere advice.  His Pyramid of Greatness is not a mere suggestion.  It is an essential way of life, if we are ever to save ourselves from ourselves.

And so it was with great enthusiasm this afternoon that I waded into a Twitter discussion spurred by Wendy Thurm about whether Ron Swanson would elect Jack Morris to the Hall of Fame on the basis of his mustache.  My position, that Swanson would not respect Morris’ mustache given that it looked like an unkempt squirrel who came to rest and slowly aged on Black Jack’s upper lip, was not expressed.  But my firm belief, that if Ron Swanson told us to we should immediately elect Jack Morris, was.

Indeed, it’s my belief that, not only should Ron Swanson’s position on Jack Morris carry the day, but his position on all baseball players should be considered sacrosanct.  And it is in this spirit that I ask you to help me choose Ron Swanson’s Baseball Hall of Fame.  The following is a list of nominees.  Feel free to add your own in the comments.  We shall show New Hampshire how democracy is done tomorrow when we vote on the candidates.

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There are those who look just fine in fashion eyewear, and there are those who look like they were born in fashion eyewear. Finally, there are those who look as though they’ve been wearing fashion eyewear for so long that the fashion eyewear has morphed into another physiological organ system, the purpose of which is to secrete vague disapproval. Danny MacFayden is such a man:

(Thanking-man’s thanks: Mop-Up Duty)