Editor at DRaysBay, contributor to RotoGraphs, and bearded gentleman Erik Hahmann has a tough question in these even tougher times: is he — as someone who (a) cares about the Tampa Bay Rays and (b) also has a beard — is he a bad fan if he wants to buy some form of Blue Jays team apparel?

Hahmann brought this question to the present author last night, and I, perhaps too confident in the precision of the readership’s moral compass, bring it to said readership now, via the embedded poll you find below.

Save Erik, reader, and save yourself.

Here’s a poem with a line by Pat Listach — the line itself from an inspirational bookmark (embedded to the left and embiggenable).

Easy payday loan? More like skeezy payday loan, amirite?

Seriously, folks. Thank you. You’re too kind. Seriously.

For my next joke, I’d like to work with children for a living.

Consider: “In school, it’s not how fast you read; it’s how much you learn.” — Former Rookie of the Year Pat Listach.

Pat Listach: in one moment, eating at the city’s best restaurants; in the next, dying alone at a sanitarium in 1917.

Credit to my colleague Robert J. Baumann for making a present of the bookmark.

I fancy myself a baseball “artist” but I am a tiny speck on a giant, awesome tradition of depicting the game in all kinds of ways. Baseball art has evolved from cigarette cards to so much more, but the best baseball artists have retained a pure love-of-the-game and it shines through their work. These ladies and dudes intimidate and inspire me every day!

Texan-turned-Brooklynite Paul Windle does illustrations for all kinds of publications, including Grantland and The Classical, but my favorite project of his is obviously his Mid-70s Baseball Dudes. These guys are off the hook.

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Jose Bautista has been many things. A Pittsburgh Pirates draft pick. An Oriole, Devil Ray, Royal, Pirate, and Met, all in the same season. A Rule 5 Draft pick. A Blue Jay. The Home Run King. One of only 22 Major League Baseball players in history to record back-to-back 40 home runs/100 walks seasons. The best hitter in baseball.

But if this whole baseball thing hadn’t worked out, Bautista would have looked right at home – and quite handsome – behind the counter.

H/Ts: The image comes from the wonderful Dan Uggla Wearing Uggs. It was brought to my attention by my Internet pal, and fellow Canadian, Dave, the mastermind behind Go Jays Go. Thanks, gents.

That was the date of Jamie Moyer’s first win. Retrosheet’s box score and play-by-play here. Steve Carlton, now 67 years old, was the opposing starter. Kent Tekulve, now 65, made a relief appearance for the Phillies. Davey Lopes, now 66, was Moyer’s third baseman and the leadoff hitter for the Cubs (he went 0-for-2, walked 3 times, and stole a base).

A week after Moyer’s first win, a man named Eric Thomas developed LISTSERV, the first e-mail list management software. Two weeks after the win, Lindsay Lohan was born. Three months after the win, The Oprah Winfrey Show premiered. Four months after the win, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik to discuss scaling back their missile arsenals. Six months after the win, Desi Arnaz (I Love Lucy) died.

The #1 single when Moyer won his first game was “On My Own” by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. Five days before the win, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released in theaters. Theaters were places people watched movies, and paid money to do so.

[The FORTUNE cover in the photo was from a month after the win, July 1986, and the full article about Microsoft’s IPO is here.]

What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, Jamie Moyer narrowly out-napped Jim Thome for the nickname “Opening Day” and celebrated by surveying his lawn from a comfy chair. So Mr. Moyer 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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Felix Cortez Reyes Sarris was born yesterday afternoon. Now all eight-pounds-plus of him is barreling towards a career squaring the barrel or barreling the best.

Or not, of course. Whichever sport he plays or doesn’t play is going to be fine by me. A name like Felix puts him on a list with many notable baseball players, but it’ll also give him something in common with a revered economist.

But you know the trite-and-true saying:

“Give a man three baseball names and and a baseball in his left hand, and he’s probably headed towards being a LOOGY at worst.”

Perhaps the reader will feel inclined to file this under Old Effing News, Asshole, but the News in question is New to the present author, and thus it is rendered here in the important and electronic pages of NotGraphs.

The New News is this: the Marlins’ new center-field camera angle (pictured above) is excellent — and joins the Pirates’ new center-field camera in the totally fictional and not-real Most Improved Camera category.

That gives us seven straight-on center-field cameras now, as follow (see all camera angles here):

• Atlanta
• Baltimore*
• Boston
• Miami
• Pittsburgh
• St. Louis
• Tampa Bay

*Mostly straight-on. Like, 95%.

Dayn Perry and I are recording his stupid weekly podcast appearance at 8pm ET tonight (Tuesday).

Feel free to submit questions or comments or court summonses in the comment section below — although, I’ll be shocked if even one person cares what Perry thinks about anything.

If you’re one of the five people you meet in Heaven or one of the measurably smaller number of people reading this, then you may have encountered this breathless petition from NotGraphs reader/thief of hearts RamboDiaz:

Request: Cookie Rojas surrounded by cookies.

Because in this space we are for the people (if not automatically so) and because Rabbit Maranville Surrounded by Rabbits is lonesome, I present to you in general and RamboDiaz in particular Cookie Rojas Surrounded by Cookies:

Like you, I once entertained dreams of something more.