As the reader will likely know by now, Tampa Bay right-hander Joel Peralta was ejected from Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Nationals before even throwing a single pitch. Indeed, Nationals manager Davey Johnson — who was a member of the front office in Washington when Peralta played there in 2010 — asked home plate umpire Tim Tschida to inspect Peralta’s glove as the latter warmed up. Following a brief delay, both Peralta and his glove were removed from the game, due to a “foreign substance on or in” the latter — pine tar being the substance in question.

To say that pine tar and its application to a baseball are “illegal” — this is fine and good. To suggest that pine tar constitutes a foreign substance, however, is a bit misleading: in fact, a popular brand of pine tar is sold by Mueller Sports Medicine, Inc., located in beautiful Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin — a town (Prairie de Sac, that is) famously known its potent domesticity.

Below is a list of five substances that are decidedly more foreign than pine tar. While we can only speculate upon what sort of competitive advantage any of them provide to the American baseballist, one is forced to assume that their use is rampant in Major League Baseball.

Betel Nut (Link)

What It Is: Generally, some combination of the areca nut, betel leaves, and (powdered) lime designed to be chewed or gnawed upon. Also called paan, it seems. Red in color. Habit-forming.
Where Found: India. Kinda alot.

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According to his wikipedia page, Antone Williamson “played first base, and occasionally pinch-hit.”

More specifically, he was the Brewers’ first round pick in 1994, taken fourth overall as a 20-year-old out of Arizona State. The Brewers took Williamson ahead of the likes of Nomar Garciaparra, Paul Konerko, and Jason Varitek. Despite the fact that he never really mastered a level in the minors, the Brewers promoted Williamson aggressively, and he reached the big leagues in 1997, when he posted a .517 OPS in 60 PAs.

He returned to the minors the next year, played another couple seasons in the Brewers system, then played one year in an independent league before retiring as a player. After that, your guess is as good as mine. I couldn’t find any recent articles that hint at where he is today, or what he might be doing, in baseball or otherwise.

I’ve joked about Williamson — as recently as this spring — with friends who are Brewers fans. The fact that he was one of the biggest busts in Brewers draft history (perhaps MLB draft history) means that he will never be completely forgotten by the dedicated fans of my generation, but to see his jersey last night at Miller Park was sort of a surprise.

Irony, thrift, unfulfilled optimism, or wild pathos? You decide.

The way I see it, there is a limited number of explanations that could explain why this man is wearing this jersey — which, by the way, hales from the era of the most hideous uniforms in Brewers history — and how it came to be in his possession:
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Because Fathers Day is a week-long holiday.

Yahoo had an article last week about the ten worst Father-Son duos in MLB history. I think this article is not terrific.

7. Jose Cano, P/Robinson Cano, 2B –
Jose Cano played in the big leagues for one year. He played with the Houston Astros in 1989. His record was 1-1 with a 5.09 ERA. Nothing special there. Robinson, however, is still active and is currently playing for the New York Yankees. Robinson is on track for a great career, as he’s batting a solid .307 and has already hit 152 homers.

4. Cal Ripken Sr., Manager/Cal Ripken Jr., 3B – Ripken Sr. spent 36 years, beginning in 1957 with the Baltimore Orioles organization. He spent 13 years in the Orioles’ farm system as a player, coach and scout. He spent very little time in the majors as a player. Cal Ripken Jr. played for the Baltimore Orioles from 1981-2001 and is one of baseball’s best. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 after a stellar career.

1. Bobby Bonds, OF/Barry Bonds, OF –
I’m probably going to get killed for putting this father-son duo on this list, but I don’t care. Bobby Bonds played from 1968-1981 for eight different squads, including the San Francisco Giants and the 1978 Texas Rangers. He was a great hitter, and he retired with 1,886 hits and 332 homers. Barry Bonds played from 1986-2007 with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Francisco Giants. He retired with 2,935 hits and 762 homers. All those with an asterisk.

Um, Robinson Cano is pretty awesome, any duo with Cal Ripken as part of it can’t possibly rank in the ten worst, and Bonds isn’t even worth getting into.

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After his second Tommy John surgery Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Drabek, still only 24-years-old, has a long road of rehab in front of him. And, let’s be honest, nobody likes rehab. It’s a real drag.

On Tuesday night, Drabek, for one evening at least, was like the rest of us: Watching the game — Blue Jays visiting the Brewers — on TV at home, high on some drugs.

And it was some bloody game. A graph on NotGraphs, if I may:

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Boileryard, you’ve risen above things,
But you’ll never be above
Slipping into the accent of
A tenement Catholic
Who brawls over gruel,

Who wanders over a brick-strewn lot
Where the tobacconist’s burned down.
Where the indigent defeated now
Fuck like choleric bears.

A name like that means
You weren’t fated to greatness
But to rankest survival,
By dint of knuckled guts.

But enough of that.
Shall we alight from safe places,
Have too much absinthe
and insult a colonel?

Who needs a heart
When you’ve got a spleen
With a vena cava?

We’ll promise to bury you
At Druid Ridge, but only if you promise
Not to outlive that snarl.

For your pecker is a grinder’s wheel.
For your balls are a civil war.

But this, Boileryard,
This is a hymn.

Arkansas sophomore right-hander and likely top 2013 draftee Ryne Stanek pitched against, and beat, two-time reigning champions South Carolina on Monday night in a winners’ bracket game of the College Word Series (box).

As Stanek’s 3:3 K:BB for the game suggests, he wasn’t dominant in the strictest sense; however, as the following steaming-hot GIFs make clear, Stanek’s slider isn’t the thing holding him back from total domination of both/either opposing hitters and/or the whole world.

The reader is invited to use the following GIFs as a potent aphrodisiac with a view to the end of sweet, sweet lovemaking.

Third Inning vs. Catcher Dante Rosenberg

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David Berman’s Actual Air isn’t the reason I started writing poems — it was to impress fine ladies that I did that. Nor was it the first book to change my entire notion of what poems could be — some combination of Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End and Kenneth Koch’s entire oeuvre did that.

Indeed, I was rather skeptical of Berman’s book when I first saw it — on account of he was a musician, is why, and musicians are famously unashamed of everything, whereas writing good poems requires a great deal of shame. Endless shame, really.

In the interest of making a rather short story even shorter, what happened is, is I did eventually read and did very much liked David Berman’s first and only book. For a number of reasons, certainly, is why I enjoyed it — but a relevant one to this blog are the numerous references to baseball and/or baseball things.

References like these three which follow. (Note: links are available to the first two poems. I was unable to find the Cantos online, however.)

From Community College in the Rain:

Announcement: Today we will discuss the energy in a wing
and something about first basemen.

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Last night, Aramis Ramirez hit a homerun vs. the Blue Jays that was initially called foul ball by third base umpire Paul Nauert. Brewers manager Ron Roenicke contested, the umpire crew agreed review the play, and the new ruling was that it was a homerun. It was a solo shot that gave the Brewers a 7-6 lead in the bottom of the seventh. They would hold on to win by the same score. (Sorry, Navin.)

Given that the Brewers had just blown a five-run lead, capped by a three-run monster mash by Joey Bats, and that this was the first reviewed call at Miller Park this season, it’s understandable the Brewers play-by-play man Brian Anderson was a bit excited. His partner, former Brewers catcher and longtime color man Bill Schroeder, initially said the original ruling probably wouldn’t be overturned with the video provided. Then, Anderson provided this “thing to note”:

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Are you a baseball player looking to get a divorce?

The law firm of Edwards & Associates has a web page specifically for you.

Divorce and Family Law for Professional Baseball Players

We have the experience in high-asset divorce to represent MLB players, including up-and-coming prospects who are waiting for a call-up from the minors. A major league career can be very lucrative, with average salaries around $3 million and an average MLB career of more than five years. With signing bonuses and guaranteed contracts, it’s certainly a good living.

We also understand the realities of baseball — the wear and tear of 162 games in 180 days (not including spring training or the playoffs), the long trips away from the wife and kids, and living life in the media fishbowl. Some marriages just aren’t built for that life.

When the marriage has broken down to the point of divorce, Edwards & Associates can represent either party (the ballplayer or the spouse) in contested proceedings. We handle the special issues for baseball players and their families:

Property division and alimony
Division of MLB pensions
Child custody and visitation
Determination of child support
Paternity suits

This makes me so proud to be licensed to practice law.*

*If any MLB players (or their wives!) are reading this and need someone to help with their divorce, please contact me to arrange a private consultation.

I had no idea who Juan Berenguer was, had never heard of him, not once, until I saw that, above, at Old Time Family Baseball.

Baseball players come and go. Thousands of them, over a lifetime. That is how I hope you remember Juan Berenguer.

Actually, Berenguer, I’ve discovered, was kind of a big deal. He had a few nicknames: “El Gasolino,” “Senor Smoke,” and “Pancho Villa.” All of them awesome.

Then I found this, about the “Berenguer Boogie”:

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