Com’on Josh Hamilton. Too much caffeine from energy drinks caused your blurry vision that kept you out of 5 games last week. While you were gone, your team went 3-2 and let Oakland stay within reach of the division title.

To heck with the Rangers, how about my fantasy baseball team? Don’t you know owners are battling it out in H2H finals right now. I missed you for five freaking games. My team was already thin in the outfield with Nick Markakis, Michael Cuddyer and Jose Bautista all out. I had to play John Mayberry in your place. It is not like I am going to just pick up a respectable outfielder on the waiver wire in a 20 team league. How did my replacement do in the 5 games you were nursing your dried out corneas? He went 4-19 with one freaking run scored.

What did I lose HR by?
4 to 5.

RBIs?
28 to 31.

Runs?
22 to 24

Just a decent game or two from you and I could of won. And because why? Because you needed to get Amped up to be a Rockstar or Monster during a game. Don’t you know nerds across this country are counting on you so they can belittle their nerds friends for a year. Get it together. Next time you need a fourth 32 oz Monster Heavy Metal, maybe you should go with a soothing cup of herbal tea.

Hi everyone! I have been on a little hiatus from most of my extra-curricular activities for the last month or so, because I have moved to New York City after having lived in Austin, Texas for pretty much my entire life. This move has been a huge adjustment for approximately 80,001 reasons, but one of those is that everyone (okay, well, a lot of people) here likes and cares about baseball! In Austin, where I saw a shoddily-constructed Rangers bandwagon rise over the last few years, only to see it abandoned without a thought once college football season begun, I had become used to wearing my Astros gear with nary a glance from the general populous. Here, it’s different. Here, people give me a hard time about that Astros gear, and rightfully so! The Astros are terrible. I LOVE THIS. There is not a single thing that makes me feel more like I’ve made a good decision than an old man in a Yankees jersey or a Mets cap ribbing me about my Astros sweater.

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Our highly reputable and totally real think tank has published five papers of late in assorted journals. Here they are, as follows:

Old Dog, New Tricks: Encased Meats at the Modern Baseball Park
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 9:38, 20 September 2012

Protecting the Family Jewels: A Cultural History of the Cup
Journal of Sport History, Spring 2012, Volume 39(1)

Sal Fasano and Sons: Facial Hair and Constructions of Masculinity
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, August 2012, Vol. 36, No. 3

The Kingdom of God Is Inside Yu: Yu Darvish’s Slider as a Means to Religious Experience
International Journal of Religion and Sport, Volume 1, 2012

To the Max: The Collected Correspondence of Max Scherzer
Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Summer 2012

From Rotoworld:

Adrian Beltre (illness) has returned to the Rangers starting lineup on Saturday.

Beltre missed Friday’s contest after undergoing “invasive” GI tests earlier in the day, but was fully expected to return on Saturday. He’s hitting an incredible .374/.415/.929 with 15 homers and 27 RBI in his last 26 games.

There are no photos.

Well, until now.

Should be self explanatory. Which is which? Who is who?

Miami OF/1B Logan Morrison hasn’t played a game since July 28; on September 5, LoMo had successful surgery on his knee. (Link does not indicate which knee it was, in case you were going to click to find out. I would have just told you; I’m not like that.)

However, since September 10, LoMo, the self-proclaimed “twittaholic,” has not tweeted. Here is a totally unaltered screenshot that I took of his Twitter page yesterday evening (click to make very big):

LoMo Twitter followers are tweakin’.

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Once the leaders of the 2012 National League Central, the Pirates are in the midst of a second-half collapse such that they may not even finish the year at .500. What a surprise. But winning the division, according to an alleged email sent out by assistant General Manager Kyle Stark, would only have been a lesser prize. The alleged email says that “the biggest impact we can have in the second half is developing more Hells Angels.” This all came out as part of a report on the Pirates September Instructional League training which apparently included many elements from “intense Navy SEALs drills.” In part of these drills, players were supposedly required to engage in hand-to-hand combat, during which pitching prospect Jameson Taillon received a (minor) knee injury. Sounds like a bad movie I once saw…

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You’re all familiar by now with Kris Medlen. By just about any measure, he’s been the most dominant starter of the last couple of months of 2012. So dominant, in fact, that anxious Braves fans and skeptical Braves foes everywhere are terrified and smugly convinced, respectively, that Meds is too good to be true. Barring a total meltdown over his last few starts, this season is going to go in the books as an extraordinary one for the Braves’ unlikely hero. So the question now becomes: what should we expect from him in 2013?

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FLORIDA– After a three-game sweep by the hapless New York Mets this weekend, the Marlins have been reduced to spectators for the remainder of the season. The entire team was shut down after their 3-2 ninth-inning loss to the Mets on Sunday.

“Essentially, we do the same thing we did before, it’s just that we don’t actually play the games,” outfielder Bryan Petersen said.

“It’s tough, it’s really tough,” said third baseman Gil Velazquez. “You get into a routine and your body knows when it’s ready to go. I’m not too used to sitting and watching. It’s kind of hard to watch the other team come to bat and play the field, and know that we’re just going to sit in the dugout and do nothing while they run around the bases.”

The team, due to its lousy record and general hopelessness, has also been pre-emptively shut down for 2013. “We could have planned to go out there in April, just to see what would happen,” said catcher Rob Brantly, “but it’s fairly obvious what the result would be, so we’ve decided to just pack it in and let the other teams win by default. We are, however, totally stoked to come back fresh and rejuvenated in 2014. Or maybe 2015.”

Reliever Ryan Webb is already thinking about 2016. He’ll go to the Arizona Fall League to begin his offseason training. Then the Arizona Winter League, the Arizona Spring League, the Arizona Summer League, and then then whole cycle again, four and a half times before getting back onto a major league field a few weeks after his 30th birthday. Part of his training will involve watching video of the Marlins’s 2012 season, a task no one would look forward to.

“The smell is always there,” Webb said of fall. “It gets ingrained in you after doing it for so long. But I’m OK. I’ll be back. We all will. And maybe the hunger to win will overcome our pretty obvious lack of ability.”

Manager Ozzie Guillen could not be reached for comment.

Ode to Terrible Cubs Fans

You will give me a look
when I say I am a Cubs fan
not a fan of Cubs fans
give me a look
think me spiraling away
in a high-horse spreadsheet
=sum(Jacques Jones, Milton Bradley, Cap Anson)
=stdev(this Google search:Steve Bartman)
The answer is not undefined
but curiously enough
spread out the collective goodwill
to the bleacher bums —
the Cubs fan heroes —
and get
#DIV/0.

Maybe the problem isn’t the Friendly Confines
but the duo Old Style and man combined.
If I don’t like the brick behind the ivy,
if I don’t toast the party,
if I don’t mind the wave,
I might be the Terrible Cubs Fan,
but I will enjoy it my own way
and when I catch a homer,
be quick to give it away.