“Whither Dayn Perry?” America asks in unison.

Listeners of FanGraphs Audio will know — and not-listeners of FanGraphs Audio will be dressed down verbally beside all America’s office water coolers for not knowing — that frequent guest and 24-hour patriot Dayn Perry has made a habit, on that program, of referring to his fighting fists as “soup bones.” Among those upon whom Perry has threatened violence by way of soup bone are right-handed pitcher Roy Oswalt, FanGraphs writer Jeff Sullivan, and (if the author is remembering correctly) “all cowards.”

What concerned reader and U.S. ambassador to LOLs Les Carter has found, then, is of some note. In the photo here, submitted by same concerned reader, what we find are soup bones. What we don’t find, however, is Dayn Perry attached to one or the other end of those soup bones.

What we have here, reader, is a plot that’s thickening. At one point, there wasn’t a plot. And then there was a plot, but it was pretty thin by plot-standards. But now that same plot is thickening, like I say. After that, at this rate, it might become turgid. There might be a turgid plot in all out futures, is the point of this post.

The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

On a broad scale, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez are very similar, in the fact that they both are one of the lucky few who get/got  to play baseball for a living. They were both born in the Dominican Republic, and they even play the same general position of outfield. However, if you zoom in strictly to the world of baseball players, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez aren’t very similar at all. They are separated by thirteen years of age, 511 home runs, and probably around 40 pounds. They have never played on the same team, and have a moderate discrepancy in career salaries – somewhere around $201 million. Even in their tiny, inevitably-meaningless world, there aren’t a whole lot of reasons for Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez to, like, hang out.

And yet, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez will not let social norms and societal precedents guide them. They will march to the beat of their own drummers. They will blaze their own trails, carve their own niches, answer to no one but themselves. They’re gonna get all Dead Poets Society up in this bitch. We are not their dads, and we can’t tell them what to do.

So, yeah, if Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez want to hang out, they will. If they want to go to what looks like some sort of quinceañera held in the unfinished back room of a banquet hall, they’re going to do it. If they want to pose for a blurry picture with a card table full of salads, baked beans, and what appears to be a slow-roasted human leg, they will, damn it. And if Carlos Gomez wants to tweet that picture, then no one is going to stop him. Because life is short. You should spend as much of it as you can at a cannibal party with players too washed-up to catch on with the Oakland A’s. Carpe diem, indeed, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez. Let us all raise a glass to this most curious of friendships.

David Price is active on Twitter.

Today, one so-called “Italian” might be thinking that David Price is a little too active on twitter.

@davidprice14 suave!!! Sneak a pic!!

— Scotty Saunier (@scottygolf1) December 12, 2012

lol ok RT @scottygolf1: @davidprice14 suave!!! Sneak a pic!! lockerz.com/s/268415276

— David Price (@DAVIDprice14) December 12, 2012

@LoTheGooner, the Innocent Creeped-Upon
(Photo Credit: David Price)

Mr. Price, this behavior is not becoming of a Cy Young Award winner, a professional athlete of your caliber, a man of your social standing and education, a specimen of your cut! 😉

How dare you violate the privacy of an everyday person! You, a professional athlete, whose privacy is surely never violated, pics of whose uniformed ass are surely never tweeted by common folk!

I think you should be stripped of your Cy Young Award, Mr. Price. In fact, I think you should be stripped and then photographed and then those photos should be tweeted to the whole world! Tit for tat! Next time let a Goon enjoy his Hollandaise-soaked crepes in peace, Mr. Price!

Rally the @LoTheGooners of the world! Take back Twitter from jerks like David Price! Huzzah and bully!

Greinke said “loved it” in Milwaukee.But money always talks. Always.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) December 11, 2012

As noted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Haudricourt on Tuesday in some number of characters fewer than 140, Zack Greinke’s decision to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers — despite whatever affections the right-hander might have had for Milwaukee — was likely influenced by the giant, giant contract available to him from the coffers of that West Coast team. “Money talks,” Haudricourt writes starkly.

“What does it say, though?” the present author wondered idly — and then, owing to how he’s contractually obligated to produce content on a daily basis, imagined (poorly) in the style of a David Foster Wallace story.

As a concept, mostly. Trying to locate the actual physical me would be pretty difficult. Impossible, maybe? I don’t know. There’s an idea of me, only. An idea corroborated by the Federal Reserve, foreign exchanges, etc. Not only is it complicated, but I also explain it poorly.

Q.

He only just signed, of course, so I haven’t been distributed into his accounts — nor the accounts of his employer, even, the Dodgers. Nor, so long as we’re following the chain of supply backwards, the account of the Dodgers’ contractual partner, News Corp., from whom the bulk of me will come — so far as I understand, I mean. Ticket sales and merchandising, of course. That, too. I’m all over the place, really.

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Last Friday, on these very electronic pages, one Carson Cistulli talked about things no one is talking about, one of which being the Hall of Fame status of former Blue Jay third baseman and tastemaker Kelly Gruber.

(Kelly Gruber, last known photograph.)

One might dismiss this sort of inquiry as media satire, and sleep easy at night; one might, that is, if one were a lazy-minded rapscallion. For there are mysteries that lurk within the heart and hair of Kelly Gruber, mysteries that are easily tangled among his cascading locks. Why is nobody talking about Kelly Gruber? Dare we call it… conspiracy?

What else could explain the fact that despite the fact that Gruber fulfilled the requirements for being elected to the Hall of Fame, having played ten seasons in major league baseball, and yet never saw his name on the ballot? Could it be that the commissioner feared the hypnotic effects of Gruber’s shiny golden mane, enchanting writers into voting the hair and not the man?

Why is no one talking about this, indeed.

After all, he may be no Lloyd Moseby, but a vote for Gruber would hardly bring shame upon the Hall. Since his eligibility in 1998, no less than 26 players have appeared on the ballot with a WAR lower than our outcast (16.9). Seven of those twenty-six even received at least one vote. Three of those seven are card-carrying members of the American Communist Party.

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“I know what will make for a marginally-interesting post! I’ll check the Twitter feeds of Jewish baseball players and compile all of their Hanukkah-related tweets into one mega-post.”

Here are the results of my exhaustive search. Danny Valencia (who is indeed Jewish) re-tweeted the Orioles’ Happy Hanukkah tweet. This completes the results of my search. I thought it would end up more interesting than this, Sam Fuld. I hoped for so much more, Craig Breslow. Are you not on Twitter, Ian Kinsler? Oh well, not every idea leads to great success. Happy 5th night of Hanukkah.

Happy Hanukkah from the Baltimore Orioles! twitter.com/Orioles/status…

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) December 8, 2012

Please allow me to review ESPN’s Top 100 base ball players.

— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) December 11, 2012

Readers who have found their way to this corner of the internet clearly possess both (a) discriminating literary tastes and (b) the exact perfect amount of free time. Also, they’re helping to pay my salary. Congratulations on all accounts.

Having said that, readers should now find their respective ways to another part of the internet — specifically, the one with Old Hoss Radbourn’s Twitter account on it. There, from the shadowy beyond, Old Hoss is currently reviewing ESPN’s ranking of baseball’s top-100 players ever.

For example:

#80: C. Gehringer. A worthy inclusion. Stole the 1937 MVP award from an Italian. Good man and fine patriot.

— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) December 11, 2012

New Phillies third baseman Michael Young gets acquainted with his new hometown.

Shortly after trading a pair of minor-league pitchers to acquire Michael Young from Texas, Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro said of the club’s new starting third baseman that he (i.e. Young) has what the Phillies need.

“And what is that, precisely?” the present author was inclined to ask aloud, in the silence of his (i.e. the author’s) small Midwestern apartment. “What do, or did, the Phillies need?”

“These types of things,” the author presumed (by way of deduction) Ruben Amaro would answer, before continuing as follows.

A Human Person
“A robot, or some sort of half-man, half-machine situation — if not expressly banned by the rules of baseball — is at least frowned upon pretty hard. What the Phillies don’t need is to be frowned upon. Michael Young, as a human person, helps us achieve that goal.”

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