It has been announced that TLC’s reality show about Pete Rose, Pete Rose: Hits and Mrs., will not have a second season. This is most likely for the best, as the show probably didn’t pull that many viewers, and wasn’t very good all-in-all.

I should be up front about something, I love Pete Rose. Well, I love Rose as a character and a player. I don’t know him as a person. It’s cliché, but his persona as a hard-nosed, anything-to-win, day-in-day-out gamer is appealing to me. His nickname is Charlie Hustle, for Christ’s sake. Say what you want about him as a person, but Charlie Hustle is a perfect fucking nickname. Me being a “writer,” Rose’s character also has appeal. Barry Bonds has now eclipsed him, but for a long while, Rose was probably the most controversial ballplayer alive. As fans, we tend to overlook a lot of things a player does in his personal life, but that list ends at drugs (that help you get better at baseball) and gambling (when it directly — and only directly — affects baseball). Since Rose participated in the latter, he’s now been marked a heathen. Whether he’s worthy of the label or not isn’t relevant. Every baseball player has two lives; the before and the after. Rose screwed up the first, and now that has forever become part of his second. He’s two people with the same name and face.

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Rickey Henderson is the fucking greatest for many reasons. The following anecdote is further proof of said.

from Long Shot by Mike Piazza

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“There are true baseball fans in Texas, but it’s not a true baseball town” – Josh Hamilton

If Mr. Hamilton desires a true baseball town, may I suggest one of the following:

Bag, Hungary

Balk, Netherlands

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From Fox Sports:

Taking note of his beard, I told Price he’d have to shave if the Yankees traded for him.

“I wouldn’t stay there very long then,” he responded. “I wouldn’t sign a long-term deal there. Those rules, that’s old-school baseball. I was born in ’85. That’s not for me. That’s not something I want to be a part of.”

Anyone want to take part in a David Price facial hair contest? Make your best David Price facial hair jpegs, send ’em to [EDITED: me, because I didn’t mean to overwhelm the NotGraphs tips account with David Price beard pictures], and I’ll post the best on Monday.

Heartbreaking update:

@cistulli upon further review, I’ve learned that the ticket is for one game in April, not all of ’em. Goldstar regrets the error, or should.

— Ian Miller (@teen_archer) February 21, 2013

The author, who has spent portions of his life eating little more than vegetable soup and also other kinds of vegetable soup, understands entirely that $16 is different than $0. However, it’s also demonstrably the case that $16 for seven Oakland Athletics baseball games is mostly as close to $0 as baseball tickets will ever get again in all our lives.

Click this hyperlinked text to take advantage of this offer, which might also be just an internet virus accidentally.

Credit to Facebook friend 4eva (until one of us dies) Ian Miller.

How can one tell if a refreshing can of alcohol is made not only of hops, barley and melted snow from Valley Forge but also honor itself? Reach for a can of Narragansett Beer, the one with the baseball-diamond scar tissue on the cask, and you can be sure that said beer will meet your daily requirements for honor …

You earn honor by punching thieves. You earn honor by giving up mortality for Lent. You earn honor by recounting your night terrors to no one save the dog. You earn honor by playing baseball.

Yea, verily: Play baseball, and no matter what else you do, you shall have honor. You shall be swollen and veiny with honor. Elijah Dukes once had honor because he played baseball — his name on his driver’s license was “Honorgood Stoutsterling” — but then he squandered that honor by not drinking Narragansett Beer, by drinking something sold not on merit but on avarice. His driver’s license then read “Communisto Slackweakling.”

Drink Narragansett Beer. You are free not to drink Narragansett Beer with the baseball diamond on the hogshead, but if you don’t drink Narragansett Beer with the baseball diamond on the hogshead, then you shall be slaughtered by a Bible.

BECAUSE THEY’RE OLD!

In Richmond, Virginia, high school student Jackie Bradley, Jr. is a baseball-whiz living with his uncle and aunt. He is bitten by a flying squirrel (which had previously been bitten by a radioactive spider) while attending a minor league game and acquires the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid and a rodent. Along with super strength, he gains the ability to adhere to walls and ceilings, and to crack even the hardest nuts with his incisors. He also becomes very cute. Through his knack for sport, he develops a beautiful swing that lets him rope doubles to all fields with the flick of his quick, strong wrists.

Initially seeking to capitalize on his new abilities, he dons the uniform of a Royal for some reason, and, as “Jackie-Bradley-Man”, becomes a high school baseball star. However, he blithely ignores the chance to swing at a hanging curveball, and his indifference ironically catches up with him when the same curveball lands, roughly one millisecond later, in the catcher’s glove for a called strike three, ending an insignificant college game in a loss for his team, but also, somehow, leading to the death of his uncle. Ever since, Jackie-Bradley-Man has tracked and subdued curveballs, learning that “With great athleticism there must also come great pitch recognition!”

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Do not stare at Joba Chamberlain’s mustache. And do not, no matter what you do, look directly into the eyes of Mr. Chamberlain, for he can see deep inside your soul. I did, and I’ll never be the same.

Frankly, I’m not sure where the hell you should look.

Image credit: Elsa/Getty Images. Elsa will never be the same, either.

H/T: The one, the only: @MikeAxisa.

By the time you read this, and perhaps even by the time I’m done writing it, Mike Carp will no longer be a Seattle Mariner. He won’t even be Mike Carp any more, by the way I measure the Mike Carp-ness of a thing. Unless you follow the Mariners, in fact, he was never really Mike Carp in the first place, any more than you are.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the fate of a man like Mike Carp would stand out to me from the general ebb and flow of the general human existence. That time will come again, when the loss of a Mike Carp can be felt, can carry significance. For the Mariners, Carp leaves his team much as he found it.

A couple of days ago on Twitter one Carson Cistulli compared me to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and to be honest, I wasn’t initially thrilled by the comparison. After all, Heraclitus isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with; he hated almost everything and everybody. We’re talking about a guy who came down with dropsy, ignored the advice of his doctors, rubbed cow manure over himself and baked himself in the sun. He was dead the next day. We’re not talking about an ancient hero here.

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