As spring winds down, it’s time to get you updated on the weaknesses of the spirit as well as those of the flesh. Here’s the latest news:

Jerry Hairston blames his recent slump on a piece of advice from his childhood that has recently taken root and developed into a larger problem. “My little league coaches encouraged me to ‘be the ball’, and it made a lot of sense,” he told reporters after a recent spring training game. “But the other day I started thinking about it, and I realized I really was the ball. I mean, basically we’re part of everything, right? I’m me and the bat and the ball and [Rockies pitcher Jhoulys] Chacin all at the same time. It gets a little confusing.” Hairston has decided to go on the 15-day DL to find himself.

Meanwhile, Red Sox prospect Xander Bogaerts admitted that a brush with the teachings of Heraclitus had interfered with his learning curve at the plate. Having discovered the maxim that change is the only constant in our lives, and that “we never step into the same river twice,” Bogaerts reported difficulty with pitch recognition, having no deductive experience to apply the spin and location of each pitch to. When asked how he planned to deal with the problem, Bogaerts replied, “I’m not sure I can, bro. But luckily, even though every pitch is a new pitch, every Xander Bogaerts will be a new Xander Bogaerts. So let’s hope that dude knows what to do when the time comes.”

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Caminho das Índias, or India – A Love Story, is a hit Brazilian telenovela from 2009. Duda is one of the main characters. Lucas is one of the guest stars. They had scenes together. Is this Lucas Duda’s life in an alternative universe?

This is Eric Chavez. Eric Chavez is a bad dude (just look at that evil twirly mustache that I totally didn’t draw myself). Eric Chavez is a murderer. He’s not a murderer of people. No, Eric Chavez is guilty of murdering something far more defenseless and expensive.  Eric Chavez killed my laptop.

Last Friday, I was minding my own business, covering my first game as a credentialed member of the sports media (how hard could it be if they let Carson do it?) from the Salt River Fields press box. Eric Chavez came to the dish against Bartolo Colon in the top of the first and lined a pitch back at me. Fortunately for my beautiful face, but less fortunately for my beloved laptop, Eric Chavez’s line drive ricocheted off the back of my laptop screen and rolled to a stop at the feet of the MLB stringer working the game.

The baseball, which was so negligently launched backwards by Eric Chavez, had cracked the bevel of my laptop and filled a third of my screen with spider-webs of shattered dreams. What looked like black electronic oil leaked from around the spreading cracks and white vertical stripes obscured much of what had once been a glorious view of my desktop.

After the game, I used my newfound media power to bully my way into the clubhouse to confront Eric Chavez, Destroyer of Computer and Scourge of Electronics. Not intimidated by the fact that he is considerably bigger and stronger than me, I asked him how he could live with himself for assaulting my property like that. He was, I am disappointed to report, remarkably unrepentant:

“If I had any type of control over where the ball went, I definitely would not be hitting it into the press box…. You know, I hit a kid about two years ago when I was in Boston and I broke his eye socket, and he had to have surgery. Now that I feel sorry about. Laptops can be replaced, but eyes can’t.”

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Today is the 145th birthday of Skyrocket Smith, first baseman for the 1888 Louisville Colonels, and namesake of my next-born child. These Colonels also included Ice Box Chamberlain, Toad Ramsey, Dude Esterbrook, Farmer Vaughn, Kick Kelly, Hercules Burnett, and Chicken Wolf. Just look at them. They can’t manage to locate a camera, let alone mount a concerted effort at baseball. They have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The following year they became the first club ever to lose a hundred games. Skyrocket was long gone, though. He joined the fire department in St. Louis and died of uremia at 48. Incidentally, Chicken Wolf was also a firefighter, and died of brain trauma at 41. Seems Toad Ramsey also died at 41, of pneumonia, while Farmer Vaughn succumbed to pneumonia as well, at 49. Dude Esterbrook passed away at 43; he jumped from a train that was taking him to a mental hospital. Pete Browning, longtime sufferer from cancer, cirrhosis, vertigo, and alcohol-induced brain damage, died at 44, shortly after release from a mental hospital. Paul Cook died of unrecorded causes at 42. Reddy Mack fell off of something and died at 50. Hub Collins died at 28 of typhoid, and Phil Tomney died at 28 of tuberculosis. OK, time to bring this post home with something light and amusing. Um…

I ask you this, dear reader, and I ask you quite frankly — who is responsible for the following quote:

“Heard you got the cops with you. That’s a goddamn shame, you talk on your album, I thought you’d have a block with you.”

Was it from Styles P, a member of the Yonkers, N.Y., based hip-hop triumvirate known as The Lox?

Styles P, who shares Cistulli’s love of hats with single block letters.

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As things ramp up here in the professional baseball world, sometimes folksy folks need a little refresher as to how best consume all of the baseball season. It’s no secret that technology plays a huge part in how we consume almost everything, baseball included.

Though I’m highly-regarded and extremely well-paid for my baseball writing, my background is actually in Information Technology, with years of experience in helping all kinds of users properly use a myriad of devices.  So, to help you kick off the season, I’ve put together some helpful tips and tricks for leveraging technology to expand your enjoyment of baseball this summer.

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A typical fan at Camelback Ranch, spring home of the White Sox and Dodgers.

Avoiding the very hot and equally fiery desert sun at spring-training games in the greater Phoenix area is not merely an issue of personal comfort, but also public safety. Towards the end of his appearance on this week’s edition of FanGraphs Audio (available later Tuesday), managing editor Dave Cameron — himself having just returned from Phoenix — discussed which of the region’s stadia offered the best accommodations, so far as shade is concerned.

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Our exploration of phrases common to sport, particularly to baseball, continues today with the concept of the “high five.”

An oft-used method of celebration, the high five has copious worldly (i.e. imperfect) iterations, but for this series, I have settled for no less than the Platonic Form High Five — once again brought to us by that most delightful of baseballing cherubs, Manny Ramirez.

Enjoy!

The only way to High Five.

Jeremy Guthrie has an actual vault where he keeps his sneakers. He keeps his money in a shoebox.

What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.

So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Dave Parker? For the ladies!

You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “You Shall Die From It Or With It”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, John Rocker and Curt Schilling tied in the balloting for “I Denounce This Man.” I broke said tie by voting for Rocker because who gives a shit. So John Rocker and his World Net Daily columns shall forever be known as such.

So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:

“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
“America’s Step-Dad” – John Olerud
“Man vs. Bible” – Carl Everett
“Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse” – John Kruk
“I Denounce This Man” – John Rocker

And now … “You Shall Die From It Or With It”!

Implications and Intimations

While driving around the streets of Chicago U.S.A. in my luxury motorcar, I heard a radio interview with a gentleman who helms an association dedicated to the eradication of an awful disease that shall remain nameless. He said of that disease and those it afflicts: “You either die from it or with it.”

This raised a necessary question: Which former ballplayer do you die from or, failing that, die with before you can die from? Please note that this phenomenon — dying from an incurable someone or dying with an incurable someone before that incurable someone can snuff you out — can absolutely be a good thing. “Look at him play baseball. The beauty of it,” you might say. “I want him to be the cause of my extinction.”

Or it can be because he is a baseball disease to which you succumb while in hospice or from which you will be spared only in the event that a thief shoots you in the lungs or I cut you down with my luxury motorcar.

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “You Shall Die With It Or From It”?