The present author has noted previously in these pages both that (a) he’s married to a real human woman with nearly all of her limbs/senses and also that (b) the woman in question has a number of Special Skills, one of which is goddamn art photography.

Below are some recent baseball-related efforts by that same wife, a result of trips to Class-A Kane County in Geneva, IL, and also to a Madison Mallards game of the collegiate wood-bat Northwoods League.

All images are both (a) embiggenable via clicking and (b) stolen directly from the aforementioned wife’s lightly maintained website.

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Obsessive readers may recall the presence of fictional pitcher Henry Rowengartner on my Notgraphantasy team. Rowengartner was able to throw 103 miles an hour after breaking his arm. According to MLB.com, Mike Fiers of the Brewers has suffered a similar arm injury. Thus, logic insists, he will soon be throwing 103 miles an hour, and will also soon regress to twelve years old, in a mash-up of Rookie of the Year and an inverted version of the movie Big.

Thomas Ian Nicholas, who played Rowengartner in the movie, recently threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie.

I am unable to find video evidence, so I am going to say he was in fact able to throw the ball 103 MPH. Sorry, Dioner Navarro.

Movies used to be so good.

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I have been reading a rich tome entitled The Fine Art of Baseball by Lew Watts. It was published in 1964, and I purchased it at a library sale. Library sales, of course, are a sign that the city you live in is going out of business.

In any event, my spirited perusals of Mr. Watts’s book led me to the following championship passage, which is on the subject of batting practice and the systemization thereof:

You see, after the balls strike the Heavy Curtain of Asbestos they do indeed “drop harmlessly to the floor.” But what of the carcinogenic flotsam they dislodge and help take to wing? That scarcely merits mentioning.

This is because in 1964 batting practice was, among teams with no access to nets, known colloquially as “cancer practice.”

Both uncles and also people who just look like uncles are frequently overheard uttering with some pleasure that, in this life, only two things are certain: death and taxes.

Of course, this is not entirely the case. One can be certain, for example, that my colleague Dayn Perry has hepatitis. One can also be certain, for example, that Perry has another kind of hepatitis, too — different than the first kind you were originally thinking about.

Concerned reader Phillip Lancaster notes another point to which we might ascribe some considerable degree of certainty — namely, that predominantly bare-chested Boston first baseman Mike Napoli is Italian. We know, in part, because he was abandoned shortly after his birth, along with his twin brother; suckled as an infant by a she-wolf; and raised by a shepherd and his wife. We know, in other part, because of the image provided by Lancaster and embedded here for the Enjoyment of the Readership.

The reader might absorb what follows and then cavil, “Sir, that wasn’t a brawl at all!” But the foul-smelling reader would be wrong about that. Bear assaulted witness:

As you may have surmised, these are two New York Giants — John McGraw Men^TM — in the process of a skylarking annihilation of what’s surely a high-ranking member of a besoiled foreign horde. For a time — during the biting, for instance — this could be dismissed as merest tenement roughhousing. Then, however, the gentleman most astride his victim begins to reduce the easy mark’s skull and belfry to a pulpy gruel. At that point, an onlooker — an onlooker almost certainly named “Pinky Cooney” — is roused to intercede.

All of that is why all of this should absolutely be filed under “Classic F___king Brawls.”

Are you guys ready for your 2013 Pro Debut Baseball dose of Yasiel Puig?! Streets Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/yejTrr2Z5H

— Topps Company (@toppscards) June 24, 2013

Those may look like batting gloves in his hands, but on closer inspection:

I believe that is an LAX baggage tag… and a Rookie of the Year Award. He’s probably got some other things in his back pocket too, like some tissues to give opposing pitchers, so they can dry their tears.

On Saturday, Munenori Kawasaki went 2 for 4 with his first North American home run. Toronto — known for its steady-crooning citizens — responded to Kawasaki’s hitterly feats with a pair of carefully crafted renditions of “KAWuh-SAki; clap clap clap-clap-clap.”

This has been your weekly, godly dose of Munenori.

For years, Luis Valbuena’s minor-league resume seemed to suggest that he could develop into an entirely serviceable major-league infielder. For almost as many years, that didn’t happen.

As a Cub, however, Valbuena has now produced three wins in only slightly more than 500 plate appearances. What else he’s produced is the substance for the footage embedded above — namely, the rare bat flip off an RBI single, in this case against Houston right-hander Bud Norris in the third inning of the Astros’ and Cubs’ Saturday game (box).

It may not be fair to refer to Voice of the Cardinals Mike Shannon as a “friend of the site” merely because he appeared one time on one single episode of FanGraphs Audio. The author will definitely continue referring to Shannon as such (i.e. “a friend of the site”); it just might not be fair when he does it, is the point.

That convoluted point having nearly been made, allow the author to state the purpose of this post — namely, to announce that friend of the site Mike Shannon was working at the very top of his abilities during the ninth inning of tonight’s (Friday’s) Rangers-Cardinals game — a game which turned out to be a loss for the home team, but a win for anyone who found him- or herself listening to KMOX NewsRadio 1120 at approximately 10pm CT.

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Scooter Gennett, a young man of 23, found himself in a bad situation. When one finds himself between a proverbial rock and hard place, one tends to rely in his instincts. In the above case, Gennett’s instincts told him to throw down a sick skateboarding move. Had he an actual deck under his feet, there is no doubt in the current author’s mind that Gennett would have kick-flipped the shit out of Carlos Corporan’s face.

Alas, Gennett was boardless, causing him to not only get tagged out, but to cost his team a possible run in a the tightest of games.