Last week, ESPN columnist Rick Reilly wrote a piece for that site in which he appears to have suggested — if not explicitly, than at least by means of implication — that Baltimore first baseman Chris Davis’s recent feats of strength haven’t been achieved by the fairest of play.

Regarding Reilly’s rhetorical liberties, the present author has little to say — first of all, because that’s not his (i.e. the author’s) literary bailiwick, really, and, second of all, because “colleague” Michael Bates (if one could call him that without chortling) possesses considerably greater reserves of outrage.

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A meaningless competition to precede a meaningless competition. Oh boy, July doesn’t only mean that everything on TV is a rerun, but it also means that for three days, the only baseball we get to watch is even more meaningless than usual.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Pedro Alvarez, especially since last year’s revelations of widespread abuse at his high school, Horace Mann.

Sorry about bringing that up. Way to be a bummer, Hopeless Joe. Let me try that again.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Prince Fielder, given the well-publicized difficulties Fielder has had with his father, with Prince quoted as saying, “my father is dead to me.”

Oops. Got downbeat again. My apologies. Let me try once more.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Yoenis Cespedes, given the struggles he went through last year when his family was arrested as illegal immigrants in the Turks and Caicos Islands while they were trying to join him in the U.S. They were finally released from a detention center this spring.

Wow, it’s hard to keep these things positive. Okay, putting a smile on my face. I’ll make this work.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Robinson Cano, forced to deal with his name appearing on the initial Biogenesis documents, even though no evidence has emerged to link him with the clinic.

Shoot. Starting this over again.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Chris Davis, demoted to minor leagues as recently as 2011, and for years failing to live up to his potential.

Okay, I can do this post happy. I can do it.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but David Wright, who for hours in 2007 feared that his brother was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Bryce Harper, who used to have poor vision until he got contact lenses.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Michael Cuddyer, who likes to do charity work.

PREDICTION: Cuddyer and Davis are the final two, and Cuddyer pulls out a victory, donating his winnings to the Pedro Alvarez Prince Fielder Yoenis Cespedes Robinson Cano David Wright Bryce Harper Fund to prevent teachers from abusing students in the Turks and Caicos Islands, stealing their signing bonuses, canceling their eye exams, and making handwritten lists labeled “Steroid Users” with their names on them. Congratulations, Michael Cuddyer.

Framing is an alright talent, says Jose Molina, but if you want a real unique skill, try to match this:

Your move, Jonathan Lucroy.

It’s not really important how events conspired to have me stumble upon and examine like a jewelry appraiser this seemingly valueless 1990 Fleer Johnny Ray card …

Johnny Damn Ray! Since tradition demands that you can liken a player only to another player of similar ethnic extraction, I’ll point out that Johnny Ray was Ray Durham before there was any such thing as Ray Durham.

But here’s the point of all this. Take a look at the flip-side …

Please do note the “Vital Signs” section at the bottom. That, friends, is OBP and SLG — the good two-thirds of our cherished triple slash! The miracle is that this happened, as implied above, in 1990, when everyone was stupid.

I like to think it was Hermes Fleer himself who insisted on deviating from the de rigueur AVG-HR-RBI trinity that prevailed in his industry.

In the absence of video evidence like that above, the reader might find some difficulty in articulating to another party the experience of young Cleveland right-hander Danny Salazar’s excellent changeup.

What follows are eight similes that might at least begin to approximate the experience of same.

1. It’s like a Bowflex that works your sense of majesty.

2. It’s like getting a shark bite on your nice pants.

3. It’s like freaking up against a sasquatch on purpose.

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Tim Brown, of Yahoo! Sports, tries ably to defend young punk Yasiel Puig today. But, as Pedro Gomez laid out yesterday, Puig’s a young man going down a dark road, full of not respecting his elders and trying to get women to pay attention to him. It’s that very same path that led a young Dorian Gray to a lifetime of debauchery, disgrace, and murder most foul.

But Gomez doesn’t even report the half of what Puig has done since debuting on June 3. Indeed, his list of crimes against human decency are myriad and shocking. They include, but are not limited to:

Devastating the confidence of pitchers – Pitchers are fragile creatures, and any time they are being abused as Puig has been abusing them (.397/.429/.630) they are prone to suffer greatly from a crisis of confidence. Who knows on what deep spirals of shame they might descend, or what may become of them? Clayton Richard is hiding on the DL right now, afraid to come out of his room and talking about shaving down his shoulder, all to avoid facing Puig again. Adam Ottavino won’t stop crying.  Remember poor Sybil Vane, who swallowed prussic acid after disappointing her Dorian, and fear for what might be.

Still doesn’t speak English – Puig has been in the United States for a full year now, and still needs an interpreter because he’s not fluent in the language he had no cause to learn or speak until one year earlier. If I can still remember how to ask where the bathroom is in Spanish (Donde aste la biblioteca?) surely he can learn enough English to speak to reporters who are desperate for him to say something wrong.

Contributed to the generation of fisticuffsmanship with his face – If Puig had been a better ducker, maybe the Diamondbacks and Dodgers wouldn’t have brawled, and there wouldn’t be so much bad blood between them today.

Bat flippery – Read the rest of this entry »

Any young lads enamored by the game of base and ball would serve themselves well to learn the game the way The Great Cobb plays it, and for a small fee they can. Does your young one possess an effeminate gait while playing stick ball in the street? Does your son patrol the outfield like a Catholic? Is he about to start working the mines without ever having heard the satisfying sound made when bat meets skull?

Enroll him now in the Ty Cobb School of Baseball. He will learn all the necessary skills:

• Playing while drunk
• Playing with a hangover
• Headbutting umpires
• Proper mother-related insults to hurl at pitchers
• How to hide small weapons in a uniform
• Hitting skills (time permitting)

With a small investment in time and monies, the Ty Cobb School of Baseball can help your son play the game the way it was meant to be played — full of vitriol, booze, and hatred for all other competitors.

Send $25 and a full family history to:
Ty Cobb School of Baseball
P.O. Box 2
Atlanta, GA

(picture via the panic dream known as Reddit.)

Not only can the new Windows 8 operating system allow you to split the screen with two programs, but it can provide splits for unsplittable statistics:

The YouTube commenters can fight all they want about Mac vs. PC, but I think the more serious issue here is that of ERA versus lefties. How does that work?! HOW DID WINDOWS BREAK THE CONTEXT-DEPENDENT CODE?! DO EARNED RUNS COUNT AGAINST A PITCHER ONLY IF THE PLAYER ON BASE IS A LEFTY? WHAT IF THE THE RUNNER IS A SWITCH HITTER?!

Windows knows.

Freddie Freeman = REAFFIRM NEEDED
(Honorable mention: DEFER DREAM? FINE)

Craig Kimbrel = CRABLIKE GRIM
(Honorable mention: KARMIC GERBIL)

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Congratulations.

Great news, registered user. You won a pizza. Did you realize you won a pizza. Did you. Congratulations.

Your pizza will arrive shortly. Congratulations. We’re excited for you. We’re also excited about the no-hitter that entitled you to this pizza. Did you see the final out. It was something. Always is under those circumstances. Hope you enjoy the pizza.

Have you ordered with us before. We hope you’ll consider doing business with us again. Next time, would you consider actually paying for our goods and services. Trying to run a business here. We’re franchised. Did you know that. So it’s really on us to execute all these ideas that corporate comes up with. Ideas that cost us money. Anyway, congratulations.

You’d think a location with our revenues and located in this hollowed-out, post-industrial Midwestern butt-scape would be exempted from this kind of promotion, but I suppose that’s asking for too much. Congratulations. Fucking Obama.

How old are you. We ask because ordering a pizza such as ours is fun for, say, pre-teens and adolescents. If you’re well into adulthood, though, then it’s something you do by force of habit and, at the same time, a willful diminishing of oneself — like making sheep noises while you crap.

Anyhow, congratulations on your free pizza. Hope you like it. Remember, 30 minutes or it’s free. Oh right. Never mind.

I live in a window-less efficiency above a funeral home. It’s an attic with an exterior staircase, really. I find the inconsolable weeping from below is loudest on Thursdays, for whatever reason. My icebox is slowly falling through the floor, so at this point I hear everything. By now, the sobbing is like a bad song stuck in my head.

So congratulations.