When I first saw the original photo posted by Erik Malinowski, I had but one thought; This is a situation in which I would like to take part.

And through the magic of photo-manipulation software, I was able to simulate such a scenario. Does this image encapsulate the feeling of actually being in said situation? It’s hard to say. I would not care for my head to be removed and shrunken in such a way, I can tell you that. But otherwise, this photo pleases me.

This has been Inserting Things Between Yasiel Puig and a Dog.

I donned my finest, most sultry workout clothes, braved the balmy Florida heat, and then promptly challenged you, dear NotGraphs reader, to be very not cynical, to fasten your not-cynical pants high upon your pale, voluptuous waist, and ice bucket yourself (if’n you’ve not already done so).

Here’s how it works:

Accept or Decline the Invitation
If you decline, you give the ALS Association — which fights Lou Gehrig’s disease — $100. You also must brand your forehead with a serif’d “i,” for “invalid” — as in: incapable of icing one’s forehead.

If you Challenge Accepted the challenge, then you hurl a bucket of ice upon your person and then you have the option to make a donation of your chosen value. I chose $15, which is approximately the equal 25 NotGraphs paychecks.

Bucket the Ice
Add water. Introduce the concoction to your head zone. Film this act for proofiness, and then share the proof in the comments here. Anyone who accepts (or previously accepted) and then shares the video in comments will have their video shared in a subsequent post.

If No One Accepts
Then maybe we NotGraphers are just too cynical and maybe we don’t deserve to have NotGraphs. This stupid challenge has already raised millions of dollars.

You have 24 hours!

(from the moment you read this)

Observations from My Own Bucketing
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Loyal reader Kris, in efforts to spare this blog from the Lethal Guillotine Of Fatal Death, has argued on these very electrified pages that NotGraphs should say yes — heck yes! — to a corporate sponsor, sort of a “Hallmark Presents Valerie Bertinelli in I Just Made a Movie For Hallmark: A Movie For Hallmark, Starring Valerie Bertinelli” type of thing, but with less Bertinelli. Well, OK.

But here’s the question: If NotGraphs were to accept a sponsor, what would that sponsor be? Before you answer, “ExtenZe Natural Male Enhancement,” please note that we here at NotGraphs prefer unnatural male enhancement, e.g., slamming our genitals on frozen polyester until serious swelling occurs.

In any event, let us begin by suggesting new names for née NotGraphs and then working backward, logically if not profoundly, to possible backers.

NutGraphs: Given our tendency to slam the aforementioned privates on the aforementioned polymers, it makes sense that the American Urological Association might penetrate the lucrative realm of stick-and-ball humor by entering an intimate corporate coupling. Pro: a longer-lasting supply of double-entendre comedy. Con: the Association might not want to cuddle.
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Dear Cubs Public Relations,

I have your next seventh-inning stretch singer here. All he requires for his appearance is three tickets to Chicago from California, a sippy cup of milk, and a hot dog (perhaps an adult soda for his handler). He might not start out perfectly, but hey, it’s not like Ozzy Osbourne knew any the lyrics to Take Me Out. And anyway, it’s all about the finish. This candidate finishes with gusto.

If you’d like to book this act, please contact our agent, Banknotes Harper, at the cc’ed address.

Thank you for your attention,

Eno Sarris

The Sporting News offers the awkwardly-headlined piece, “Astros slugger Chris Carter: The most 2014 player of 2014,” thanks to his prodigious amounts of home runs and strikeouts.

Which, of course, begs all sorts of questions. Like, who is the most 1995 player of 2014. (Jason Giambi? Latroy Hawkins? Derek Jeter?) Or who is the most 1914 player of 2014. (C.J. Wilson? You know, closest name to Woodrow Wilson…?) Or who is the most 350 BC player of 2014. (Alex Torres? Alexander the Great…?)

Or who is the most 1776 player of 2014, obviously Ben Revere, who has now been mentioned in posts I’ve written twice this week, which ties a record set by Andrew Cashner earlier in the season and means I’m required to draft Revere in at least one fantasy league next year. Great!

Who is your most ___ player of ___? (I ask, begging for commenters to help create content.)

I think it’s wonderful that the San Francisco Giants have made the first successful protest in the past 28 years of baseball. Too long have we been chained to the pedantic, tiresome facts that pile up over the course of each baseball game. The external world is overrated anyway, what with its unreliable sensory data, its lack of free will, and the suspiciously lifelike behavior of the actors that populate our personal dramas. It’s time to make our own rules.

So as long as sophistry reigns supreme, and we can alter the outcome of games by talking about them very cleverly, I’d like to nominate a few contests of the near and distant past that I officially protest.

June 2, 2010: Cleveland @ Detroit

This seems like a good place to start. Armando Galarraga threw a perfect game. We don’t need The Man’s approval to tell us what’s true and what isn’t.

October 22, 1975: Cincinnati @ Boston (World Series Game 7)

I really couldn’t care less who won a World Series between two championship-rich franchises in a year that predates my birth and the birth of my baseball team of choice. But I do love the image of Fisk waving it fair, because I am a human being capable of feeling emotions, and thus I find it kind of selfish of the Reds to ruin it by winning the next game. Also, it eliminates 25 years of New England self-pity, so bonus!

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The tiger-striped glasses that didn’t
look quite like I expected,
as though the frame in the doctor’s office
was the toy on the cereal box —
never the same as the one inside; sometimes
painted differently, sometimes
plastic, not steel —

the tiger-striped glasses, heavy
on my nose and adding roundness and orangeness
to an already circular and freckled face
paid me in headaches lost
(no headaches from squinting
at the Mr. Lawton’s chalky notes
on elements and particles
from the back of the class),
but cost me in those fleeting moments
with brown-haired Alyssa,
who thought I was making fun
of how she ate the banana,
who never seemed so interested
in me as me in her.

Chris Sabo, let’s go, you and I,
and lie etherized on the optometrist’s table;
let’s stretch across expired TIME
and NatGeo magazines until we
get our vision and our heartbreak;
let’s wait together and say nothing
when the toy inside is not red,
       but blue.

Advertising, as a form of either clever marketing or blatant mind control that robs individuals of their decision-making sovereignty while consigning them to a groupthink circle jerk to which radically independent hipsters apply the delightfully clever and not at all hivemind-y epithet “sheeple,” has been around for a very, very long time. Examples: The Lascaux Cave paintings were part of an ad campaign for Grak’s Real Pit BBQ. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa served as an ad poster for Luigi’s La Bomba Lip Gloss. And Wagner’s Ring Cycle was a lengthy jingle for Günter’s Chainrings Und Sprockets.

Indeed, the history of advertising is a long illustration of coercion disguised as art – or, at the very least, persuasion concealed in an interesting-to-look-at form. It has always been this way, including that time when Warhol marketed soup. Two weeks back, however, advertising took on an entirely new dimension – specifically, a dimension measuring 20 yards by 53.3 yards – when, in the midst of the Ravens-49ers preseason game, a Toyota Red Zone logo appeared onscreen in what is typically just “the Red Zone,” sans any sort of corporate sponsorship that makes viewers want to gouge out their eyeballs and serve them between a pair of poppyseed buns to Roger Goodell.

This got me thinking: I am kind of hungry! While eating I had a second, non-food thought: What if advertisers were to employ a similar strategy on big league baseball fields? One possible plan: Whenever a player makes an exceptional play, be it offensive or defensive, the advertiser’s message appears in the area of play where the player made that play, no exceptions.

What follows is a list of proposed player-advertiser relationships.
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Last week, it doesn’t matter when or how many hours before midday, I was drinking. In a bar where the mesero brought me a menu with several parts, including a laminated photograph of the establishment’s dog with text telling patrons that while the dog would dearly love some of your food, please don’t give him any. The venue for my drinking had a logo with a cowboy hat on it. Then it came to me: that is what I can do for my NotGraphs post!

[Verse 1]
I haven’t seen a pennant since my youth
When Brett and Saberhagen played (and Steve Balboni)
And Charlie Leibrandt, Hal McRae
Gubicza, Frank White, and Quisenberry

But every year’s like false hope, prospects, oops they’re getting injured
Bad trades, dumb signs, oops they’re going backwards
They don’t walk, they don’t hit homers much too.
And then they talked about Hosmer, Myers– wait, I think we’ll trade him
Mike Moustakas– wait, we’ve really played him?
Seemed the plan, another year to end right as it began

But now they write about Royals (Royals).
They’re somehow winning games,
With people who can field the ball.
A bullpen not so bad at all.
Maybe it’s just timing (timing),
A division that’s weak
And maybe they’ll win, they’ll win, they’ll win, they’ll win.
Or a long, long losing streak.

[Verse 2]
Sal Perez and Escobar
Infante, Gordon, Dyson, Cain, Billy Butler.
It’s not a lineup that strikes fear– but our pitching’s nice,
And maybe that’s what matters.

But every year’s like false hope, prospects, oops they’re getting injured
Bad trades, dumb signs, oops they’re going backwards
They don’t walk, they don’t hit homers much too.
And then they talked about Mike Montgomery– wait, I think we’ll trade him
Odorizzi– wait, we’ll trade him too, yeah
Seemed the plan, another year to end right as it began

But now they write about Royals (Royals).
They’re somehow winning games,
With people who can field the ball.
A bullpen not so bad at all.
Maybe it’s just timing (timing),
A division that’s weak
And maybe they’ll win, they’ll win, they’ll win, they’ll win.
Or a long, long losing streak.