We are used to seeing Joe West throwing things out of various contexts. Here, we witness Joe West pre-throwing out — though we can be sure that whatever Joe is looking at, he is about to throw it out of his sight, once and for all.

What remains uncertain is the object of his glance — and the nature of said glance. (Does it suggest surprise? Horror? Does Joe West take offense? Is that just the way Joe West shrugs? Is a pig’s house about to be blown in? Is this a glance of fear? Fear of a burgeoning, medieval flatulence of which only Joe West is capable, only after certain meals? Who knows? Perhaps we can never know.)

But, after y’all vote, we will know what he saw. (Everyone knows that a public majority creates truth.) Please vote.

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I was all sorts of excited when, over a year ago, I heard someone say, “…Paul Thomas Anderson film based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard that takes place on a yacht…”

This past weekend, I witnessed the culmination of that idea when I saw The Master.

The Master has nothing to do with baseball, really. Baseball is never mentioned in the film; there’s nary a glimpse of a baseball bat or glove in any of the scenes, so far as I can remember. But, as I was trying to make sense of the film, I noticed some connections between Lancaster Dodd (the character based on L. Ron Hubbard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Kansas City Royals General Manager, Dayton Moore. To wit:

They both are committed to an obscure idea — for Moore it’s the Process, for Dodd it’s the Cause — that cannot be explained by logic, and that require blind acceptance from their faithful. (Coincidentally, “processing” is what the Cause offers to prospective members.)

Moore, The Master

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Miami OF/1B Logan Morrison hasn’t played a game since July 28; on September 5, LoMo had successful surgery on his knee. (Link does not indicate which knee it was, in case you were going to click to find out. I would have just told you; I’m not like that.)

However, since September 10, LoMo, the self-proclaimed “twittaholic,” has not tweeted. Here is a totally unaltered screenshot that I took of his Twitter page yesterday evening (click to make very big):

LoMo Twitter followers are tweakin’.

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Since I posted my advice on which NL team to root for if your favorite team was already out of the playoff picture, some interesting things have happened.

Most notably — at least for me personally — is that the Milwaukee Brewers have a record of 24-10 since I made that post (August 14), and are 13-4 in September. I did not include them in my “study” — for a number of reasons. Firstly, I needed a reason to write those posts. Secondly, I am a pessimist. (Not to be confused with a “fair weather fan”.) Finally, I really miscalculated what it would take for a team in the position that the Brewers were in at the time to get back in the wild card race:

Yes, my beloved Brewers could rattle off 15 straight wins and make a run for a Wild Card berth or even the NL Central title. But given that they traded their ace and that, even though they’ve been slightly unlucky in terms of how their run differential corresponds to their W-L record, they’re still only a .500 team at best, and that’s not going to cut it.

Apparently, all that was really needed was a 24-10 record accompanied by a massive slide from the now woeful Pittsburgh Pirates.

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Mayhap your team needs to lighten up down the stretch, have fun as a team, grow trust. Glenn Braggs & Co. can help with that. Allow him to provide a list of services.

Mayhap your team needs someone to move very, very heavy things. Glenn Braggs himself can do that. For fifty bucks!

Tommy Lasorda bids you: Look at that specimen.

You say your team’s players desire to know exactly who among them is able to get away with wearing a half-T while bobbing around the locker room in their respective jocks? For a reasonable fee, a consulting team comprised of select members of the 1991 Cincinnati Reds — including Glenn Braggs — will be able to advise on said.

To this day, when Tommy Lasorda needs to present a “specimen” of human strength, he refers to this video, and to its inadvertent star, Glenn “That Specimen” Braggs:

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Unflappable. We will not be flapped.

There are many differing demeanors found among the attendees of any baseball contest. The above photo contains a number of them.

There is the photo-bombing younger sister (seen at left above), who has no interest in the game to begin with, but sees an evening at the ballpark as an occasion to enjoy nonetheless.

There is the moderate fan (at center above, between the figures of the foreground), wearing apparel that expresses his casual, Nike-sponsored fandom. He is intelligent and observant, but really, he knows little about the intricacies of the game, and he doesn’t care to know them. He is there to clap excitedly at the triumphs of the home team, nod in pity at its shortcomings, and to otherwise mind his reasonably handsome business. For him, this contest constitutes entertainment; it is not baseball.

There is the sleeping fan (at right above, his peaceful face just peeking out) who took too much sun and too much drink while tailgating before the game. He is an excitable fan, normally — not one of the fair-weather types, he’ll tell you. Normally, however, he doesn’t have so much to drink.

There are, finally (and at the focus of the photo above), fans who consider themselves to be the model fans, whom nothing escapes as far as the contest itself is concerned; who consider the wave to be fascist but never say so; who believe that the ballpark is no place for children or for those possessed of weak bladders; who clap and cheer and harbor heartbreak only with their minds, and with the subtle, silent shifting of their attention to follow the action.

When these fans have children, and when those children are able to sit still long enough to attend a ballgame, those children shall not require popped corn or the like; they shall only require the sound of oak or ash striking cowhide, the bright lights of the ballpark on their unblemished faces, the flowing swoop and scoop of the shortstop, the firmness of the park’s seats on their well-disciplined hindquarters…

And they, too, shall have their likenesses immortalized on such a baseball blog as this.

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team — ever purveyors of obscure, tenuous, and breaking news — has discovered that twenty-one-year-old phenom Mike Trout is considering leaving his team (whose playoff chances now stand at just 22.8%) in favor of pursuing a career in comedic performance art. The Investigation Team discovered the below flier, which was tacked to the community bulletin board of an independent bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the weekend.

“…one the American masters of the art of talking onstage.”

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Cheers, to the future of a franchise…

So, turns out, Dale has a funny story, been too embarrassed to tell you all about it till now. Remember when Dale had that crazy day, back in May — when he maxed out on Icers and accidentally smoked crack from a bong, notched an ol’ Save-a-roo-ski, and ended up knocking on the door of a house that looked familiar somewhere late at night, having to pee an’ puke?

Turns out — this is the funny part — that was Dale’s mom’s house.

Called my mom “dude” while rapping on the door. Lucky she wasn’t home.

Because Dale lives by one rule and one rule only — Call Your Mother — I knew she was out of town on little trip she does with the aunties every spring. So, after pukin’ over the porch into the rose bushes, I grabbed the spare key from around back of the house and went in.

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Only the most thorough readers who also are possessed of near-photographic memory will recognize Terry Doyle as a name from Señor Cistulli’s Daily Notes from yesterday. You might also recognize his name if you are a devout White Sox fan — perhaps you are the very fan that created Doyle’s Wikipedia page.

For the many faceless…

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