Flourishing almost a hundred years before the birth of Pharrell Williams, Fleet Walker was the original black nerd. Not only did Walker run his own newspaper and manage an opera house, but, as a graduate of Oberlin College, he likely could fashion a pipe out of any number of household items.

It was for this — and also probably how he was the first African-American in the majors* — that the Toledo Mud Hens presented the first thousand fans at this past Monday’s game with a Moses Fleetwood Walker bobblehead.

*Evidence suggests that William Edward White appeared in one game with the Providence Grays in 1879, but was hardly a fixture in the team like Walker.

The attentive reader will note that Walker’s excellent mustache was not neglected in the creation of this True Collector’s Item. The attentive reader is also invited to cast his eyes below, where (upon clicking) an alarmingly sized image of said bobblehead is available for consumption-via-eyes.

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Much like Big Bank Hank, Mike Axisa (of River Ave. Blues and RotoGraphs) is both (a) 6-foot-1 and also (b) tons of fun. (It’s also very possible that, like the aforementioned Hank, he owns a color TV.)

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As I noted in these pages recently, one of the great pleasures of baseball is the amount of data it produces. Some of that is the sort of data that produces metrics like WAR; other of it, though, might be more appropriately apprehended by the softer sciences.

By way of explanation, allow me to introduce the reader to a work of art known as the Terry Francona Press Conference. While perhaps only an average baseballing tactician, Francona has distinguished himself as a sort of savant of personality management. Winning a lot, certainly, has helped subdue any would-be discontent among his ranks, but Francona has a way of making any issue seem manageable and human-sized — and nowhere is this more clearly on display than in his post-game press conferences.

Let’s watch the above-ly embedded one (from July 26th’s victory over the Royals) together and see what we see.

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The attentive reader will recall how, recently in these electronic pages, I submitted a post regarding the very serious issue of Sam Fuld’s moral fiber.

Because I had no real opinion on Fuld’s contretemps with Alcides Escobar, I elected instead to leave the question of Fuld’s guilt/innocence to the readership via a slightly irreverant poll. While the results of the poll aren’t particularly important (although I’ll note that close to 50% of respondents believe that polls are a cheap way to drive traffic), what does deserve remarking, I think, is how it (i.e. the poll) garnered answers from 16 different countries — including, for example, Slovakia.*

This, if you’ll permit me a rare (and, I think, warranted) foray into the explicit, warms my fucking heart.

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I can neither confirm nor deny the claim that it takes a village to raise a child. I can, however, state with some certainty that it requires an electronic village to properly document all the frigging whimsy going otherwise undocumented at America’s ballparks.

In this particular instance, the electronic villager is Will, and he’s alerted us to what is clearly one of William Wallace’s allies from the Battle of Stirling Bridge, who, having traveled to the future, is posing as a Cardinal fan to avoid drawing attention to himself.

Either that, or it’s Jason Isringhausen in disguise. One or the other.

Around 2pm ET yesterday, amid the experiment in exhaustion that was the author’s Twitter feed ahead of the 4pm ET trade deadline, Arizona pitching prospect Jarrod Parker reminded us all of what’s really important in life — i.e. Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

The observant reader will also note that Parker’s tweet was RT’d by Arizona starting pitcher Daniel Hudson. I’m not sure if Emily Post has addressed this in the most recent edition of Etiquette, but I’m curious if it represents an honor of sorts for a minor leaguer to be recognized by a major leaguer. Sociology, what?

It’s a well-known law — authored originally by Hammurabi and enforced in 49 of the 50 states (frigging Vermont hippies) — that one must, after scoring a run, return to his dugout and high five all present.

Nor’s there generally any reason to enforce said law: run-scoring is the currency of success in baseball, and success, as everyone knows, correlates perfectly with personal happiness.

There are times, however, when one is moved only to fulfill the letter of law — as the above footage reveals.

This past Friday, the Royals scored 12 runs en route to an Official Blowout of the Cleveland Indians. Though undoubtedly pleased by their performance, the Kansas City-ers can be forgiven if — by the time Alex Gordon scored in the very first inning of the very next game against the very same team — if the ritual of the celebratory high five had become commonplace, tedious even.

So it’s no surprise that Gordon and Friends took the opportunity to utilize what is known as the Air Five. The Air Five technically satisfies the most basic obligations of high-five code while also requiring minimum effort/enthusiasm.

In fact, this ought to come as good news for Royals fans: not since May 13th, 1994 — en route to a 16-6 win authored by Mark Gubicza — has the Air Five been spotted in a Royal dugout.

Using Jon Dyer’s blog as reference, I’m likely to identify Padre reliever Luke Gregerson’s facial hair situation as a Zappa — although with more of a Pencil, and less of a Chevron/Police, situation on the upper lip.

The attentive reader will notice that yesterday, at mission control, I wrote a love letter to Clayton Kershaw and his newfound command.

Please believe me, reader, when I say that said piece does not represent the last of the electronic ink I’ll be spilling on Kershaw and/or his Ample Talent.

In fact, in what I’m calling GIF-imaufry (in homage to our white-bearded forebears), I present this: five sliders, from Clayton Kershaw’s hand to your eyes.

All five of the GIFs you see here are from Kershaw’s 12-strikeout performance against the Giants on July 20th. They all contain footage of Kershaw inducing a swing and miss on a slider. (Per Brooks Baseball, Kershaw got whiffs on six sliders. I didn’t find the sixth one. Che to the sarà, is my thought on that matter.)

Otherwise, um, here:

1. Cody Ross, Bottom 1st:

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Mike Schmidt is a mustachioed former third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. A different Mike Schmidt is Madison, Wisconsin’s funniest comic and the author of the joke you see embedded expertly above.

In point of fact, I’ve heard Schmidt tell this joke in a slightly different (and, depending on your tastes, perhaps slightly more offensive) way, as follows.

My friend asked me to participate in a fantasy draft with him. He chose Alex Rodriguez and I picked two Korean girls.

Now that I’ve told the joke that way, let me tell it this way…

My friend asked me to participate in a fantasy draft with him. I picked two Korean girls. He chose Alex Rodriguez.

It should be noted both that (a) Schmidt tweets a number of his jokes and (b) those same jokes are frequently hilarious and entirely sans taste. Futhermore, he can often be seen in real life at Madison’s Comedy on State.