Clayton Kerhsaw will pitch in front of this camera on August 14th, or not.

While Clayton Kershaw has dedicated much of his 2014 campaign to lowering the self-esteem of opposition batters, it’s also the case that he’s recorded zero starts in front of a straight-on center-field camera — i.e. the sort of camera angle which might best allow a viewer to fully appreciate what Clayton Kershaw is throwing and how he’s throwing it.

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A young pupil came to his master and asked for a koan to ponder.

Responded his master: “Show me the sound of Hall & Oates playing blue-eyed soul.”

The pupil played “Rich Girl” on a small stereo.

“Good,” said the master. “Now show me the sound of Max Scherzer playing blue-eyed soul.”

The pupil bowed and went to his room to consider this problem.

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Here’s an animated GIF of Texas prospect Joey Gallo’s home run from the sixth inning of the Futures Game on Sunday:

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While there’s nothing explicitly wrong with watching an entire 14-minute YouTube compilation of only air-show crashes — and while such a video might serve to remind one that life is fleeting and ephemeral — it’s also difficult to ignore the unpleasant sensation produced inside of oneself just after having regarded death upon loud and fiery death of otherwise innocent peoples.

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Not unlike the astrophysicist whose ever-increasing intimacy with the universe only serves to convince him that it (i.e. that same universe) is the result of a thousand miracles, so too does the analytically inclined baseball writer, with every spreadsheet he populates with sexy data, become more resolute in his opinion that the game is designed to transcend reason.

Such being the case, I was less surprised than I might have otherwise been when, while working quietly in my study last night, I was visited by the ghost-specter of former and long-dead MLB executive Bill Veeck. After accepting a brandy, the noted jackanapes confessed that, while the afterlife offered myriad pleasures, he was frustrated by his inability to personally disrupt what he regarded as a “wave of conservatism” among modern baseball ownership. I will neither confirm nor deny that he directly cited and threatened bodily harm upon Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and Jeffrey Loria’s gentleman’s tackle.

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It has recently come to the attention of the present author that the coat of arms of Germany — in which country that author presently finds himself and which coat of arms appears, hauntingly, to the right of these words — is a menacing ur-eagle of such a type as one might only expect to find in the dark recesses of a nightmare.

That revelation, while significant, has little bearing on the Pastime which has compelled us all to congregate at this particular corner of the internet. With a view, then, towards wrestling some relevance from this personal epiphany, what I’ve resolved to do is to identify the coats of arms typically associated with the family names of the league’s top pitchers, according to WAR. What I’ve resolved to do after that is conduct my affairs like someone who is afraid both of himself and the world.

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Almost notable prospects Stephen Landazuri and Dario Pizzano played for the Double-A Jackson Generals today, the latter recording his fifth home run in just over 100 plate appearances for that Mariners affiliate (box).

Of perhaps even greater interest, however — at least to anyone who finds himself compelled to drive along I-40 outside of Jackson, Tennessee — is that the Generals MiLB.TV feed also serves as an entirely useful traffic webcam for that same stretch of American freeway.

The author can report with some certainty, for example — owing to the GIF embedded here — that at 1:05pm ET today traffic was running smoothly along the aforementioned highway. As for the conditions on that same interstate at the moment, this is a different questions.

The present author is known in some (very small) circles as the sort of person who takes pleasure, first, in identifying and then, second, celebrating with undue enthusiasm the virtues of marginalized but promising talents.

In recent years, there have been peans written to such personages as Colby Lewis and Charlie Blackmon and, most recently, entirely laconic — and also now very successful — Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber.

I am aware that the cultivation of these infatuations might seem affected. Indeed, there does appear to be a some notable qualities shared by the above-named baseballers, insofar as they all (a) are older than a player ought to be before demonstrating major-league success but also (b) produced promising sabermetric-type numbers before their actual, real success and also (c) possess a given name that begins with the letter C.

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Orahovac [or-a-HO-vawts] is a Croatian liqueur made from walnuts and designed — like other beverages classified as an apéritif — designed to stimulate the appetite.

The GIF embedded here of Matt Shoemaker’s excellent split-change is also designed to stimulate the appetite — not for the evening meal, however, but rather for Matt Shoemaker’s start tonight against the Texas Rangers that begins shortly after (a) 8pm ET and (b) the United States’ probably rousing victory over Portugal.

Živjeli, is what we now say.

As was made mostly clear by way of their 2-1 defeat of Ghana, what the US national team makes up for with pluck and want-to, it probably lacks in terms of overwhelming skill so far as the world’s game is concered. This isn’t entirely surprising, of course: not only is soccer in its infancy, relatively speaking, within the States, but there are also multiple other sports which tend to draw potentially transcendant talent in other directions.

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