Editor at DRaysBay, contributor to RotoGraphs, and bearded gentleman Erik Hahmann has a tough question in these even tougher times: is he — as someone who (a) cares about the Tampa Bay Rays and (b) also has a beard — is he a bad fan if he wants to buy some form of Blue Jays team apparel?

Hahmann brought this question to the present author last night, and I, perhaps too confident in the precision of the readership’s moral compass, bring it to said readership now, via the embedded poll you find below.

Save Erik, reader, and save yourself.

Here’s a poem with a line by Pat Listach — the line itself from an inspirational bookmark (embedded to the left and embiggenable).

Easy payday loan? More like skeezy payday loan, amirite?

Seriously, folks. Thank you. You’re too kind. Seriously.

For my next joke, I’d like to work with children for a living.

Consider: “In school, it’s not how fast you read; it’s how much you learn.” — Former Rookie of the Year Pat Listach.

Pat Listach: in one moment, eating at the city’s best restaurants; in the next, dying alone at a sanitarium in 1917.

Credit to my colleague Robert J. Baumann for making a present of the bookmark.

Perhaps the reader will feel inclined to file this under Old Effing News, Asshole, but the News in question is New to the present author, and thus it is rendered here in the important and electronic pages of NotGraphs.

The New News is this: the Marlins’ new center-field camera angle (pictured above) is excellent — and joins the Pirates’ new center-field camera in the totally fictional and not-real Most Improved Camera category.

That gives us seven straight-on center-field cameras now, as follow (see all camera angles here):

• Atlanta
• Baltimore*
• Boston
• Miami
• Pittsburgh
• St. Louis
• Tampa Bay

*Mostly straight-on. Like, 95%.

Dayn Perry and I are recording his stupid weekly podcast appearance at 8pm ET tonight (Tuesday).

Feel free to submit questions or comments or court summonses in the comment section below — although, I’ll be shocked if even one person cares what Perry thinks about anything.

MLB.com’s Doug Miller has written a profile of FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron and his contretemps with stupid leukemia.

Along with what is a decidedly touching portrait of a person (i.e. Cameron) who is respected by readers and colleagues, Miller’s article reveals some other facts that will shock and/or amaze.

To wit:

• Cameron, who is obviously funny-looking, is somehow less funny-looking now that at any other time in his life. Photo evidence confirms this.

• When a 14-year-old Cameron asked Derek Zumsteg (his future USS Mariner co-editor) to remove David Pease from the alt.sports.baseball.sea-mariners newsgroup because he (i.e. Pease) was a “moron,” Zumsteg replied thusly: “[I]f we had a ‘No Morons Allowed’ rule, I’m afraid that would mean you couldn’t post either.”

• While thorough, Miller’s pieces is incomplete for its total omission of this image (courtesy Dayn Perry):

It’s a fact of science — and by “fact of science” I mean “I heard on the news or something once” — that the human brain is, more or less, programmed to search out narratives. The instinct is so strong that, in those cases where it (i.e. the brain) encounters seemingly disparate facts and events, it (i.e. the brain) will compel a human being to name Yuniesky Betancourt as the starting second baseman of his baseball team.

In maybe — although not definitely — related news, Newsday reporter Jim Baumbach’s Twitter coverage of this morning’s jury selection for Roger Clemens’ impending perjury trial is more amusing than all of your spouse’s work stories.

Some recent selections from Baumbach’s timeline:

Jury selection in the Roger Clemens perjury trial, take two, begins Monday morning. I’ll be live tweeting from inside the courthouse…

— Jim Baumbach (@jimbaumbach) April 10, 2012

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WGN’s coverage of the Cubs-Cardinals game in St. Louis is currently (as of 3:27pm CT) being delayed by a combination of weather and Cardinals’ World Series festivities. In the meantime, the network is running an episode of noted Chuck Norris vehicle, Walker, Texas Ranger.

As the following pie chart — based on totally real data — suggests, however, there’s nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary about this sequence of events.

In his Discourses, noted Roman Stoic Epictetus proclaims that, to live a life free from anxiety, that each of us must become like a “spiritual athlete.” To that end, NotGraphs presents this exercise, with a view towards helping to tighten and tone the spirits of the readership.

Even the most cautious children can be eaten by she-bears

Notes: In his Thursday afternoon start against the Chicago Cubs, Zack Greinke struck out five of the 20 batters he faced while conceding only a single walk and zero home runs (box). Such a performance, extrapolated over nine innings, would typically see a pitcher allow only a single run. In this Thursday game, however, Greinke allowed eight runs over just 3.2 innings — or, about 20 runs for every nine innings. Of the 14 opposing batters who put the ball in play, nine (or about 64%) of them recorded hits — over twice as many as one would expect.

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Former Cincinnati and Detroit and Houston and Detroit and New York (NL) and Texas and Atlanta and New York (AL) and Washington and NPB and KBO left-hander C.J. Nitkowski has published a collection of photos he took of Tiger Stadium in 1999, the last season of that stadium’s active use. Below are some notable (and clickable, embiggenable) images.

Here, for example, is where a gentleman ballplayer would store his bat:

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Over the first two games of the Pirates-Dodgers series, right-handed reliever Kenley Jansen (already a Person of Interest for the present site) has faced seven batters over 2.0 innings. Against those seven batters, he’s recorded five strikeouts and two ground balls (one of which went for a hit), having induced swings and misses on nine of his 33 pitches (27.3%). Of those nine swinging strikes, over half (five) have come against Clint Barmes — who, not surprisingly, has struck out in both of his plate appearances.

Owing to what one can only assume is the product both of above-average nature and nurture, the production team of the Dodgers’ broadcast home, Fox Sports Prime Ticket, chose to render lovingly into Super Slo (and eminently GIF-able) Mo the conclusion of each Barmes plate appearance — which footage I now share with the reader. (Note: both GIFs are precisely 1000 frames long, so they should theoretically be aligned in terms of time. Theoretically, I say.)

From the April 10th game (box):

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