While the modern fan is far too accustomed to hearing, say, Scott Stapp groan out canticles to God and country during what was otherwise a lovely game of American Rounders, there was a time when Great Men saw to the business of singing Great Baseball Arias. So it was during the seventh-inning stretch of a Red Stockings-Marlins tilt back in 1776, when Great Men of History Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Telly Savalas, Vic Tayback and Nathan Hale took the gullet-pipes not for a rousing walk, but rather for a proud cock’s stroll.

Come with me, won’t you?

Do you realize what just happened? Five men just hit the lights in what was previously a darkened city on a hill.

Those who know know this: Every one of baseball’s nine commissioners was elevated to the office not because of his executive acumen or fealty to ownership. Rather, every one of baseball’s nine commissioners was elevated to the office because of his libidinous pizzazz. To say that each of baseball’s commissioners is sexy is to bury them in a shallow grave of understatement. They are not sexy; they are coitus made man …

Now go forth and begrime all that you survey.

Sometimes a gentleman prefers a leisurely lunch — one rich in aperitif and Algonquin Round Table-grade conversation. At other times, lunch is an act of war, in which food and surroundings are but blood enemies to be vanquished, raped and slaughtered. So it was with Eric Young Jr. and his recent trip to the finest in Oriental-themed Occidental steakhouses …

As you are no doubt aware, Eric Young Jr. is not a man of idle threats and vacant promises. When Eric Young Jr. declares that a restaurant shall be crushed, a restaurant shall indeed be crushed …

Eric Young Jr. will lunch the shit out of this shit.

In his major-league career, Moises Alou tallied precisely 2,134 hits. In retirement, Moises Alou has devised no fewer than one way to live the Good Life. Witness …

Breakfast of a Champion! lockerz.com/s/268909272

— Moises Alou (@MoisesAlou18) December 14, 2012

Please allow me to save you exactly one Internet Hot Click and reveal what lies within …

That, friends, is a Presidente Light, which hideous people like Eno Sarris would describe as “passable” or “brutish” or “disconcertingly post-colonial.” However, Moises Alou, a gentleman both cocksure and sure of cock, knows that a Presidente Light is best enjoyed while morning is still virginal, the possibilities still puffy.

He is on the way to buy cologne for his van.

Not pictured: barbecue chips, ladies.

Lamentation: Wil Myers, when they traded you
To far, awfullest Florida,
A rifle report of no origins
Snapped across the prairie.

Patricia Neal looked up from her dishwater, if only for a moment.
And then resumed drowning her hands.
In Holcomb, old bones nestled deeper in the loam.

In Eastern Kansas those who married at 19 threaten their children
With Bill Self on a Shelf … and you.
“Wil Myers never did such a thing,”
Bloodied boys are told.

What will spare their husbands,
Whose eye sockets are filled by stupefied tumors trained to see
Nothing more than the defeats of this, the only county in the world?

In Western Missouri, there is a sameness to droughts and wives.
Two-pack-a-day communions, elected beasts wandering the diners and
Aching out smiles for the slackened honkeys
Who whittle at time until the pharmacy opens.

Their clapboard huts, mottled and foreclosed,
Lean and chirr in the wind.

Where is their consoling, Wil Myers?

Drumfire of the Plains, Moses of Switchgrass —
You are needed at once.

We are but blind pullets fallen from our nests.

In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

In today’s episode, Mr. Dick Allen wanders into one of Christendom’s sacred texts — the Old Testament, which, much like Dr. Pepper Ten, is not for women.

A reading from 2 Kings 2:23-24, New International Version …

Elisha Is Jeered

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then Dick Allen came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

Sometimes merest nicotine isn’t enough for Smokin’ Bud Selig. Sometimes Smokin’ Bud Selig needs a little something more to take edge off and to make everything seem a little more far-out and hep. You know what I mean, Bubba Bean? Hell yeah …

“When you’re driving have you ever thought about how everything outside the customized van is moving all fast and shit, but everything inside the customized van is perfectly still? Yeah … Let’s go buy a python for the apartment.”

He is not Smokin’ Jay Cutler. He is not even Smokin’ Obama. He is, however, frumpy, disheveled and vaguely anguished at all times. He wears a suit, but he also sleeps in that suit. He smells like outgoing mail. He is the Shelley Levene of highly paid executives.

For these reasons, Bud Selig smokes, even if, within the misleading bounds of reality, he doesn’t smoke. Bud Selig smokes because he is Smokin’ Bud Selig …

“For once, can’t you just handle this yourself?” Smokin’ Bud Selig says. “Christ, I just need an Anacin, a Sanka and some sleep.”

Here’s a cake! A Detroit Tigers cake!

Looks delish, does it not? The Sommelier of Whimsy shall pair it with a delightful-as-a-daisy Sartre quotation from The Age of Reason, that devil-may-care romp through the sun-dappled meadows of caprice …

He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, common sense stoicism – all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.

This has been your Morning Cake and Quote.

Podcast veterans and those of right-wise inclinations will know of my affections for Nathan Hale, who invented the gun and the traveler’s check. So it is with a swollen and veiny pride that I present to you, courtesy of brawny frontiersman War2D2, the 1977 Nathan Hale High School Yearbook …

You will observe that that is Nathan Hale’s communist-punching soupbone, be-ringed in Artcarved, seizing the rainbow so as to use it to bludgeon those who wish us harm. The roiling thunderheads and troubled spires do not lie: water-colored trouble is about us.

But Nathan Hale’s soupbone will beat the fucking shit out of it.