The nomination process, which involved furious denunciations and copious amounts of the dirty-dirty, is complete. Now you may select from the 10 names that follow. The desperate question before us: Who, because he is a rank maroon, should be nicknamed “I Denounce This Man”?

Thank you for exercising the franchise.

I bought a t-shirt today …

“Mr. Roberto Clemente!” I said upon purchase. “One must certainly respect the great Mr. Roberto Clemente!”

“One must certainly not,” sniffed Cistulli, who, unbeknownst to me, had been lurking behind a potted palm the entire time. “And his name is not ‘Mr. Clemente.’ His name is ‘Bobo Clementines.’ The honorific is reserved for men of honor. Bobo Clementines is a mewling baby coward.”

“How can you say such things?” I gasped.

“Charity is vice,” sniffed Cistulli. “Death is weakness. I do not respect Bobo Clementines.”

Then he ravished me.

In the upper reaches of a multipurpose stadium,
Thunder has been set afire.

In these distant perches,
In this nest of a hawk tent revival,
Cheap of the dollar, rich of the possible,
I am ransacking you with my 1972 mouth and my 5,000 B.C. cock.

Baseball is below us.
Baseball is about us.
Joe Rudi is working in a quarry.

The horizon is a waterbed.
Oakland is a dance move.
And we are fighter-fuckers.

On this stunted firmament,
Your teeth and blue damn jeans
Taste scared to death.

I am kissing you with my bad neighborhood.

What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.

So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Dave Parker? For the ladies!

You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “I Denounce This Man”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, John Kruk somehow confused everyone with a broth of flatulence and then somehow won the voting for “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse.” That’s really fucking stupid and betrays an en-masse misunderstanding of the criteria, but I’ll let it stand, I suppose. Don’t ever let me down like this again. I suppose, though, the blame lies with me, since I green-lighted his coconuts nomination in the first place.

I denounce John Kruk.

So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:

“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
“America’s Step-Dad” – John Olerud
“Man vs. Bible” – Carl Everett
“Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse” – John Kruk

And now … “I Denounce This Man”!

Implications and Intimations

Quite simply, this is a FORMER player you detest at a visceral level. It can be for reasons defensible and right-wise (“The man was a racist menace to all he surveyed!”), or it can be because of some trifling affront of which he is not even aware (“His stooopid lips are stooopid!”). It matters not. He can even be deceased, since the dead should absolutely be subjected to the contempt of the living.

You denounce this man because he is worthy of denunciation or because he is an awful match for your neuroses. Either is a damnable sort.

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “I Denounce This Man”?

In a recent podcast with Carson Cistulli — whose surname’s middle syllable is in fitting homophony with a synonym for foulest poo — I was forced to bail out the host and his inability to deliver neither Hot Sports Opinion nor Five-Alarm Sports Opinion nor anything at all that could plausibly be Served Up Hot. These Job- and Frodo-like burdens led me to bellow that Marlins reliever Heath Bell should be boiled in oil on account of his being too promiscuous with his grievances.

Did I sincerely mean this? As is the case with all Piping-Hot Radio Men, I’m merely saying what more measured types lack the courage to say BUT ARE SURELY THINKING. So it is with a swollen and veiny pride that I present the image that follows, which was lovingly crafted by abiding reader/listener Kyle …

Thank you, Kyle, you Internetting Gentleman of Distinction. There is yet hope for those whose Hot Sports Opinions stand athwart the milquetoasty tides of Radio Infirmity.

Young Charlie Manuel fills his shotgun shells with dried black-eyed peas. That way it just stings a little.

Young Charlie Manuel once benched all of West Virginia for not hustling.

While Loretta Lynn is rightly known as the “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Young Charlie Manuel is just as rightly known as “Damn Good Buddy to the Shenandoah Valley.”

Thanks to Young Charlie Manuel’s soothing presence and weather-predictive hinge joints, he remains to this day the world’s only certified Tornado Whisperer.

Young Charlie Manuel walked into one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants, and the staff knew immediately to prepare him an off-menu dish of squirrel meat and dumplings. He said upon sopping up the last swaths of gravy with a flaky buttermilk biscuit, “では、神を恐れるチャウチャウ、小さい相棒をありがとうございました。 y’すべての右である、知っているya’llですか?”

When Young Charlie Manuel needs to clear his head, he takes his black, street-illegal 1955 Olds 88 — the one with the aftermarket Piper J-3 Cub engine, which he and Rebel Dabney towed out of the junkyard with a battleship chain — out on the rural route and opens her up just a bit.

Young Charlie Manuel would probably be able to relax a bit more if he didn’t have a vast haul of corn liquor in the trunk and strap-bolted to the undercarriage of that black, street-illegal 1955 Olds 88.

Prolly be okay, though, since Young Charlie Manuel is deputized in every county that the creek runs through.

Did you see that shit? Young Charlie Manuel gunned her at the crest of that hill and easily cleared that doe and that opossum crossing the road. Woo-wee shit.

Young Charlie Manuel has, for several years running, been voted Meanest Sumbitch and Nicest Sumbitch in the Valley. Which one he presents you with pretty much depends on you.

Young Charlie Manuel would punch his way out of this dead-end town, ‘cept Young Charlie Manuel has always had thing for dead-end towns.

The next time someone in authority doesn’t survey a mounting disaster and mutter, “God Almighty Damn. Better call Charlie,” will be the first.

Ideally, he knows that the only way to get aholt of Young Charlie Manuel is by CB radio.

Evangelical patriot Jack Chick has admonished us against, among other things, Halloween and dirty Catholics. That much we know. What you may not realize is that Mr. Chick has of late undertaken the necessary business of warning the world about the wicked and iniquitous Carson Cistulli, who roams this earth spreading clap and bad ideas.

What, according to Mr. Chick, do you have to fear from this epicene waif who prefers fever-dreams of privilege to honest toil? Much, it turns out. For soul-thieving instance …

Carson Cistulli, upon threat of discipline from a dark force, encourages drug use among at-risk youths.

Carson Cistulli gives syphilis and AIDS to pregnant innocents.

Carson Cistulli, sub-rosa product of public schools, had a Wiccan teacher and from her he learned black arts and the finer points of animal torture.

Carson Cistulli, besides advocating a weak and mewling foreign policy, once murdered his own brother. This was the only act of anything resembling physical courage in Carson Cistulli’s foul-smelling life.

Go and tell others what Jack Chick has taught you about Carson Cistulli.

On Thursday, Twitter lurched to a halt and then sloughed off into the murky fathoms of the sea when a single tweet embodied the entire essence of the very medium of which it was believed to be but an infinitesimal sliver. This is that tweet:

And this is the Internet.

From the depths of newspaper morgue and the dead-letter office come this Collage Most Murderous …

Dave Parker is not on the loose on the streets of your town, but that’s only because Dave Parker’s call is coming from inside the house.

You have refused to eat your mush. You have been told many times to hush. Your eyebrow has broken the brush.

So goodnight, room.

And, at long last, goodnight, Wally Moon.

Goodnight, nobody.