One night in 1977, Dennis Martinez was confronted by a decision: fight or go make love somewhere …

When faced with an onrushing and plainly nettled George Scott, a gentleman scampers. “A hasty retreat is what he beat,” Vin Scully might have said if he’d been calling the game. But probably not.

Martinez, it should be noted, lived to feel the breeze on his loins for another many days. Scott, it should be noted, is to this day still being restrained by Martinez’s long-retired teammates among the ruins of Memorial Stadium.

Readers — no fewer than one of them — not long ago sounded the call, clarion in nature and execution, for more classic brawls. So it is with the sense of agency that comes from satisfying a customer that I introduce the new NotGraphs category: “Classic Fu*king Brawls.”

If loving you is a crime, then draw-and-quarter Buster Olney and set his remnants ablaze in the public square as punishment for breaking the laws of the heart …

Buster Olney breaks his own ribs from within because his heart beats too mightily, too much without ceasing. The hands that will one day hold you? He uses those meddlesome court orders to dry them.

(Longing, lingering stare at Lana Berry for the original daguerreotype)

Over the weekend most recent, you may have noticed a foul-smelling interloper in our midst. He is unwelcome. He is a boor. His ripping flatulence has despoiled the taffeta furnishings. We all wish he would go away and leave us to our base-ball.

You know, they call Joe West a cowboy because he is exactly that. For instance, upon discovering that this town was not big enough for both him and the dread cattle-rustler and claim-jumper Doomsday Beans-Doogan, he did away with Mr. Beans-Doogan. So we call upon you, Sire West, to please escort this mouth-breathing intruder off the premises …

Thank you, Joe West. Thank you.

He’s done something, that’s for sure. Peter Graves has seen a thing or two regarding a thing or two, so he’s not exactly surprised by what Johnny Bench has done. “I’m not exactly surprised by what you’ve done, Johnny Bench,” Peter Graves might be saying.

But what of young Lesley Ann Warren? Whatever Johnny Bench has done, it has complicated her feelings for him. “Heart-rending effrontery, thy name is Jack Bench,” she seems to be saying. “Henceforth, my boudoir door shall remain bolted.”

So I ask you, NotGraphs readers, what is it that Johnny Bench has done?

(A hat and the tipping of it: Jeff Polman)

Indians prospect Eric Berger has a mustache.

Let us crush the uprising.

Let us check our chained pocket watch before signing the railroad deed.

Let us agree not to speak of the colonel’s history of ravishment.

Let our wives die in childbirth.

Let our sons die of the catarrh.

Let us poach buffalo from the dining car.

Let us build, in the town square, a monument to the general on horseback as he watches the slaughter through his opera glasses and from the safety of a garrisoned hillside.

Let us ponder the imponderable while the minister intones.

Let us perpetrate a mining disaster so as to smother the union.

Let us agree that the issue will be decided by the men in this room.

Let us decide that the mining disaster will be our casus belli.

Let us toast the decision.

Let us make sure that all the pine boxes of dead Christians will fit in the vessel’s hold.

Let us backhand the maid-servant as punishment for her lowliness.

Let us over-murder the mewling settlers.

Let us pass the vicar a clod of dollars in a handshake.

Let us threaten the constable with a glance.

Let us see that those coxcombs and jackanapes, so promiscuous with their complaints, are seen to.

Let us pound the the scroll-top desk upon reading the telegram.

Let us sign the order of execution with a plumed quill.

Let us sip absinthe alone in the dark.

For Indians prospect Eric Berger has a mustache.

The nomination process, which involved sturdy building materials, sinew and poo, is complete. Now you may select from the 10 names that follow. The desperate question before us: Who, because he he could punch out a Sequoia, should be nicknamed “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”?

Thank you for exercising the franchise.

Something rolled, not unlike waves of grain, into my inbox:

First of all, congratulations to Messrs. Cloyd and Ruf for what’s a genuine honor. Second of all, thank you to Messrs. Cloyd and Ruf for giving one the occasion to imagine new dimensions of the hard-nosed procedural …

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: “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, Carl Everett talked his drinking buddies into crucifying him to the front door of a brothel and thus claimed the nickname “Man vs. Bible.” 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

And now … “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”!

Implications and Intimations

Internet Hot Links teach us that the phrase “like a brick shithouse” was, understandably enough, originally concocted to indicate a lady of pleasing physicality. Time and tide, however, have altered the phrase to mean a gentleman of sturdy build, capable of beating up a nation. It is this latter connotation that informs this particular exercise.

The former player, then, should not only be built like a brick shithouse, but should also be actually be, in the most literal of senses, a stink lodge constructed of bricks and mortar and-or impregnable concrete structure filled with big shit. Here’s a helpful artist’s rendering:

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse”?

I am an unqualified admirer of the prose faculties of Judith Martin, whom you may know by her nom de suavity, “Miss Manners.”

Not only is Miss Manners America’s leading Gentleman with Lady Parts, but her ministrations have also helped preserve Western Civilization more than any stupid monk in his lamewad scriptorium. While said Western Civilization is undoubtedly lingering in hospice care at this very moment, Miss Manners soldiers on, armed with nothing but savoir-faire and a shimmering grace of a caliber foreign to our stinking world.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the lessons Miss Manners imparts regarding, say, one’s mother-in-law who insists upon talking about her scabies during high tea or that utter beast in first class are also applicable to baseball. For instance, in one of her recent epistolary lectures she reproved a young lady who had received not one but two ghastly marriage proposals via cellular-telephone textual message thusly: “That you have captivated two gentlemen who thought this would charm you is alarming.”

Baseball players, you know, are but low creatures in need of horse-whispering and social finishing, so the wisdom of Miss Manners penetrates their tiny worlds. To wit …

Now go and better yourselves, swine. And always crap while wearing a tailored vest.