Much about the Internet is disappointing. This for instance. Also disappointing is that there exists a person who claims to hate Pablo Sandoval. Pablo Sandoval plays baseball well and is happy, large and furry. Ergo, one should not hate Pablo Sandoval. However, an exhaustive search of HotBot and Lycos and Ask Jeeves has turned up this Internet exchange:
When did the Internet turn into the Internet?
It’s time for another installment of “Shorter Baseball Columnists,” in which we read mainstream baseball columnists and marginalized bloggers like Murray Chass so you don’t have to! Let us begin!
Shorter Steve Rosenbloom: This is why Adam Dunn struggled last season. Maybe. Or not. I don’t know, man.
Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: Get comfortable, lads, because this one is going to be about me.
Shorter Mike Lupica: Shame on Ryan Braun for making his failed drug test a public issue.
Shorter Murray Chass: Hold on to your funny bones because you can make a “twit” joke out of the word “Twitter,” which I hate. Twitter, I mean, not the joke I just made, which is gold.
Shorter Jim Souhan: Joe Mauer is a pussy.
This is a baseball with Ric Flair’s autograph on it:
This has been a baseball with Ric Flair’s autograph on it. This has also been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.
When Bad Company announced through song that they, as a collective, were “ready for love,” the about-to-be-ravished were left to wonder: “What does a man who’s ready for love look like?” The answer, it turns out, is this:
Word on the streets of America and Hollywood is that Mr. Berkman’s tickler is faux. It matters not. The Ray-Ban Aviators are real, and the zests and vitalities behind the mustache are real. This reinforces an age-old dictum for us: one need not have a damn mustache in order to have a damn mustache.
A mustache is, ipso facto, hair astride American lips, but it is also knowing which responding officer to punch first. It is having sex in a hallway. It is using a coupon to buy a motorcycle. It is stashing pot in a gun.
Lance Berkman’s mustache is not real because it is too real.
(Image courtesy of my soon-to-be primary employer)
Ozzie Guillen, provoking provocateur, prokoves via Joe Capozzi’s Twitter …
While I have no particular problem with Bed, Bath & Beyond — and in fact I once purchased a lovely dryer-vent brush from them — I would absolutely rather drink than be there. This is not a particularly distinguishing characteristic — after all, I would rather drink than be anywhere, save for a bar — but it is true.
So take that, cruel world.
Blood has been spilled by the point of a rogue’s knife. Mead, gruel and pipeweed have been consumed. Elvish maidens have been consensually ravished. Orcs have filibustered. Owlbears have cut a murderous swath through the streets of America. And so the nomination process is complete. You may choose — carefully and at great personal hazard, of course — from the following 10 names. Who, villagers of Zargmoranathtauften, should be nicknamed “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”?
Thank you for exercising the franchise.
Former base ball-ist Elijah Dukes, whom various style books insist we refer to as “embattled,” has perhaps done something wonderful:
Tampa police pulled over Dukes’ orange Chevy Camaro for a routine traffic stop at Nebraska and Sligh avenues at 1:08 a.m. today, according to an arrest report.
When officers approached him, they saw flakes of marijuana on Dukes’ shirt, the report said. Dukes, 27, who played for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2007, was also trying to eat a small bag of pot, police said.
Oh my. When something contains such multitudes as this and these, we are of course duty-bound …
What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, Mark Hamburger, to the disappointment of many, claimed the nickname “Gomez’s Hamburger.” So Mr. Hamburger — and not Malcolm Clapsaddle, whom taste and horse-sense would seem to endorse — has been added to our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling …
Embedded belowly, courtesy of Big League Stew, is a noteworthy image of Rays GM Andrew Friedman, Rays manager Joe Maddon and their evocative faces. Regard:
Mr. Friedman’s facial bestowals in this daguerreotype are commonly referred to as “Peyton Manning Is Vaguely Dyspeptic Regarding Football Events,” while Mr. Maddon is mugging what face enthusiasts call the “Golly Amazing Fuck You.”
As the Professional Marketing Professional knows, there’s no better way to appeal to the younger generation — the Pepsi Generation — than by replacing the plural-signifying “s” with a “z” and by adding the italicized and exclaimed phrase “with attitude!” to an otherwise unassuming noun. Another focus-grouped tool is making domesticated animals into hilarious rappers. This latter step to success at the office, at the gym and in the bedroom is not lost on the Tampa Bay Rays, who have hereby put the “wild” and the “card” into “wild card.” Please ready an awkward fist-bump for DJ Kitty:
Much like the Fresh Prince rose from the remorseless urban crucible to remind us that parents, in point of fact, just don’t understand, DJ Kitty is here to remind us that nobody works the dub like a cat from Florida. And like most mascots, he is also here to remind us that the least you can do is be nude below the waist.