Author Archive

In Case of Emergency

As every survivalist knows, it’s not always possible to offload your pressing emergencies onto the broad-shouldered likes of John Buck. Sometimes, one must take matters into one’s own hands. So what follows is useful for the fan of base and ball who is also concerned about the rise of a global currency, a resident of any Michigan city center, suspicious that the other shoe is about drop, of the steadfast belief that the Rubicon has been crossed, and or a damned loon:

Post-modern side table or instrument of a homesteader’s righteous and bloody justice? Yes, it would seem.

(Ham radio and canned foodstuffs: Dwell Well)


Call John Buck

Since John Buck has the name of a Dodge City sheriff with nothing left to lose, it’s somewhat fitting that he’s a hero in real, actual life:

Buck ran to the overturned car and went to work with two other Good Samaritans.

Buck and a bus driver who stopped to give assistance were able to help the car’s driver crawl out of a window of the upside-down car. Buck and another man pulled the passenger out.

So what does one do when one has nowhere left to turn? Who can save us? To whom should all distress calls be directed? Who will stride loins first into mounting disaster? John Buck will …

John Buck can help.

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A Gentleman’s Anguish: Bases Loaded 3

“This was a childhood favorite of mine. Now it just really fu*king pisses me off.

If you enjoy hopelessly outdated video simulations, liberal and spirited use of the F word, pretend baseball, and a gamer’s discontent, then the following is for you:

This was once a good thing, but it is now a bad thing. Every day is better than the next.


Nickname Seeks Player: Vote on “Gargoyle O’Boyle”

Although the convention floor, which is slimed in the residue of the basest of human urges, might lead one to think that the title of “Mayor of Babylon” hangs in the balance, it is actually the nickname “Gargoyle O’Boyle” that is at sexy stake.

The nomination process yielded many names, which have been whittled down to a tidy 10, according to the whims and impulses of the Utmost Culminating Exchequer, whose zippered latex mask is for purposes of maximum intimidation. He — is he really a he? — asks that you ponder carefully who should be known forevermore as “Gargoyle O’Boyle.” Now go and vote like everyone’s watching. Because they are …


Thank you for exercising the franchise.


Derek Jeter Is Grateful

It should come as no surprise to you that Derek Jeter knows what the ladies like. And what the ladies like, particularly after a session of boozy coitus ‘neath a mirrored ceiling, are things they can sell on Ebay or give to their nephews:

Yankees star Derek Jeter, one of New York’s most eligible hunks since his split with longtime gal pal Minka Kelly, is bedding a bevy of beauties in his Trump World Tower bachelor pad — and then coldly sending them home alone with gift baskets of autographed memorabilia.

The Yankees captain’s wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kiss-offs came to light when he mistakenly pulled the stunt twice on the same woman — forgetting she had been an earlier conquest, a pal told The Post.

“Derek has girls stay with him at his apartment in New York, and then he gets them a car to take them home the next day. Waiting in his car is a gift basket containing signed Jeter memorabilia, usually a signed baseball,” the friend dished.

Which brings us to:


Nickname Seeks Player: “Gargoyle O’Boyle”

Our ongoing quest, in the manner of a noble knight-errant, is to assign cool nicknames to players rather than indulge in the tired, lamewad paradigm of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out? Jeff Mathis laid authoritative claim to the nickname “Hot Lettuce.” So Mr. Mathis 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 …

Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks
$45 Couch” – Yuniesky Betancourt
Liván Hernández” – Liván Hernández
Frog in the Pot” – Carlos Zambrano
Aqua Velva Man” – Chase Utley
Victorian Sex Rebel” – John Axford
Good, Round Friend” – Prince Fielder
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” – Kyle Farnsworth
Interrobang” – Adrián Beltré
Turbaconducken” – Ty Wigginton
Hot Lettuce” – Jeff Mathis

And the nickname now available for purchase? It’s “Gargoyle O’Boyle”!

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

The nickname “Gargoyle O’Boyle” should evoke for you the late-19th-century and early-20th-century base ball-ist — a man of that blessed time when batting averages and infant-mortality rates kept close numerical quarters. It is a name that suggests a murderous intensity on the part of the base ball-ist, as well as offseasons spent working in the coal mine or astride the blast furnace. It suggests a man for whom base ball is an incurable disease. It suggests bunts, spikes-high stolen bases, games of pinochle played in the dining car, and a grim history of throttled elevator attendants. It suggests a man, full of bale and harm, who will die of too much corn liquor or perhaps a lung complaint. That is to say: It suggests beauty.

Or perhaps, for you, it suggests something else entirely. Whatever.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Ty Cobb is the obvious model for all who would aspire to be Gargoyle O’Boyle. Tony Phillips is a worthy, more recent example, as is Lenny Dykstra. Of course, “Gargoyle O’Boyle” need not be a small-ball fetishist. Are you suggesting Eddie Murray couldn’t have played for John McGraw? Because I’m suggesting no such thing. Woe betide the man who does suggest something like that!

Guiding, Determinative Query:

What current major-league player should be nicknamed “Gargoyle O’Boyle”?

The convention floor, which is filled with actual, palpable misery, is open for nominations …


Ty Cobb and His Rather Large Cigarette

As manuals on youth and young manhood have taught us, the secret to a vital constitution is a regimen of organ meats, deep knee bends and cigarettes. Or, as Ty Cobb has taught us, you can forgo the calisthenics and chow in favor of a one large cigarette that’s brimming with nutrients and wholesome, muscle-building tobacco:

This has been Something I Found on the Internet. This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.


Reflections on “Ed”

“Ed” is movie about a monkey who can play baseball and the shitty pitcher who befriends him. There is a mechanical chimp in this movie. Worse, there is a Matt LeBlanc in this movie. Here is a trailer, which, you will surely find, is mortifying in its breadth:

“Ed” has a Tomatometer rating of 0%. IMDB proclaims, in Augustine of Hippo fashion, that the following is a memorable quote from “Ed“:

Jack “Duece” Cooper: I am going to spank that monkey!

He’s not talking about masturbating. He’s talking about beating a chimp with an open hand in order to impart some kind of lesson or set in motion the oft-taught cinematic lesson of regeneration through violence.

“Ed” is memorable. That one time you got hobo spit in your eyes was memorable in the same manner. And that’s apparently how the movie chooses to spell the word better known as “Deuce,” which, in the full light of its atrocities, is fine, I suppose.

It would seem that $6.288 million worth of human beings paid to suffer the afflictions of “Ed,” a movie, let us remember, about a baseball player and a chimp and the poo jokes that bind them.

Distinction withers. No one is named “Woodrow” anymore. People make movies like “Ed.” The world spins on its axis in a numbing dance. Fools like us mistake the ending for endlessness.


Extry, Extry: 2011 Winter Meetings in Meme Form

The recent base-and-ball hootenanny provided us with several storylines. One of the most prominent, of course, is Jeffrey Loria’s success in unloading all dis gold bullion and all deez doubloons in exchange for the lives and efforts of baseball players. Which leads us to …


Your Move Again, Every Baseball Card

Chestnuts Cistulli has already concocted a post that, leveraging the football-card models of the past, instructs the Baseball Card-Industrial Complex on ways to improve the product and or merchandise and or deliverable. Naturally, the Internetting Gentleman is left wondering what the Garbage Pail Kids line of enthusiasms can teach Topps and their business combatants. Here is your answer:

Yea, verily: Capital. Punishment. Humor. Now.

Let us have executions. Let us have ducking stools. Let us have trials by ordeal to see whether Aaron Miles is a warlock. Let us snuff out life in the service of human amusements.