Mr. Bob Uecker is, of course, such a national treasure that he carries with him the unmistakable odor of treasure. No surprise then that, in addition to receiving baseball’s highest honor, he has also been belaureled by those who roam the killing floors of Wisconsin. Bear delicious witness:

The embiggening observer will note that Mr. Uecker, besides enjoying the full privileges of membership in the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame, is also known among Wisconsin meat-industry types as “Mr. Meat,” which, one assumes, requires him to wear on occasion an offal-stained pageant sash. I care not to imagine it any other way.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Our efforts to bestow upon a deserving base ball-ist the nickname “Interrobang” is increasingly a cluster, and that cluster, armed with a certain zeal is starting to fuck. The first crack at it yielded a beautiful tie, and the second attempt also yielded a beautiful (albeit somewhat contrived) tie.

So now we must rally ’round the flag for a third and — one hopes (or doesn’t, if mounting chaos is your thing) — clarifying referendum. How, citizens, should we break this tie, which failed to break the first tie? To the Diebold Sybian!

Excellent choice!

This being the Space Age of the Computer Future, it behooves even the retired gentleman to cultivate a grasp of the ColecoVision and other emergent gadgets. As such, it’s heartening to see that the great Bert Blyleven, age 60, knows a thing or two about a thing or two about Twitter. Exhibit A:

If you’ve read Mashable and other authoritative guides to this social medium, then you know that the best way to announce oneself to Twitter Nation-State is to, a, tell Johnny Bench to kiss your ass and then, b, inform him when he’ll be home and in his bed with the lights out. Exhibit B:

If it weren’t already self-evident, then I’d tell you why this Tweet is the sign of an Internetting Gentleman of Triumph.

It’s possible there could be a better Tweet than this, but that Tweet would necessarily be a breathless dispatch informing us that you just saw Bert Blyleven at Cracker Barrell, pork chop upon gullet.

Citizens:

We have a first in the annals of “Nickname Seeks Player”: a tie. Indeed, Messrs. Nyjer Morgan and Mike Stanton both garnered the exact same number of votes, and that means an urgent, hastily assembled and palpably corrupt run-off is in order. Vote below, but remember: Present your papers to the uniformed constabulary or be walloped by his oxskin glove and placed into a holding pen alongside other foul-smelling members of the newly disenfranchised …

The ward heeler thanks you for voting as instructed. Now leave, lest your fruit cart be overturned daily until you see things our way.

UPDATE: Two commenters have a love of chaos that matches my own. Take it way, citizens:

TartanElk says:
November 15, 2011 at 1:30 pm (Edit)

Please be a tie

Yirmiyahu says:
November 15, 2011 at 1:57 pm (Edit)

I say that, before voting, EVERYONE should click on ‘view results’ and then vote for whichever guy is trailing at the moment.

Camus once said that we are all ashamed of beauty. For years, I believed this to be true. But then I saw Rowland Office.

He is beautiful, and I am not ashamed of him.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Young Roy Halladay was born in that letterman’s jacket. Over the years, it grew with him.

The look in Young Roy Halladay’s eyes says, “I might make love to you in the back of a sensible sedan, or I might go to church.”

Young Roy Halladay has been said to resemble “Orel Hershiser with extra America sauce.”

Young Roy Halladay once, at age four, removed his growing letterman’s jacket and, at the behest of his mother, put on the most adorable sailor’s blouse for a posed Olan Mills portrait. Afterward, he removed the sailor’s blouse, wrapped it around a United States phone book, and tore it in half. “Never again,” he told his mother. “I love you,” his mother said. “Never again,” said Young Roy Halladay.

Young Roy Halladay is capable of inducing “sexual fainting” in exactly a million cheerleaders, all at once.

That’s not Young Roy Halladay’s Adam’s Apple; that’s a second, even stouter heart.

Young Roy Halladay has a stack of postcards from the protective fathers of the world. Each one reads: “It would be my privilege if you impregnated my teenage daughter. I shall lean a sturdy ladder against her second-floor bedroom dormer. The window is unlocked. Careful of the ivy.”

Young Roy Halladay is there for those with nowhere left to turn.

(HT: Snakkle and Todd’s championship Twitter feed)

In these four-wheel-drive pages, we’ve already held the rebranded Miami Marlins to account for their sartorial affronts. But now it’s time to look at this thing through fresh eyes and loins …

The accompanying music can best be described as “a murdering of innocents,” and the only thing that would make this more “Miami,” which is America’s worst city, is if an alligator were getting a Brazilian wax on stage while high on coke. Still, I must confess that I kind of like the all-whites and all-grays on awkward, under-duress display here. The font saves the day, as does Ozzie Guillen’s pocket square.

Jeffrey Loria, much like Dick Clark, knows how to reach kids these days.

The convention floor is vacant, save for pools of spilled liquor and the desperate residues of mass Onanism. And thus the time for exercising the franchise is upon us. Names have been placed into nomination, and patriots charged with knowing what is best for you have whittled those names down to 10. Please reacquaint yourselves with the impassioned arguments and then go and vote sexily …

Thank you for voting. Please have a pre-owned lollipop.

While it seems odd to make a baked good in commemoration of a ceremonial first pitch, I’m forced to assume that’s what this is …

The civilian’s pants, the nervously clinched legs, the ill-fitting jersey, the forced smile, the scarcely prehensile way in which he clamps the ball — what about this doesn’t bellow “the instant before a ceremonial first pitch”? Given the gentleman’s palpable distress, it is certain that a humiliating short-hop in front of thousands soon followed. This cake, then, serves but one purpose: to remind him that he is now and forevermore something less than what we think of when we think of a man.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Our ongoing quest, in the manner of a noble knight-errant, is to assign cool nicknames to players rather than indulge in the tired paradigm of assigning cool players nicknames. Before we launch the latest installment, however, a trip through 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

And the nickname now available for purchase? It’s “Interrobang”!

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

What, who or why is “Interrobang”? It is the greatest and most neglected of punctuation constructs. It is represented by this: “?!” Or this: “!?” Or, on occasions most special, this:

As you can imagine, the interrobang poses a question — “What?” — followed by an exclamation and or whoop — “Shit, golly!” It is a moment — or a man, or a man and his moments — that is equal parts stupefaction and awe. “Did he just do that? Fuck my idiot face, he just did that!”

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Greatness with flair. Greatness in defiance of human limits. Ozzie Smith. Sir Dick Allen. Mike Schmidt. Pedro Martinez. Babe Ruth. Willie Mays. Bob Feller. And it need not be sustained greatness. Bo Jackson. Mark Fidrych. Or the opposite of Rico Brogna.

Guiding, Determinative Query:

What current major-league player should be nicknamed “Interrobang”?!

The convention floor, which is filled with gaping maws and Sans-a-belt slacks pooled around pale, hairy ankles, is open for nominations.