Your Daguerreotype of the Evening is (allegedly) not former major-league catcher Biff Pocoroba …

But I have my doubts about that.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium was, provably and undeniably, the place where YouTube commenters gathered before there was such a thing as YouTube. As such, there are any number of ways to describe the angsty tincture of assholes and disimprisoned maniacs that prowled within its walls. And thanks to SI’s excellent and mustachioed Gary Smith, we have some championship examples of doing so.

First, a couple of warm-ups:

“It was San Quentin,” says Head.

“It was a circular concrete slab of crap,” says Boo.

Not half bad. But would anyone care to trump?

“It was a green dying turd,” says Dan Tarng, a first-generation Taiwanese-American fan who needs to meet Head and Boo.

In the course of stinking, meaningless human events, you might be tempted to describe Veterans Stadium in your own words. Do not. Instead, pay obeisance to Mr. Dan Tarng, who was through with it before you knew what to do with it.

“I once thought this game of base ball to be something paltry — a trifling, a merest emanation. Yet, lo, across my years I have learned that the end of the base-ball season is as redolent of death, of foreordained annihilation, as the vicar’s withered corpse.” – Pauly Shore

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

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 Murray Chass: Let me tell you about the time that Tony La Russa had to go potty.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: OH HAI LARRY LUCCHINO!!11!ONE!!!

Shorter T.J. Simers: Don Rickles likes the Dodgers.

Shorter Frank Isola: Here’s the latest on Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit.

Shorter Chris DeLuca: Theo Epstein still hasn’t won a World Series for the Cubs.

Much like you, I slogged through this day encumbered by the grim assumption that, once again, I would not see the final outs of Dennis Martinez’s 1991 perfect game broadcast in French. Thankfully and mercifully, I was wrong:

The Constitution teaches us that Jesus spoke American and killed the dinosaurs. But French is okay, too.

Young Lance Berkman, although generally quite happy, affects for all photos a look he calls, “brooding teenage thunder.”

Young Lance Berkman is wearing a paisley cummerbund (not pictured).

To Young Lance Berkman, the paisley cummerbund is not “novelty”; it is merely “sweet.”

Young Lance Berkman, in the summer ahead, will touch boob at the snack bar at the water slide.

Young Lance Berkman owes his hair to L’Oreal sculpting mousse.

Young Lance Berkman tells people he owes his hair to used Valvoline.

Young Lance Berkman, despite impassioned claims to the contrary, did not rip his Girbaud jeans on a nail.

Young Lance Berkman dreams of making urgent, forbidden love to Heather Thomas.

Ideally, Young Lance Berkman will make urgent, forbidden love to Heather Thomas on top of the snack bar at the water slide.

More ideally still, Young Lance Berkman, while making urgent, forbidden love to Heather Thomas on top of the snack bar at the water slide, will sprout wings not unlike those of the Pontiac Firebird.

Young Lance Berkman will use those wings to get Heather Thomas out of this dead-end town.

Young Lance Berkman will figure this thing out yet.

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

Your Daguerreotype of the Evening is perhaps fraudulent. But this space is not a bastion of quality assurance, so we don’t much give a shit about that. All we know is that artistic renderings of Morty Klaus Robbman’s uniform have been leaked, and we are absolutely a vessel for leakages …

Geography teachers the world over refer to Florida as “America’s tired-yet-sexless pecker.” The above image has nothing to do with that fact.

The convention floor is filled with happy, beaten asses. Names have been placed into nomination, and some of those names have been subsequently culled according to the whims of the Parliamentarian with the Lidless Eye. And now, citizens, it is time to vote.

The matter before you: Which player is most worthy of the nickname “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass”? Remember, please don’t enter the voting booth unless accompanied by one of our Election Supervisors, who are here to ensure proper and right-wise outcomes …

Thank you, patriots, for exercising the franchise.

The god he does not believe in has never been more absent.

It is not like the time when he thought he saw his father, who had been dead for 20 years, standing in his kitchen in the middle of the night.

But something has grown restless and turned back …

It is nothing he could impart, nothing that even has a name. But the gnaw is enough to tear notches into the strong hearts of oaks rooted forever to the floor of the world.

Clipping old roses from the garden brings him to tears. The skin is mottled not from affliction but from cruelest design. His escaping finger forgets, for a moment, that bones tether it to other bones.

His face is dismal even for a frog’s. Even for an idiot’s. Or a dead emperor’s. His library is but a burnt offering to the man he believes he is believed to be.

He would fear mangling the next grounder, too …

But that suggests an order, a composition, where surely none survives.

(Image courtesy of C.F. Payne, by way of Pitchers and Poets)

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

And the nickname now hanging perilously in the balance? It’s “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass”!

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

While this scribe is something of a Yo La Tengo agnostic, there’s no disputing the heaven-sent, maiden-kissed, dandy-fondled perfection of this album title. It would, I attest from atop the pile of my basest urges, make a fine, good nickname.

What does it mean? It means an absence of fear where fear should dwell. It means defiance of human — nay, animal — bounds and limits. It means that there is a very certain type of shit that, anymore, he’s not going to take.

I am afraid of you and it is thus deducible that I will not beat your ass. But this Player to be Nicknamed? He is not afraid of you and he will very much beat your beautiful ass.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Billy Martin surmounted modest skills and a slight build to carve out a major-league career and sucker-punch scores of legions of many. Jackie Robinson was courage and noble bravado writ awesome (if, that is, we wish to take this in a direction that’s actually inspiring on the merits rather than, you know, rich with amusements). David Eckstein was certainly unafraid. He wasn’t going to beat anyone’s ass, but, really, the willingness and confidence to beat an ass is more important than actual beating of asses, even beautiful ones such as yours.

Guiding, Determinative Query:

What current major-league player should be nicknamed “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass”?

The convention floor, which is larded with asses — consenting asses — looking to be beaten, is now open for nominations …