When you survey base-and-ball enthusiasts about the World Series most recent, they’re likely to remember championship phenomena like Albert Pujols’s three home runs in Game 3 or L’Affaire Bullpen Phone or the Rangers’ nihilistic failures in Game 6 or Zooey Deschanel. Those are all noteworthy or, in Ms. Deschanel’s case, prepossessing in the extreme, but they’re not what you should cling as winter approaches and the baseball-less world turns to cold shit.

No, you should remember when Mr. Pujols, astride a motorcycle at home plate, took a moment’s respite from signing autographs to hit a home run with his fist. Then you should remember that the Rangers, in the throes of Game 6, undertook a mound celebration before the game was even over. Then you should remember that Messrs. Pujols, Freese and Trophy traveled across a fiber-optic network and emerged from your TV to party with you in your living room. And then you should remember that “party” is always a verb.

Those were the days, lads. Those were the days …

As we learned previously in these yellowed and courtly pages, board-certified Aqua Velva Man Vic Tayback has a proud history of Giving the Business to ballplayers. So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Tayback once put ink-dispensing stylus to cowhide orb. Clicky!

Sure, Mr. Ed — with his stupid, thumbless hooves — and Kate Hepburn — with what was surely a fetching pantsuit — are also signatories, but there’s everyone and thing else and then there’s Vic Tayback.

This is his grave:

Young Ryan Braun isn’t smiling because “intent with Buick-like seriousness” are his factory settings.

Young Ryan Braun doesn’t like posed senior portraits.

Young Ryan Braun doesn’t like portraits.

Young Ryan Braun is worried about some things but not Y2K.

Young Ryan Braun will go to prom and get under-the-bra action from Tiffany Blankenship and Jen DeLuca.

Young Ryan Braun’s prom date will be Amber Symanski.

Young Ryan Braun will sometimes work out while listening to “Country Grammar,” which he owns on compact disc.

Young Ryan Braun’s acne medication doesn’t work perfectly, but everything else does.

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

Ignore, for the moment and if you’re able, the hipster virulence in the belowly embedded action-video footage — ignore Those Who Ruin Everything — and instead focus on what’s important and right-wise: that John Axford has been named the Mustached American of the Year:

While Mr. Axford is not American, he indubitably embodies the American spirit, particularly in his choice of tailored vests. However, he is not mustached. He is mustachioed.

He is pistols at dawn. He is making his fortune by importing silk garments and exotic spices. He is invading the Duchess’s boudoir. He is making love to love.

(Butterfly kisses: Hall of Very Good)

You may recall that in this beloved space we have previously regaled you with tales of the Cruz Missile. And on this day I am pleased to inform you that the Cruz Missile is back, and this time his glory is both boundless and without bound. How boundless? So boundless that it’s too large for me to embed. In what other ways does WordPress hate freedom? I intend to find out and then file a breathless dispatch on the matter. Nonetheless, please do click the above link — wait, here it is again! — and luxuriate in its wonders.

And since every post needs some kind of visual hook, my hope is that this will meet the needs of the Internetting Gentleman:

Here was the great Red Smith’s lede the morning after the Shot Heard ‘Round the World:

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

And here is the just awful Dayn Perry’s lede the morning after the Busch Putsch:

Nerp taaaaa duputoah ploopy snaarfgort baseball loorfgack the fuck? Derpy derp holy grappertom snarfglop. I am shitting out of my stupid mouth.

And so I am left with my drool, my indignities, my gaping maw, and this:

Baseball is love and religion and sex and food.

What to do you when your favorite player annoyingly takes advantage of his post-Messersmith/McNally liberties and leaves you with a jersey-shirt that serves as nothing better than a reminder of those grim treasons? You improvise like a champion’s championship champion:

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Some might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with boundless horrors.” Others — patriots, for instance — might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with righteous justice.” Judge for yourself, so long as you agree in advance to make the correct judgment …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRi59dhVawo&feature=player_embedded

At this point, you might be wondering what the puckish young lad in the Yankee cap did to merit such a shuddersome fate, other than the self-evident breach of wearing a Yankee cap in the first place. And, hmmm, I might be wondering why you’re not content to leave such matters to the relevant jurisdictional authorities. Perhaps, because of your dissension, the Republic finds itself in need of even more blood-soaked redress, eh?

I’d watch what I say and think, if I were you.

Rangers manager/America’s favorite cackling bedlamite Ron Washington is, as you are probably aware, bald. But he is not bald in the sense of merely being in possession of a hairless top floor, like, say, Lex Luthor. Rather, Wash’s baldness contains multitudes. This you shall soon see …

So multitudinous is his baldness that we now have a category called “Great Moments in Baldness.” If not for Ron Washington, there would be no such thing as a Great Moment in Baldness. The inverse formulation — if not for Great Moments in Baldness, there would be no Ron Washington — is obviously not true. But still.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

When a meme beckons, we are powerless to resist its mandate.

So Tony La Russa seizes the horn during the most fraught moments of Game 5 …

And …

As any good baseball man knows, “Motte” sounds a lot like “Lynn” to a screaming Englishman in the echo-y confines of the stink lodge.