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 Mike Lupica: Hot Sports Opinion: Yankees-Red Sox games sometimes last too long.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: How much do I love Peter Bourjos? Enough to refer to his “dazzling dignity.”

Shorter Lake Cruise: The Cardinals’ ongoing embrace of Mark McGwire might kill your children.

Shorter T.J. Simers: Report immediately to your comfiest reading chair, because this is going to be about moi.

Shorter Murray Chass: New York Times, if I can’t have you, no one will.

Shorter Jerry Green: Stop giving me the high-hat: Justin Verlander is the MVP. And that’s my lawn you’re standing on, you whippersnappers and jackanapes. Ah, the dickens …

The “Shorter” approach to Internetty commentary traces back, as best as one can tell, to Daniel Davies.

In keeping with the prevailing NotGraphs winds on this Monday, it’s only appropriate that your Daguerreotype of the Evening capture the gentle social mockeries of which the Skull-and-Bones Man is so fond. And so it is that we encounter these young Washington Nationals neophytes dressed up like the small, blue habitues of every child’s favorite Jonestown analogue …

As ‘Duk helpfully notes, that’s Rosin Bag Jesus Stephen Strasburg as philosopher-king Papa Smurf and that’s catcher Wilson Ramos as Smurfette, who, logic suggests, is charged with servicing the entire colony.

As the distinguished parlor-dweller may have noticed, the Football-Caliendo-Industrial Complex is once again inflicting itself upon polite society. Yes: The NFL, where even the commercial breaks have commercial breaks, is back!

Still, it might come as a bit of surprise to learn that the two gentlemen tasked with using English words to describe the 11 minutes of foot-and-ball action, tease the upcoming season of “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.” and, more generally, Move Product, seem as unmoved by all of this as the baseball loyalist of noble breeding. Embiggen and regard!

And the people say: Viva baseball.

I have never been excited about anything for 15 seconds as much as Hanshin Tiger fans are excited about baseball for 15 minutes …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x8sLOs_q3s

People with no taste and incorrect opinions say baseball is boring. May they be roused from sleep and then deafened by the partisans of the Hanshin Tigers.

Regular patrons of Wrigley Field will be glad to know that watery, intoxicating Old Style will continue to flow at the friendly confines. Also available to the discerning epicure? Black slime!

Fortunately, as you may have noticed in the Action News Video embedded abovely, we have a Television Journalist and Food Safety PhD on hand to break it down like a fraction …

Television Journalist: “They found black slime inside an ice machine. That sounds awful. Bad?”

Food Safety PhD: “Yes, it’s terrible.”

Terrible Black Slime!

I wonder if that is ever going change.

“That is never going to change,” says Yankees supreme exchequer Randy Levine.

Fine.

“That” refers to the playing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium. And “that” is too bad.

I could argue that songs oozing religious certainties have no place in the public square (we the taxed mostly pay for these ballparks, after all). I could even argue that Mr. Berlin’s “GBA” is a saccharine load that sounds like it was composed on a low-end Casio. And I could absolutely submit that the Yankees were creepy “Dear Leader” types about the whole thing for far too long.

But mostly it’s the idea of making a baseball game — a light, airy thing when not intense for reasons independent of world events — into something solemn. That’s why “GBA” should go away. Dead-ass Bin Laden is enriching the sea floor and being stripped for parts by gilled beasts. The Arab Spring, to continue the metaphor, flowers apace. So after almost 10 years of this, where’s the harm in letting baseball be baseball? Is it that we’ll … forget?

Read the rest of this entry »

I know what you’re thinking: “What is UETAMEJ, and what can it do for me?” Like the best acronyms, UETAMEJ is pronounceable (our own Bradley Woodrum pronounces it “you-da-mage“) and fits conveniently on the full complement of CafePress swag. As you’ve probably already guessed, it stands for, “Using Ellipses Toward A More Evil Journalism.” I hardly need to say this, but the practice of UETAMEJ, which is as ancient as it is sacred, entails the use of the ellipsis in tandem with words and phrases ripped from context and stripped of intended meaning.

This week’s victim is America’s Step-Father Dan Shaughnessy, who recently declared from on high that neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees will win the World Series. Yawn, it would seem. But what’s really going on? Peer more deeply and you’ll find an old Shaughnessy staple: the sexy tone-poem!

Release the UETAMEJ!

[S]tare at one another from a distance … Why not? … collision … bursting … four hours and 21 minutes … Deep … every night. Dominant and … laden. Let’s start … A bone … buffeted … in … a bust. [I]s anyone uncomfortable … ? Let’s not forget … the toilet. Mocking the … shape … the mound … the rotund … favorite … ball … Nobody feels good … for the next three weeks.

Behold the evil journalism!

In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

In today’s episode, Mr. Dick Allen finds himself astride a contemporary work of sky-scraping importance: that email John Mayberry Jr.’s agent sent in an attempt to hook him up with that mermaid …

“I hate to even be sending you this e-mail, and I’m quite embarrassed to say the least, but we have a young client on the Philadelphia Phillies who asked us if we knew any agents at Innovative Artists and could connect him to Dick Allen.

I know you’re not a dating or set-up service, but Dick Allen would love to meet Dick Allen or invite himself to a baseball game sometime. Would this be possible?

Here’s a bio of Dick Allen to give you some more info on him (he’s a great guy, down-to-earth, humble, Stanford-educated, etc.) Thanks for considering this as you know how this business is and servicing clients.”

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.

No doubt roused to action by our new “Cakes” category, reader Yirmiyahu, wearer of monocles and four-button spats, calls the writer’s attention to this, which is a surely delicious gingerbread rendering of Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfect game …

If you’re interested in answering questions like “Why would someone do this?” and “Why wouldn’t someone do this?” and “Was graph paper involved at any point during the planning stages?” and “Did the light towers at one time look like tensed and determined phalli?” then please do go here.

The thinking man’s neo-Agrarian theorist will tell you that before industrialization, people, quite joyfully, walked around with dog heads. We know this because we know this, and not just because Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry insist it’s true. That’s why it was nice to see Braves second baseman Dan Uggla succumb to ancient ethnobiological urges and sprout a pug’s melon atop his muscled, hitting-streaky shoulders. And so, courtesy of Citizens Bankers, comes your Daguerreotype of the Evening, which is of Dan Puggla …

In other Tribe of Uggla news, Deadly Don Hammack, America’s leading Nats fan, calls the writer’s attention to one Magnus Uggla, who exists and actually has that name. As well, Mr. M. Uggla’s Wikipedia page contains this championship description:

He is a member of the Swedish nobility and a descendant of several European rulers, among which John III of Sweden and Gustav Vasa.

Forgive the clunky translation and instead regard again: “[A] member of the Swedish nobility and a descendant of several European rulers …”

That may not describe Dan Uggla, but it describes Magnus Uggla. And it absolutely describes Dan Puggla.