Rays pit boss Joe Maddon has always been a gentleman of fashion and leisure, and being a gentleman of fashion and leisure means bowing to the times. Your Daguerreotype of the Evening proves that Mr. Maddon is no stranger to the dictates of one’s era …

Wisdom: When in Rome do as the Romans do, and when on a golf course dress like a buffoonish buffoon given to buffoonery. This, of course, did not apply to Joe Maddon, who, when on the links, dressed like a conqueror of something they said couldn’t be conquered.

Snifters up, dons, cavaliers and men of noble breeding!

(Mustachioed golf clap: Aaron at HBT)

Back in 1976, when men were men and the drugs were just, just great, Philadelphians succumbed to what can best be described as one of the grooviest blood-borne soul-borne pathogens ever to roll across the plains, hills, dance floors, and sex parlors of America …

Some might question the verisimilitude of some parts of this audio recording. However, I have it on good authority that when Garry Maddox and Dave Cash have a conversation over Citizens’ Band Radio, it’s absolutely on the subject of the hottest thing in town.

Notice some fresh, oozing papules on the epidermis? You’ve got Phillies Fever, my friend.

Via the championship Twitter feed of Erick William comes this, which is Carlos Gonzalez, nickname of “Cargo,” doing his finest imitation of actual, real-live cargo. Please click, embiggen and enjoy!

Hosannas! My only complaint is that this is more “dangerous payload” than mere cargo. We have a giant and possibly menacing baseball-ist rising from the sea and, from appearances, about to unleash misrule on the nearest unsuspecting port city. You take it from here, Bruckheimer.

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: The Yankees won’t win the World Series unless they do.

Shorter Kevin Kernan: Derek Jeter has confirmed that the Yankees would like to win the division.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: Televising the Little League World Series is bad for children. With that said, it would be fine if they televised it on the hit program, “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

Shorter Gregg Doyel: The MLBPA should defend only players I like.

Shorter Jim Souhan: Not many have the guts to say this, but the Tigers are better than the Twins.

Shorter Joe Cowley: I have decided to accept Starlin Castro’s apology.

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

Please enjoy as a certain Padres fan announces his presence …

Consider these facts:

– Playable ball!
– Potentially meaningful game!
– Embroidered cap as vehicle for taunting!
– Road game, where a certain deference is expected!
– Humiliated lady-friend!

Does this display make the nobleman in question the worst fan ever or the greatest fan ever?

Management thanks you for your time.

(Loving embrace — loving to the point of awkwardness — for handsome, handsomer, handsomest reader Tony.)

It’s no secret that base-ballists everywhere are quite fond of the refreshing taste of 7UP. In the case of Mike Schmidt, the fire in the belly for 7UP became so strong — so fiery — that he installed beneath home plate a subterranean robot tasked with delivering ambrosial, restorative 7UP during the middle of a plate appearance. Bear mute witness:

You may have also noticed that Bruce Sutter knows, when it comes to highly acidic, carbonated beverages, there is a time for sipping and a time for painful guzzling. You may have also noticed that Dave Parker, quite understandably, prefers the taste of ambrosial, restorative 7UP to recording outs on foul pop-ups.

In short, nothing screws up a game of baseball quite like 7UP.

As you may have heard, The Captain is now available for freelance love-making. And so to celebrate both love lost and the forthcoming tide of wild oats that will shame any earthquake or hurricane, here is an obscenely large photo of Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly locked in captive embrace and Frenching like teenage thunder …

Seriously, click to embiggen: This thing is huge!

Tonight’s Daguerreotype of the Evening required alarmingly little deliberation on my part. After this sentence concludes, I think you’ll understand why …

The fact that the framers were fond of drawing celebrities of the day as ducks — every time Hamilton droned on and on about this or that, Jefferson would doodle Vivaldi as a giggling mallard, for instance — to this day informs originalist interpretations of the Constitution. So in some ways, a bewinged and bebilled Jim Edmonds fulfills Madison’s fondest hopes. Stated another way, if Jim Edmonds had never been rendered as a duck, then you’d be quartering soldiers in your home under threat of the hoosegow.

But all of this is obvious, of course.

You’ll recall that the Giants, in celebration of winning the belt and the title, cooked up a little contest called the “World Series Baby,” which celebrated and encouraged unprotected sex in and around San Francisco. On that front, we have a winner. Please meet Brooklynn Bird …

If there’s one thing I take seriously, it’s impregnating the Ladies of America, which is a thing that I have done before. Still, it’s hard for me to get past the look of angsty betrayal on the hound’s face. “And so it begins,” he’s surely thinking, encumbered by the knowledge that he’s but an infant’s dander allergy away from a trip to Uncle Tony’s.

If I’m reading sight-lines correctly, it appears that the dog is directing his mounting hostility toward the mother. The 1950s taught us that an unwelcome pregnancy is always the woman’s fault, and it’s oddly heartening to know this lesson has crossed species.

(Impregnation of thanks: With Leather)

It’s former major-league second baseman, manager and coach Chuck Cottier!

No. 2 pencils up! Please click Prodigy/AltaVista-enabled link below!

(Image, yo: Wrigley Wax)