Congratulations.

Great news, registered user. You won a pizza. Did you realize you won a pizza. Did you. Congratulations.

Your pizza will arrive shortly. Congratulations. We’re excited for you. We’re also excited about the no-hitter that entitled you to this pizza. Did you see the final out. It was something. Always is under those circumstances. Hope you enjoy the pizza.

Have you ordered with us before. We hope you’ll consider doing business with us again. Next time, would you consider actually paying for our goods and services. Trying to run a business here. We’re franchised. Did you know that. So it’s really on us to execute all these ideas that corporate comes up with. Ideas that cost us money. Anyway, congratulations.

You’d think a location with our revenues and located in this hollowed-out, post-industrial Midwestern butt-scape would be exempted from this kind of promotion, but I suppose that’s asking for too much. Congratulations. Fucking Obama.

How old are you. We ask because ordering a pizza such as ours is fun for, say, pre-teens and adolescents. If you’re well into adulthood, though, then it’s something you do by force of habit and, at the same time, a willful diminishing of oneself — like making sheep noises while you crap.

Anyhow, congratulations on your free pizza. Hope you like it. Remember, 30 minutes or it’s free. Oh right. Never mind.

I live in a window-less efficiency above a funeral home. It’s an attic with an exterior staircase, really. I find the inconsolable weeping from below is loudest on Thursdays, for whatever reason. My icebox is slowly falling through the floor, so at this point I hear everything. By now, the sobbing is like a bad song stuck in my head.

So congratulations.

You’ll recall that recently in this space, Chuckles Cistulli took occasion to mock my yeoman’s toil by posting a crudely altered image of Babe Ruth. According to foul-smelling Cistulli, his outputs constituted the depth and breadth of Internet-based half-assedness. Since that moment, I’ve been oiling my guns for war.

And now I’m here to escalate this Indolence Donnybrook by posting a picture of a goblin shark that’s been altered in only one shiftless regard: I added — in the default font, no less — the career triple-slash of Garth Iorg …

After posting this, I ambled yawning to the ice box to retrieve some milk and wound up falling asleep in the crisper. I’m still in there. It’s cold but not cold enough to rouse me from my idiot’s doze.

In the triune interests of baseball, media sociale and dong jokes, I present to you — with minimal commentary — two Tweets that the reader may find of arresting relevance:

and …

It should be noted that neither Tweet is particularly recent, just as it should be noted that each Tweet is particularly timeless.

With very little pomp, Donruss recently launched a new line of baseball cards be-branded as the Donruss Youth and Young Manhood, Rookie Fresh and Crisp series. Said series of numbered collectibles promises to be lucrative not only because of the usual rookie-related inducements native to the industry, but also because these doe-eyed rooks embody all that is cherubic and nubile.

No, they are not yet endowed with 50 innings pitched, 130 at-bats or 45 pre-September days on the active roster. What they are endowed with, however, are the hallmarks of an apple-cheeked and puckish whelp. Totems of sinewy promise and sprawling future are what they are! Hope-smiths are what they are!

Opening a pack of the Donruss Youth and Young Manhood, Rookie Fresh and Crisp series is like discovering a new Kennedy. Dawn breaks, the journey has not yet begun, spring blooms eternal upon this, our babyscape! For this is the Donruss Youth and Young Manhood, Rookie Fresh and Crisp series …

In 1953, American hero Joseph P. Kennedy commissioned the busts of eight captains of industry to be constructed outside the Chicago Merchandise Mart and worshiped as dollar-gods. On this day, a ninth marble bust was added — the bust of Banknotes Harper …

Banknotes agreed to be honored only if his bust faced a different direction from the others. “That’s because I see arbitrage opportunities that other motherfuckers don’t. Those butt-smell losers are reading the financial pages, while I’m looking up skirts.”

Since his wishes were satisfied, Banknotes Harper himself was on hand for the ceremonial unveiling. “I’m here because nobody knows shit-hot business like I do,” Banknotes said to the assembled dignitaries and media. “I’m going to buy the Merchandise Mart and turn it into a big-ass computer, motherfuckers.”

At that point, Banknotes Harper laid a deep-rooted kiss on Queen Rania of Jordan, unleashed a thunderous air-guitar riff, booted Paul Volcker in the rascal basket and dived into the Chicago River.

“Later, slack-dicks,” he bellowed, as he swam toward shit-hot business.

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I have been reading a rich tome entitled The Fine Art of Baseball by Lew Watts. It was published in 1964, and I purchased it at a library sale. Library sales, of course, are a sign that the city you live in is going out of business.

In any event, my spirited perusals of Mr. Watts’s book led me to the following championship passage, which is on the subject of batting practice and the systemization thereof:

You see, after the balls strike the Heavy Curtain of Asbestos they do indeed “drop harmlessly to the floor.” But what of the carcinogenic flotsam they dislodge and help take to wing? That scarcely merits mentioning.

This is because in 1964 batting practice was, among teams with no access to nets, known colloquially as “cancer practice.”

The reader might absorb what follows and then cavil, “Sir, that wasn’t a brawl at all!” But the foul-smelling reader would be wrong about that. Bear assaulted witness:

As you may have surmised, these are two New York Giants — John McGraw Men^TM — in the process of a skylarking annihilation of what’s surely a high-ranking member of a besoiled foreign horde. For a time — during the biting, for instance — this could be dismissed as merest tenement roughhousing. Then, however, the gentleman most astride his victim begins to reduce the easy mark’s skull and belfry to a pulpy gruel. At that point, an onlooker — an onlooker almost certainly named “Pinky Cooney” — is roused to intercede.

All of that is why all of this should absolutely be filed under “Classic F___king Brawls.”

This is Mike Shannon’s pencil:

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to bat .288/.339/.462 during the course of the 1966 season.

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used to captain a gondola — a gondola handsomely crafted from the very same pencil — along every nautical spice route. All the while, Raquel Welch felt safe. She found the turmeric soothing.

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon used, in 1932 in Greenwood, Mississippi, to write the lyrics, “You’re closer to me, baby, than Jesus to the cross.”

This is the very pencil that Mike Shannon, son of Denethor, used to avenge the death of his brother, Boromir. On the plains of Rohan, Mike Shannon and his pencil trenched many an orc.

Mike Shannon’s pencil likes “Disease Monsoon” to place in the third race at Conestoga Park. Mike Shannon’s pencil, without prompting from its master, has made notes to this end in Mike Shannon’s copy of today’s Daily Racing Form, which Mike Shannon’s pencil will later copy and preserve in Mike Shannon’s Scriptorium of Gambling Documents.

This is also the very pencil that Mike Shannon uses to toll the cathedral bells in every belfry across Christendom. The chimes rise and melt to form what sounds like a human voice, what sounds like Mike Shannon’s voice. “Baseball without ceasing,” the voice says.

Courtesy of the morning paper, the current standings …

I think it’s obvious at this point that it’s going to come down to Junior A.C. and Davis Shell and the private-school kids with their high-end bikes who populate the two teams. Were this a cinematic flight, then the relentlessly middle-class kids from, say, Naas Candy, would rise up and bring low their economic betters. But this isn’t a movie, so Junior A.C. and Davis Shell, what with their superior breeding, boutique equipment and precocious and unreachable girlfriends will surely hold sway.

Just as sure is that this will mark the onset of many decades of holding sway over the Naas Candy boys. The difference is that the certain defeats ahead will be more meaningful, more lacerating. For instance, is there really any doubt that Davis Shell shortstop Caspian Westwood will one day order his middle managers to fire current Naas Candy left fielder Rusty Stricken from the crew because he was rumored to have a flask in his lunch pail? The mounting black lung was making him less than efficient, anyway.

As for the natural rivalry between Faultless Cleaners and Economy Cleaners, two concerns that will leave your Sansabelt slacks crisp to the grope and redolent of chemical vats, it’s not much of a contest thus far. This is because Economy Cleaners is shitty in all ways.

You see, they are shitty because their coach, Floyd Chickens, is all too at ease on the dole, where he’s been for lo these many years. His indolence seeps down to the shiftless layabouts on his roster. Rather than patrol the infield with a sense of mission, they instead panhandle base-runners. Even when a member of Economy Cleaners is presented with the opportunity for honest toil — for instance, Junior A.C. star pitcher Maximilian Humphries, while measuring his lead-off from second base, recently offered Economy infielder Cesar Chavez McMurphy a good many pence to beat the teammate of his choosing with a ditching spade and then finish him off with sheep shears — they recoil and fart. They are bound headlong for diseases that never spread north of the Town Plaisance.

All of this helps explain the current standings, which you see above.

It’s been a good day at the High-Rise Business Building of Banknotes Harper …

At first, it appeared as though the leveraged buyout of the pharmaceutical concern he’d been eyeballing would fall through, but then, as negotiations frayed, Banknotes Harper locked eyes with Larry Ellison, his minority partner, and thundered, “Get your purse.”

Sensing the seriousness of the moment and suspecting no contrivance, the Business Victims and toothless regulators across the conference table — splintered from an unappeasable pounding — promptly surrendered. Seized with Business Terror, they scribbled their beggarly imprimaturs upon stacks of binding documents, each of which was bannered in 36-point Fraktur typeface, “BILL THE FUCK OF SALE.”

Afterward, Banknotes Harper remained standing — there are no chairs here — surveyed the Business Dead, and unspooled his jumbo member onto the catered platters before them. “On this day, I have arbitraged,” thundered Banknotes Harper.

Then he used his portable handheld cordless telephone to call ahead to Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls, Banknotes Harper’s favorite downtown restaurant. “Steak, rare, hot dog on the side, rolls, another hot dog, scotch, beans, ladle of scotch on top of the food,” he thundered to Herman Crackers, the obliging and tenured maître d’hôtel.

“As you wish, sir,” said Herman Crackers.

“Oh, and Crackers,” thundered Banknotes Harper, “Another scotch and hot dog and beans and steak.”

The staff at Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls knows that Banknotes Harper prefers to dine while sitting on the aftermarket sliding bench seats of a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba. So they accommodate him.

He also likes that Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls understands the visual power of price points. For instance, every menu item is priced not at rounded dollars, but rather at 99 cents on top of the next-lowest dollar amount. Banknotes Harper knows that this helps the customer feel that he’s getting a bargain, and gentlemen like bargains.

Just that same day, Banknotes Harper had closed that leveraged buyout by offering not $100,000,000,001, but rather $100,000,000,000.99. Sure, the conference-table pounding, threats of purses, intimidating deep-knee bends and timely pretend Business Telephone Calls helped, but that strategic price point was the difference. You motherfuckers need to know that.

At Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls, Banknotes Harper sat on the aftermarket sliding bench seats, ate in silence and thought about compounded interest and offshore holdings. Then his business phone with the dry-cell battery rang decisively.

It was Marilu Henner.