Our ongoing quest, in the manner of the noble knight-errant, is to assign players to cool nicknames rather than indulge in the tired, shopworn paradigm of assigning nicknames to cool players.

First, though, a brief jaunt through our Nickname Seeks Player Sun-Dappled Old-Growth Forest of Honor:

“Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
“Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks

Moving on … The nickname up for grabs in this episode? It’s “$45 Couch”!

The inspiration for the nickname “$45 Couch” comes to us by way of thinking-man’s kick boxer Dan Wade, who, recently over large beers, informed us that he once owned a $45 couch. He prattled on. We, meanwhile, thought about how “$45 Couch” would make a good nickname …

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

A $45 Couch is not something you want; it is something to which you are resigned. The $45 Couch is a signifier that, in the famous manner of signifiers, signifies something. That something is the plucky region between full dependency on the parental unit and the soulless expanse known as one’s “earning years.” The $45 Couch is the best you can do under the circumstances. And isn’t that — along with putting off death until it’s at least convenient — the point of all this?

The $45 Couch can also be something endearingly serviceable. Although you can afford something better, you stick with the $45 Couch because of nostalgia or frugality or force of habit — even if your significant other forces a “basement/garage diaspora” upon you and your beliked $45 Couch. The people say: serviceable!

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

In all instances, it is preferable if the player in question at least vaguely resembles a couch. Bob Hamelin felt like the best we could do at the time, and he was large without necessarily being in charge. John Kruk was all serviceable and stuff despite looking very much like a couch. Ditto Dmitri Young.

Guiding, Determinative Query: What current major-league player should be nicknamed “$45 Couch”?

The floor, gorgeous signatories to every important historical document, is open for nominations …

I know what you’re thinking: “What is UETAMEJ, and what can it do for me?” Like the best acronyms, UETAMEJ is pronounceable 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 the likable and excellent Ray Ratto, who recently penned a likable and excellent column on last night’s absurd happenings in Atlanta. But what’s he really saying?

Release the UETAMEJ!

Jerry Meals[,] . . . acknowledge that this is . . . the crime of the century. Jerry Meals screwed this one up, spectacularly so, . . . because he is inherently evil. God in heaven, will you please . . . murder . . . Jerry Meals[?] Because it is my firm belief that . . . baseball would benefit from . . . the . . . murder . . . of . . . Jerry Meals. Reasonable people can . . . shut up.

I . . . will . . . be . . . in the only bar in Atlanta that stays open beyond 3 a.m. . . . with . . . a jackhammer[,] . . . Tim Donaghy[,] . . . some . . . hallucinogens[,] . . . and . . . a tomato with eyes.

Behold the evil journalism!

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 Bob Ryan: Confused about how to resolve the “PED users and the Hall of Fame” conundrum? Boy, do I have a terrible idea!

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: A number of athletes have said stupid things on Twitter. This is Twitter’s fault.

Shorter Woody Paige: Ubaldo Jimenez is much like every other person who lives in Colorado, in that they couldn’t possibly want to live anywhere else.

Shorter Jim Souhan: A number of nameless, unquoted, possibly nonexistent fans want the Twins to sell off at the deadline so as to ensure that the team doesn’t get embarrassed in the playoffs once again. The Twins should totally sell off at the deadline, but that’s not why they should do it.

Shorter Bruce Jenkins: The Brewers’ pennant hopes will quite possibly hinge on Nyjer Morgan’s flamboyance.

Shorter Mike Peticca: I don’t understand WAR. At all.

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

You happen across American Bad Seed Pete Rose in a Cooperstown diner. You follow him to his car and ask him for an autograph. He declines. What you do next will, in some ways, define you and how you handle the daisy chain of adversities found in this, our miserable existence.

Do you merely acknowledge that celebrities have no obligation to indulge our bizarre whims and return to your chili-cheese fries? Or you do heave the unsigned ball across the road — at traffic level — and into the woods where James Fenimore Cooper once played army, heel-turn, stomp off into the distance, and squeeze out a few shitty-baby tears? If you’re the guy captured below on live-action video, then it’s an easy choice …

At this late hour, I thought all of us knew that Mr. Rose would walk through hell in a gasoline suit before he’d sign something for free.

(Autograph request: Off the Bench)

It hasn’t been the best of days around here at NotGraphs World HQ, but maybe things are looking up? How’s that? Well, perhaps you’ll recall my affection and longing for the rare confluence of absurdities that is the inside-the-park grand slam (note: you will not recall this, but still). Turns out such a miracle recently came to pass, thanks to Jeremy Moore of the Salt Lake Bees, three of his teammates and the burning fire-god in the sky.

By all means, please dig!

A thing related to my occupation for which I have yearned has come to pass! Let us now praise professional fulfillment in all its forms!

That clamor you hear is the people’s collective demand to be introduced to the 1976 AL starting All-Stars. As is the case with anything having anything to do with baseball and or matters of the heart, I’m here to satisfy.

Witness George Brett in “young man somewhat agape at the possibilities before him” mode! See Thurman Munson exchange pleasantries with a Red Sock of Boston! There’s an understandably self-serious Ron LeFlore! Toby Harrah has a puzzling coif! Rusty Staub is somewhat gigantic! And most and best of all: Gaze upon the still photograph of a certain starting pitcher and tell me all is not well …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeT4AyXUu2Q&playnext=1&list=PL1DD909EC17590A1F

Also: Kick its ass, Dave Cameron.

Survey this daguerreotype of Von Hayes, and you may be tempted to focus solely on the tenuous unibrow that introduces him to the world as a cocksman of distinction. But peer more deeply, and you’ll see a countenance riddled with mounting horror …

What is it just off-stage that troubles him so? A baleful incubus plucked from a Goya painting? The dark ways of Ron Hassey? The approaching hoof-beats of the decisive yet still fraught Cold War endgame?

Afflict Von Hayes no more, you sickening menace!

First, lay eyes, heart and soul upon this, your Daguerreotype of the Evening …

Now, based on this photo and its many, many blessed connotations, what should Mr. Calderon’s nickname be?

A – Smooth Jazz
B – Pendergrass Stains
C – Sexual Face
D – Jheri Seinfeld
E – Love and Rockets
F – Whole Soul
G – [Your Suggestions Here]

Thanks to the hirsute likes of Oscar Gamble and John Henry Johnson, baseball has a proud history when it comes to the Afro and the rocking thereof. More recently, Coco Crisp is to be praised to the heavens and back for keeping it impossibly real.

All that is well and good, but the gauntlet — a hairy, awesome gauntlet — has been thrown down at the feet of those who take seriously the fusion of baseball and Afros …

And the people say: Your move, Mr. Crisp.

I’m not going to suggest that this is the greatest lede in the history of journalism, but I will submit that this is the greatest lede in the history of journalism:

I was listening to the San Diego Chicken give a speech the other day …

It gets arguably better right about … here!

After all these years, I still get a charge when I first spot the San Diego Chicken — that same visceral reaction you get when you see a very pregnant woman walking down the sidewalk — her innie now an outtie. You poke whoever’s next to you — “Hey, look!” — as if you’re about to witness a miracle, pay attention.

I’m not quite sure whether the San Diego Chicken is like a pregnant woman or like a pregnant woman’s navel, but I find it impossible to disagree with either position.

What I do know is that anyone Googling the search terms “San Diego Chicken” + “pregnant” + “navel” will wind up first at the L.A. Times and then here. And that’s the greatest gift of all.

(Impregnation of gratitude: BBTF)