According to sanctioned tradition, the player comes first and then the nickname. That is, when concocting a nom de baseball, we typically ponder the player in question and then assign him a nickname that reflects some native trait of interest or — if we’re feeling galactically uninspired — knock a syllable or three off his actual name and reward ourselves with refreshing liquor. Given the unremarkable catalog of present baseball nicknames, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the process.

And so begins our grand experiment. First, we shall ponder the denotations, connotations, implications, intimations, and incriminations of a given nickname. Then, while balancing these concerns like sexy Lady Justice, we shall consider the prototypes of yore. What baseball-ists from the game’s gauzy past best embody the various denotations, connotations, implications, intimations, and incriminations of the nickname that we are examining like a tireless appraiser of gemstones? And finally, based on the indomitable will of the people, we shall assign the nickname to a current player. Let us begin …

The first nickname held up for scrutiny, ridicule and or clammy embrace is “Bad Miracle.”

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations: “Bad” suggests something bad. Or “bad” can also mean “good,” as the kids who need to pull up their pants are wont to say. “Miracle” means something good. Or it can also mean something bad. For instance, the “Miracle on Ice,” was good for the Americans, bad for the Soviets and value-neutral to the Glasnost.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past: Someone like Lenny Dykstra was bad in the sense that he’s a sociopath. He’s a miracle in the sense that he was good at baseball. Our patron saint Dick Allen was “bad” like the kids say, in that he smoked in the dugout and once punched a teammate in the chompers. He was a miracle in the sense that he was good at baseball. Mark Prior was bad in the sense that the outputs of his vast potential are best likened to a murdered body. He was a miracle in the sense that he had that previously mentioned vast potential in the first place. Or it could be someone like Tagg Bozied, who, as a lantern-jawed Son of the Republic with large body muscles that suggest the frequent lifting of heavy objects over his breast, chest, breastbone, neck, and head, looked like someone who would be good at baseball. So: Miracle. Yet he was not, at least by the standards of major leaguers who earn nicknames. So: Bad.

Guiding, Determinative Query: What current major-league player should be nicknamed “Bad Miracle”?

Please, sinewy, glistening readers, take it away …

I scarcely need to mention this, but Kirk Gibson and his brawny musk, unlike a certain Francis Macomber, do not quake and flee at the sight of a lion. Kirk Gibson and his brawny musk fear no man, beast or godhead. The sprawling African savanna, it is his …

You might wonder what Mr. Gibson, Lord of the African Savanna, does with the captured pitchers you see above. He murders them.

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.

Today’s episode: A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by Dick Allen.

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

First, please consider the following photographic image …

It occurs to this chronicler that there are but two possible explanations for the ballistic weapon, which is certainly large and quite possibly in charge, that you see alongside Mr. Davis. The obvious one, I suppose, is that Mr. Davis’s baseball-ing chops are so substantial, so prepossessing, so like a large gun that they are best symbolized by a large gun. The other, less obvious explanation is that the streets of Cincinnati are afflicted and in need of taking back. And so desperate are conditions that only Eric Davis and his stylish red pocket square and his Joe Piscopo gun can … take back the streets.

On another level, this is Eric Damn Davis, and any answer is the correct one.

You may have noticed a germinating fondness for Wily Mo Peña in these parts.

I must confess to having been a wee bit of a Wily Mo agnostic when all this first began. After I saw what follows, however, I found myself on the streets of Mesopotamia with eyes aflame and voice aroar: I believe in Wily Mo with more heart-pumping, red-faced certainty than Cotton Mather believed in anything ever!

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

He spits in his helmet. Believe in that or you shall converted at the point of a sword.

(Genuflection: Awful Announcing)

If you’ve ever longed to see Eric Byrnes tear up Harold Reynolds like a parking ticket, then today, God-fearer, is your lucky-best day …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8iZ7OyP6I&feature=player_embedded

(Form-tackle of thanks: Extra Mustard)

I’m not going to suggest that dark forces have overrun the fair city of San Francisco and that the streets are in need of taking back. No, I’m not going to suggest something like that. But in the unlikely event that someone does need to take back the streets, may I humbly suggest that Kevin Mitchell be deputized posthaste?

Think of the great miseries of humankind — war, famine, disease, Delta Airlines, Kid Rock — and how we as a people coped with them. Yep: witticisms on shirts. Even our hairy, slope-headed forgoers transferred their ironic cave etchings to the wrinkled pelts of the gomphotheres. They said things like, “My Milkshake Brings All the Homo Neanderthalensises to the Yard,” and “I Caught Crabs at the Patagonian Ice Cap During a Brief Respite in the Sub-Continental Permafrost.”

Fast forward to the current day and time, and you’ll find that Dodger fans, crippled by the misdeeds of America’s Worst Businessman^TM, are turning to the shirt to help them through the various stages of grief and spittle-flecked rage. First came this, and now comes a more direct assault on the author of their miseries …

My only hope is that in 25 years, these will be the Dodgers’ throwback jerseys.

(Shirt tip: Biz of Baseball)

Did you see the Cirque first pitch below? Impressive. And hosannas to the young man who is orders of magnitude more athletic than I am, even in the dreamscape of my mind.

In the interest of balance, however, I’m duty-bound to remind you of this, the unpleasing polar opposite of what we witnessed earlier …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaYuxTj4yh4

I’m not going to say something crass like, “This is why the terrorists hate us.” I am, however, going to say that this is why we can’t have nice things.

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 Jim Souhan: Joe Mauer would be a lot tougher if he had Jim Souhan muscles instead of Joe Mauer muscles.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: I don’t care what anyone else says, but Frank McCourt did not, under cover of darkness, murder Vin Scully and Tommy Lasorda.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: You might think that what’s going on with the Dodgers has nothing to do with the Red Sox, but please remember that everything has something to do with the Red Sox.

Shorter Wallace Matthews: I just looked at Jorge Posada’s splits for this season.

Shorter Murray Chass: Tyler Kepner of the Times interviewed Roberto Clemente’s biographer on the subject of Clemente. I interviewed a buddy of mine from junior high. Advantage, me.

Shorter T.J. Simers: This is quite possibly Jamey Carroll’s fault.

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