We have a category called “Jersey Edit.” I speak with a Puritan’s certainty when I say it is now safe to retire the category “Jersey Edit” …

(High-interest loan of thanks to the Dodger Divorce Twitter feed.)

There are things in this world that Joe West will not abide: bad clams, people talking over his Artie Shaw records, barmen given to ungenerous pours of the Maker’s Mark, use of the Single-Windsor knot when everyone knows the Double Windsor gets the dame, kids who won’t pull up their damned pants. And that’s but a partial listing.

Here’s something else: the dark ways of Cobra Kai, especially when employed against God’s own Roy Halladay …

Jon Gruden, you and your nefarious dojo are outta here!

(Roundhouse of gratitude to Twittersome reader Adrian.)

Here’s newly minted Nats skipper Davey Johnson!

The discerning discerner will observe that also in this photo is a white orb of cowhide, something known in industry parlance as a “baseball.” It seems there are but a finite number of possibilities to explain the presence of the baseball in this picture …

A) Mr. Johnson, blinded by the klieg lights, is unable to see the baseball hurtling toward his unsuspecting chompers. It goes without saying that Jim Riggleman, just off stage and concealed by a fake Cardinal Richelieu beard and his best Slovene brogue, is the author of these unfolding horrors.

B) Mr. Johnson, after an intense and character-shaping apprenticeship, is dancing not the Tango, but rather the Calcaterra.

C) The ball has descended from the firmament above and is now fluttering about Mr. Johnson. Much like the magical-realist butterflies of a certain Garcia Marquez novel, a flock of hovering baseballs will now and forever trail Mr. Johnson wherever he goes. It is at once a portent of the dugout miracles to come and a stinging rebuke of the electoral college.

D) That’s not a baseball. That’s the haunting, lingering spectral presence of Tony Plush.

E) Mr. Johnson has the Uri Geller-like power to levitate baseballs, outerwear made from fine Corinthian leather, and beautiful ladies.

What other explanations could there be for the sorcery before you?

(Righteous gratitude to Dangerous Don Hammack.)

As everyone knows, there are just five laws of the universe, which, of course, is the same number of people you meet in Heaven. Anyhow, one of those laws, handed down on ancient papyrus, is that, “Tailing fastballs, regardless of velocity and action, shall not — indeed, shan’t — saw off an aluminum bat.”

For eons, we as a stinking people have ordered our lives around this simple principle. Yesterday, however, our notions of the provably true and demonstrably false were beaten savagely about the head, neck, face, chest, and rascal basket. It turns out, given the proper confluence of absurd events, aluminum bats can, in point of fact, be obliterated by a hellbent two-seamer.

If that doesn’t send the physicists scurrying like a bunch of frightened Jason Tyners, then I don’t know what will.

(Tip of my newly vulnerable aluminum hat: Big League Stew)

I break no news, only hearts, when I remind readers that it’s been an eventful 24 hours for defrocked Nats skipper Jim Riggleman. First he witnessed a walk-off victory that was as taut as the tautest of things. Then, to the shock of all humankind, he resigned. Then he drank some wholesome, nutritious spirits and allowed the ladies of Maryland to ogle him.

In some ways, Riggleman’s fretful Thursday, which was a Thor’s Day full of fret, embodied the best and worst of this, the reeking human pageant. And so we are left to remember Riggleman and his veiny, chiseled pipes as we should: a tuxedo splayed across his chest and loins, a boutonnière the color of spilled blood on his lapel, and the contemplation of murder in his eyes …

Ask anyone who’s anyone or no one who’s no one, and they’ll tell you that Frank Robinson is a good, tough egg. In doing so, they’ll likely use a sampling of the Lord’s nouns like “toughness,” “class,” and “dignity.” But what if Mr. Robinson were forced to wear red pants paired with a red top? Would he still be tough, classy and dignified? Or would he, by mere virtue of the sartorial affronts inflicted upon him by, say, the Indians of Cleve’s Land, become something less? That is, do clothes make the man, or do they unmake him?

And what hope is there for the rest of us?

In celebration of last night’s record-setting performance in Arlington, I thought it appropriate to post something appropriate. What’s appropriate in this instance? Players of ball, obviously. And eyewear, natch. And, of course, bewhiskered upper lips. Come with me, won’t you?

Craig Kusick of the Twins …

“Ya see, here at the plumber’s local, we wear Foster Grants. If I was you, I might consider doing the same.”

Dennis Lamp of the Cubs …

“Do cats have grandparents?”

Jeff McKnight of the Orioles …

“Baseball. Pontiac Firebird. Uriah Heep.”

I look upon this as I imagine Rilke looked upon that statue of Apollo, or as Frank Sinatra first looked upon the naked bestowals of Ava Gardner.

The image journeys through my eyes, down my throat and into the flame-licked meadow of my guts, and all that is wrong or inadequate or too purple or too loosed from its moorings during last night’s storm recoils. It recoils not for fear of the unnamed something but rather in order to stop and listen to a sound that is at once the annihilation of ancient leaves under Charlemagne’s boot and the fife-and-drum corps that heralds the simultaneous birth and death and spectral presence of a great man. Or perhaps the screams of a pumice stone at the river’s edge.

Swing low, baseball’s chariot: I have laid eyes — yellowed, rheumy eyes — upon The Inside of Dick Allen’s Batting Helmet …

Given what we have long known about Mose Schrute of “The Office” and his baseball-ing double life, can the following striking resemblance come as any surprise?

First, Mose Schrute …

And now here’s major-league closer turned fearless opinion-shaper, Mitch Williams …

Not many beards these days say, “I was named for an Old Testament character, and I occasionally entertain the darkest of thoughts while churning butter,” but these two beards say exactly that. Can it possibly be a coincidence?

The following has already been linked to over at Mission Control, but IIATMS’s viciously sublime takedown of the McCourts is more than worth your while. Even in this day and age, when news of corporate malfeasance is mere background music, this raises one’s hackles. For damn instance:

How did the Dodgers manage to fund the McCourt lifestyle? Let’s start with salaries: Jamie McCourt received up to $2 million annually for her services as Dodgers’ CEO. Frank McCourt received up to $5 million annually from one or more businesses affiliated with the Dodgers. The Dodgers also paid up to $600,000 in annual salary to two of the McCourt children, one of whom was attending Stanford University and the other of whom had a full-time job at Goldman Sachs.

But $7.6 million a year was not nearly enough money to meet the needs (estimated at over $2 million a month) of the McCourt family. The McCourts spent money at a rate that turned heads, even in Los Angeles. Best known is the McCourt appetite for real estate. After buying the team, the McCourts proceeded to buy four homes in Los Angeles – two in Malibu, two near the Playboy Mansion – at a combined cost of around $89 million. This figure includes the estimated cost of McCourt “improvements” to these homes, including a roughly $14 million bill for tearing out tennis courts at one property and replacing them with a swimming pool. Then there were the other expenses: the vacation properties, the private jet, the private drivers, the hairdresser who worked exclusively for the McCourts five days a week … the list goes on and on. Here’s an expense that’s one of my personal favorites: over one 18-month period, Jamie McCourt paid over $100,000 to various florists, and charged the Dodgers for the expense.

There’s more. So, so, so, so much more. These people are beasts. I don’t wish death upon anyone, so instead I’ll hope that these two, upon being forced to live in the woods by the bankruptcy court, get permanent chicken pox.