With a carnival barker’s enthusiasm, I should like to announce: R.A. Dickey names his bats after famous swords! Regard:

One bat is called Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and the other is Hrunting. Dickey, an avid reader, said that Orcrist came from “The Hobbit.” Hrunting — the H is silent, Dickey said — came from the epic poem “Beowulf”; it is the sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s mother.

First and foremost, R.A. Dickey is a Great Man of History because he’s a bearded knuckleballer. But the 11-year-old boy in me — the one who would drift into sleep with the Monster Manual splayed across his breast and dream dreams of a gelatinous cube’s hit points — now holds him in a newer, loftier esteem.

Baseball and swords! What could possibly be next? Hot, delicious pizza, mayhaps?

America loves R.A. Dickey. I declare it to be so, and the rest of America is not free to disavow this love we have for R.A. Dickey.

It’s been a rough week for Osama Bin Laden. First, he was killed. Then the Times refused to call him “Mr.” (The Gray Lady withholds the honorific from only the world’s most wretched scoundrels.) Then he crossed over to the dimensionless horrors that awaited him. And now Bin Laden’s (no “Mr.” for you, you dead, rotting jerkwad!) pleasing demise has united those previously immune to unity: the Mets and the Phillies. Witness spontaneous chants of nation-state:

“I don’t like to give Philly fans too much credit,” David Wright said of the binding powers of Bin Laden and his sucking chest wounds, “but they got this one right.”

Weary of those ancient ballpark urinals found in haunts like Wrigley, Fenway and Dodger, the ones taken from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate? Know that the future brings hope …

“Thermochromic coating on steel panel” or urination sorcery? The latter, obviously.

If nothing else, team owners now have the tidy rationale they need for the next round of taxpayer-funded stadium refurbishments. Bodily Functions 2.0!

Did you miss the explosive and exploding inaugural NotGraphs chat? If so, then please enjoy one of the highlights …

NotGraphs reader/chatterer/philosopher-king stevedore SubtleStatement passed this along, and let’s just say our gratitude is incalculable. Not even Dave Cameron could calculate our gratitude — that’s how incalculable it is.

Anyhow, Garvey later impregnated that ninja! Untrue fact!

From left to right …

Young Lady #1: “I can’t quite believe my own thoughts, but the photographer is cuter than Jetey-Jetes! He kind of looks like Ed Yarnall. Ed Yarnall was a darn dreamboat.”

Young Lady #2: “Over there, in the distant distance … keep your almond-shaped eyes on the distant distance … The only way Mr. Jeter will notice me is if I distinguish myself from the undistinguished likes of Mitzi and Crystal. I’ll tell him I prefer a sensible Ann Taylor pantsuit to that Aeropostale tripe. Didn’t he once date Susan Sontag? I think he did. Derek, I am complicated but worth the complication. Did you notice that I was respectful of the Anthem without being servile? Convention can be subverted with the cottony touch of approaching Autumn. Vous ne pouvez pas s’étendre vers votre gauche, et pour celui je vous pardonne. My smile is but a mask, you know.”

Derek Jeter: “1, 2, 3 … Corpse face! Ha, ha! No one does the corpse face quite like the Captain! Heh. F*cking A-Rod.”

Young Lady #3: “I can’t believe the Captain smells! It’s a good thing he can’t range to his left. El. Oh. El.”

So loyal NotGraphs commenter Card Archives (more on that name in a moment), who is also a broad-shouldered captain of industry, has done a thing and that thing is amazing.

I can’t begin to fathom the Mennonite’s toil that went into cataloguing every Topps baseball card ever, but I stand agape. And then I fall down, still agape.

So lose yourselves within his pages, stick-and-ball enthusiasts, and know that here at NotGraphs a hero walks among us.

This BBTF thread yields this stirring image plucked directly from the history books …

Indeed, on this dark day all seemed lost until Blast Furnace O’Dwyer showed up and, with a righteous Christian fury on loan from Increase Mather, cudgeled that murderous thunder lizard into a dead, bloodied pudding.

Our fair game — and our world — were saved.

I was and am a Topps brand evangelist. Sure, as a kid I had a sherpa’s load of Fleer and Donruss cards lying around, but something about the Topps family of products inspired in me a consumerist loyalty I would not experience again until my discovery of fine Corinthian leather.

Why is this the case? It’s probably hail-fellow-well-met Manny Sanguillen. How can you see this expression of uncorrupted joy at the world about us …

… And not emerge from the experience with a love for everything everywhere? You cannot, say I.

Anyhow, I recently began purchasing Topps cards anew for my male human child, who will one day — provided he agrees not to follow his father into the absurd, toad-like existence of the liberal-arts major — inherit the full complement of my palatial holdings. And now comes this, a Topps innovation like none other …

Sure, I don’t care a whit about the confluence of lowered expectations and bet-hedging known as a “wedding,” and I don’t care about the World’s Leading Preppies and their opulent rituals. But I do care about kings. Why? Because the very mention of such an ancient and now-mythical designation makes me think a unicorn or an elf might show up.

I won’t buy this — holy crap, I will not buy this — but knowing it’s out there makes me think of dragons. So thanks again, Topps. I very much look forward to once again giving you some U.S. currency in exchange for durable goods.

So the well dressed ballroom dancers over at Seamheads.com are holding a contest. What do you have to do? Come up with an awesome nickname for a current player. If you prove better at this than the competing hordes, then what do you win? A copy of MLB2K11 for the Xbox 360 machine, which I assume is a series of motorized pulleys that runs on a standard 120-volt outlet.

Once again: Come up with a compelling baseball nickname, and your precious lucre will be a board-certified copy of MLB2K11.

If you will, please part the ever-thickening mists of time and think back to when we first met those blessed purveyors of miracles, Team Ghost Riders. If you were as moved as I was by what you witnessed — and indubitably you were — then you no doubt have been roused from sleep each night by a gnawing curiosity: Who is the patriot behind Team Ghost Riders, who have brought so much righteous joy to minor-league ballparks across this, the world’s only country?

Wonder no more, page viewers. Wonder no more …

I’m not sure if the quote is an original or something lifted from the Magna Carta, but it is surely among the greatest of all human utterances: “And in 1962 a little boy was born, and his dream and his goal was to own a monkey.”

Absorb it. Know it. Fathom it. Now repeat it: “And in 1962 a little boy was born, and his dream and his goal was to own a monkey.”