So this is an actual thing …

Hey, I thought it was a cool moment. Both guys handled themselves exceptionally well, and Galarraga in particular showed that a sense of equanimity is possible even in the throes of a screw-job, which is something of which I am wholly incapable. With that said, is this all it takes to sustain a narrative these days? I get that there are moments in time that, as book editors are wont to pretend, CHANGED EVERYTHING, but this happened roughly eight months ago. Have we really had time for sober reflection on anything beyond the epidermal layer of consequences? That is, how do we know that Joyce’s blown call CHANGED EVERYTHING?

And wouldn’t this make a better, I dunno, “Vanity Fair” article or something? How are you going to wring 250 pages out of this story? Sure, we’ll get the back-story on Galarraga and a portrait of the umpire as a young man, but what then? Pictures? Blank pages for note-taking? Clip-out flashcards so you can memorize details of their lives? Mazes? A choose-your-own-adventure chapter or three? A carved out space in which you can hide weed? If nothing else, they should change the title from Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History to I Kicked the Sh*t Out of It: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History. I’m surprised I even need to say this.

On the celluloid front, remember the story of the two Indian pitchers who signed with the Pirates after winning a reality show? The least shocking news ever is that their story is going to be a movie. Also unsurprising: The shlock merchants at Disney will be at the switch.

Normally, I don’t trust any Disney outputs that don’t come to me from the loving arms of Pixar. Partly, this is because I’ve never forgiven them for the sadistic lacerations I suffered from watching Old Yeller. (Seriously, you’ve never heard of rabies vaccinations, you rubes?) Mostly, though, it’s because you and I both know that Disney will one day kill us all. Combine Disney’s dubious sense of aesthetics with the central ingredients of bad cinema already present in this story, and the potential for groan-inducement is both boundless and without bound.

The one consolation is that Tom McCarthy will be writing the script, and McCarthy knows a little something about making good movies. Let’s just hope that the suits let McCarthy use the light, aware touch he showed in The Visitor, so we don’t end up with something like the provably awful “Outsourced” set on a baseball diamond.

Also: Actual. Baseball. Now. Please.

Generation X is so often pilloried — rightly at times — for being too self-absorbed, too indolent, too prone to calculated ennui, off-brand cigarettes, liberal-arts degrees, and bouts of longing for Winona Ryder. I will argue with none of this.

But sometimes we’re capable of greatness. For evidence — evidence that not even Hollywood attorneys could assail — please take time to watch the video below. It’s the iconic 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series re-imagined through the constraints of RBI Baseball. I just checked, and I’ve never used the phrase “profoundly beautiful” in my life. But I’m using it now to describe this. Highlights? See pixelated Marty Barrett win the Miller Lite Player of the Game, and then look on in mounting horror as the John McNamara of the NES keypad toggles desperately between foredoomed relievers. The dulcet tones on Vin Scully are but a welcome flourish.

Come with me, won’t you?

As you may have heard, the Football Industrial Complex is about to have its big day. Yippee?

Anyhow, every gentleperson of highly evolved opinions knows that the football-related product put out by the NFL is inferior to baseball in a multitude of ways. My opinion or true fact? True fact!

Disagree? First, I’m sorry you hate freedom. Second, please take this opportunity to revisit Thomas Boswell’s classic, “Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football?” Best of all, it’s in list form for today’s busy executive!

Still not convinced? Then please fire up the video embedded below, jump ahead to the 0:30 mark and then ponder how much you regret having done so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezm66VaNL6o

Kommissar Cistulli has already regaled you with the back-story of Billy Ripken’s “Fu*k Face” card, which is beautiful in its awfulness and awful in its beauty. And now we learn that Fu*k Face has a legacy that’s as enduring as any other cherished artifact of Western civilization — like the Magna Carta or Vicky Lawrence. Let Billy’s lesser known older brother Calvin tell the story …

Peter Sagal, host of the show, asked Ripken if he ever gets tired of living up to his good-boy image.

“Does that ever get to be a drag?” Sagal asked. “Do you ever, like, want to go out and behave really badly, but you can’t because you’re Cal Ripken Jr.?”

“The answer to that is yes,” Ripken said. “I’d like to be able to behave really badly and not have it matter. … I’m OK with being out in public, except when you get in a fight with your wife or you get in a fight with your kids or your daughter calls you a name and storms off and you feel pretty helpless to do anything.”

Faith Salie, a panelist on the show, piped up: “Did she call you the name that was on the bottom of your brother’s bat?”

“Sorry,” Ripken said. “My daughter’s name is Rachel. Sorry, Rachel, but yes, she did.”

Because it will make me sound like the Man of Letters that I am not, I’ll leave you with a quote from something called “Mark Twain”: “Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

What should the elder Mr. Ripken take from this? Consolation, that’s what. The next time your daughter calls you “fu*k face,” it should be viewed as something more uplifting and adorable than whispered prayers at bedtime.

Remember, children of the world: Curse without ceasing.

(Curtsy: Da’ HBT)

Who doesn’t love a good death threat? While this bit of sociopathy isn’t quite as beautiful as the recent lawsuit filed against P-Diddy, it’s still pretty crackin’ good.

Obviously, the best part is when threatener assures the threatened that the address on the envelope is indeed fake — just in case Mr. Smoky Joe Wood was pondering putting the fuzz on the scent or seizing the initiative and showing up for pistols at dawn.

Curiously, Mr. Wood wound up curiously dying at the curious age of 95. Suffice it to say, the Investigative Reporting Investigation Team is on it like something that adheres quite strongly to something else.

(Curtsy: Deadspin)

Given that the Dodgers-Giants blood feud already has a body count, what follows might strike some as an example of imprudent brinksmanship:

As most of you die hard fans know, The World Champion San Francisco Giants open up Major League Baseball play at Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. In this hostile environment The World Champion San Francisco Giants will need the support of The World Champion San Francisco Giant’s Faithful. The plan is to fly a banner 3 miles above Chavez Ravine that says, “Giants 2010 Champs: BEAT LA”. This banner will fly in Los Angeles for the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday games for an hour and 20 minutes. It is a great way to pay tribute to The World Champion San Francisco Giants while giving the other organization a taste of what it is like to be World Series Champions: something they haven’t tasted since 1988. So, we ask the faithful of The World Series San Francisco Giants to pledge whatever you can to make this idea, this dream, a reality.

As righteous causes go, it’s hard to argue that this one ranks up there with St. Jude, but if nothing else one must admire the grassroots zeal. My only complaint is that “Beat L.A.” is a bit tepid and uninspired. I mean, if you’re going to risk inciting a riot at least ramp up the airborne taunt with something like, “Ha ha, Dodgers, you suck!” or “Vin Scully doesn’t recycle!” or “Sandy Koufax was decidedly a belly-itcher!” or “You are all foul-smelling, withered gargoyles, the lot of you!” or “Barry Bonds was better than Franklin Stubbs!” or “One could argue –and this flying machine does — that the 1981 championship wasn’t entirely legitimate!” or the like.

Mostly, I’m left wondering what you, upstanding readers, would put on the flying banner if you were taunting your rivals from the heavens and had set up a 501c3 to that end. Regale us!

Internet computers everywhere are no doubt aware of Brian Wilson’s championship appearance on something called “Lopez Tonight,” but we’d be remiss if we didn’t post it anyway. As you’ll soon see, some redundancies are worth redundancy …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQesL-G4jPE

The “veteran purveyor of processed faux-tilapia logs” look is a winning one, to be sure. And the second hat and Finding Nemo socks are also worth the price of admission. Bonus: If you were short on thinly veiled references to coitus, then consider your quota now met and exceeded. As you might anticipate, Mr. Wilson is now a board-certified dirty birdie! Oh, and thanks to Lil’ Pat Burrell for showing up.

As for Mr. Wilson’s offseason travels, which have presumably made him into a kind of walking Zagat guide to the Thai sex trade, at this point we are duty-bound to summon Murray Head to the podium …

(Curtsy: Pretty much all of you.)

This is a couple of months old (then again, so am I), but it absolutely merits a mention.

Tim Lincecum, who is awesome in a bounty of ways, already has a pair of Cy Young awards placed carefully atop his custom-made oaken mantle — a mantle from the Prestige Collection, no doubt — a World Series ring on his finger and, I assume, a championship belt around his waist. Now comes the most impressive laurel of all. Lincecum, because of his alleged zeal for sweet, sweet herb, has been named Top Celeb Stoner by, fittingly, CelebStoner.com. Please behold the last two paragraphs of the announcement:

Known as “The Freak,” for his long black hair and wiry 5-11, 170-poind build, Lincecum is a phenomenon – a gifted athlete who chooses to use marijuana (except for when he’s getting drug tested).

Fun Facts: Lincecum has a French Bulldog named Cy. His mother is Filipino. He’s single.

“If God didn’t want us to smoke doobage,” Lincecum said upon receiving the award, “then he wouldn’t have invented Foghat and detached garages.”

Actually, Lincecum didn’t say that. James Madison said that.

We’ve already laid eyes upon the wonder that was Matt Murton upon a mythical steed, and — as we see above — now the Twins’ Matt Tolbert has joined the fantasy beast-of-burden party.

Questions abound … Is this a Midwest thing? A “guy named Matt” thing? Why do some ballplayers have such a hardwired yearning to ride unicorns/pegasi? After all, these are photos, so we now know that, a, such beasts exist; b, Matts Murton and Tolbert ride them and; c, both seem to favor the dressage style.

Distinctions? While Mr. Murton seems bound by the strictures of gravity, Mr. Tolbert thinks nothing of thundering across the firmament in defiance of all we think we know about science-y science. Sure, you might point out that Mr. Tolbert is atop a winged creature and thus better able to fly. Poppycock! I prefer to think it’s because Mr. Tolbert’s secret nickname is “Mythical Beast Whisperer Jesus” and that everything flows from there.

I can’t say whether Matt Tolbert’s prevailing goal in this life is to be photographed atop and in manly, sinewy command of every varmint found in the Monster Manual, but I can say it should be.

(Curtsy: Pretty darn sure this image originally appeared at That’s Twins Baseball.)

Yes, the above beard is more “maladjusted IT guy” rather than “elite ballplayer,” but I’m going with it. Anyhow, Internet computers have been buzzing for a while over news that Nats outfielder Jayson Werth might be forced to shave his “at work on my manifesto/buying canned food and ammo for my bunker” beard. Werth’s lamewad new employers have a facial-hair policy, and last month team pit boss Mike Rizzo dropped this bomb: “When I last saw him, he had no beard.”

Google Images is sadly lacking in photographic evidence, so we must take Mr. Rizzo at his word. Yes, near and dear, it is time to mourn Jayson Werth’s beard. To that end, nothing I could say, do or perpetrate will match what the Beard of Truth has to say on this urgent matter.

And what of the second-most famous baseball beard of the contemporary era? Fear not for it. As Beard of Truth reminds us, “I think you know this sweaty bastard needs me.”

(Curtsy: Reader Jordan Shapiro, who’s there for those who have nowhere left to turn.)