In keeping with Carson’s explorations of Dick Allen, there’s this:

What to say about this thing of wonder? The White Sox wore red! He’s juggling! He has the facial hair of a 19th-century railroad baron! And: He’s smoking in the dugout!

I once heard an interview with Paul Stanley in which he said something to the effect of, “For a while there in the 70s, every song was about sex or what you were going to do that night.”

That’s as succinct and penetrating of a comment about a generation as I’ve ever encountered. The Dick Allen SI cover is similarly illuminating. This photo couldn’t be of anyone else at any other time.

Viva la Crash.

I have long had a rather bizarre fascination with the inside-the-park grand slam. It has forever eluded me. I’ve seen Albert Pujols hit three home runs in a game, I’ve seen Melky Cabrera hit for the cycle, and I’ve seen Randy Johnson and Zane Smith flirt with no-nos. Yet not in person, not even from my couch — the sacred place from which I have witnessed so many of civilization’s miracles — have I seen the elusive ITPGS.

Anyhow, Wikipedia, which is an unassailable source of true facts, tells me that there were but 40 ITPGS’s through 2007. Then this thread from 2002 lists them. It’s on the Internet, so I assume pristine accuracy.

Some random amusements to be found therein …

– Honus Wagner hit five ITPGS’s in his superlative career. Five. I declare: that’s a lot.

– What I find to be more amazing is that teammates Joe Kelley and Jimmy Sheckard each hit one in the same game in 1901.

– Then Sheckard went and hit another one the very next day.

– Bombo Rivera hit one in 1976. Bombo Rivera is such a great name that all of God’s children should be named Bombo Rivera.

– And here’s what gobsmacks me the most of all: Ron Karkovice — Ron Slapping Karkovice! — somehow pulled off an ITPGS in 1990. Kark was slower than a Bergman film, so I can’t rightly fathom the absurd tapestry of events that led to his clumping around every base and then, I am forced to assume, collapsing face first onto home plate. I would give up multitudes to have been there.

So what’s the coolest baseball event you’ve ever witnessed in person?

As Dan Shaughnessy or any self-aware electron will you, it pays to go negative. So in keeping with that wisdom, we’re going negative in this space and handing out a few “Anti-Awards” for the 2010 season.

First, though, something must be said. Even lousy major-league baseball players are better at baseball than I am at anything in the world. Now I feel better.

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Before I post the video, some observations …

At this point, what can I do but roll tape?

SF Weekly reminds us that freshly minted Oakland A Hideki Matsui is a man who loves his porn. This from an old Time Asia piece on the occasion of Matsui’s joining the Yankees:

Indeed, his only eccentricity, if it can be called that, is his extensive private library of adult videos. His refreshing ability to laugh self-deprecatingly about his porno collection, reporters say, is one reason why fans and even nonfans have taken to him so much. Says former reporter Isao Hirooka: “Hideki just wants to be like ordinary people.”

Just how extensive is ordinary person Matsui’s private library? Sketchy reports suggest he could use a librarian.

Hideki, I christen thee “Dirtyzilla.”

(Curtsy: BBTF)

While baseball is my favorite human endeavor, I’m also a college football fan on the side. For those reasons (and as part of my ongoing recovery from yet another Nebraska loss that challenges the dimensions of the absurd and because — as Kid Rock hastens to remind me on those rare occasions when I cross paths with popular music — I was born free), I decided to see what things would look like if baseball operated under the widely maligned BCS system.

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If I’ve learned one thing in this world, it’s that NYC tabloids are never wrong. So that’s why I believe the Daily News when it tells me Yanks outfielder Nick Swisher and actress Joanna Garcia are to be wed this weekend.

My own wife, who I assume was coconuts from pregnancy hormones at the time, went through a three-month or so phase of watching “Reba” on the CW every day. So I feel like I’ve watched Joanna grow up. Or not.

Anyway, Swish seems like a good egg, and I can guarantee you no professional athlete can claim this:

Reba McEntire, Jamie Lynn Sigler, and Lance Bass will serve as part of the bridal party, Us reports.

Next up for the future Mrs. Swisher? Doing Laura Posada’s laundry as part of her Yankee Wives Club pledge requirements.

While I am personally not a fan of Pete Rose and think he has as much business being in the Hall of Fame as does an unassuming cheese curd, there’s no denying his popularity among the Joe Fan types. An outgrowth of that popularity is a truly bizarre menu of photos and artistic renderings.

So come with me, won’t you, as we stroll through the Pete Rose Wing of the Museum of Questionable Aesthetic Decisions …

You’ve heard of “Christ Figures” in cinema? Above we have unassailable proof that Anton Chigurh was a “Pete Figure.”

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There’s not much need for introductory throat-clearing: Baseball has an impossibly rich history when it comes to player nicknames, and what follows are the 10 very, especially, most greatest of all …

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Not long ago, Carson whipped up a wonderful little post that made me nostalgic for the florid sports prose of yesteryear.

For whatever reason, the game stories we read these days lack that certain something that you’ll find when you go spelunking through the archives of some venerable major daily. This isn’t to criticize the poor grunts who have to come up something interesting to say 162 times per year. Hell, give, say, Nabokov a steady diet of Diet Rite, Funyuns and airline liquor and seal him off in a foul-smelling press box for half his life, and the output will suffer.

So what to do? Here’s how we can improve your reading experience, refashion baseball journalism and vastly simplify the lives of our heroic and harried beat writers.

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