Ryan Braun starts off his new children’s book series with the charming tale of the Anti-Semitic Urine Collector.

‘Twas the night before Purim
And all through the land
Not a toilet was flushing
Not a plunger in hand

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It’s impossible not to love a fantasy baseball draft. I can even get my non-sports-watching wife to understand why the draft is exciting. Each year, I prepare too much. That’s not a good thing. It’s a waste of time. The plan goes out the window after ten minutes anyway — the guy you’re convinced you love more than anyone else could possibly love him gets taken early, and you’re left to rejigger your entire plan. And you spend the rest of the draft three picks behind, just trying to catch up, and get back on top of things. But that’s the fun of it. The adrenaline. The back and forth — whose ups and downs do you want to live with for the next six months, who do you want to be rooting for, who do you truly believe in, beyond what the numbers say you should?

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Okay, I know the fashionable stance to take on Derek Jeter’s defense is that it’s bad. But surely it’s not this bad.

From MLB.com, your official home for ballboy news.*

I thought I was kidding, but a search for “ballboy” really does bring up far more articles than I expected. We’ve got “Ballboy catches Davis off-guard on foul fly,” “Bullpen catcher owes this Rays ballboy a steak dinner,” “To the relief of everyone sitting behind him, ballboy nails leaping catch,” and this weird four-line article about Livan Hernandez throwing sunflower seeds at a ballboy that seems to be missing a much-needed video.

Clearly ballboys need their own 24-hour sports channel.

Newly-acquired Royals outfielder Justin Maxwell has nice teeth.

And he should. From The New York Times:

Maxwell, from Olney, Md., is the son of Austin Maxwell, who was the presidential dentist for five years, starting in 1997. He handled dental care for President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their families, and then for President George W. Bush before retiring from the Navy in 2002. Justin Maxwell, 29, was a star amateur player for much of that time and drew the attention of one of his father’s patients.

“My dad told me that when Bush was president — he’s a big baseball fan — during one of his appointments, he asked how I was doing at the University of Maryland,” Maxwell said. “And my dad said he had never talked about baseball, so he obviously did his research. I thought that was pretty cool.”

That was a conversation the elder Maxwell could share. As for what he saw inside the mouths of the presidents, that was strictly confidential.

“He was never allowed to tell me anything,” Maxwell said. “Even to this day, he’s not allowed.”

Much has been written, including on this very website, about Adam Rosales’s past week: DFA’d by the A’s, picked up by the Rangers, DFA’d by the Rangers three days later, picked back up by the A’s, DFA’d the next day, and then claimed by the Rangers again. Or by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, depending on whose NotGraphs post you believe.

But over here at NotGraphs investigative headquarters, we’ve discovered that all of this DFAing has made Rosales begin to wonder about whether he might need to look for a new career… and he’s decided to become a computer programmer.

Among his very most recent follows on Twitter is the account for Codecademy, a site that provides free computer programming lessons that, according to the person writing this NotGraphs post, is a great idea that can get a writer really excited to sign up, and then the lessons are kind of interesting for about an hour, but then it’s impossible to get motivated enough to ever click on the site again, even months later (although maybe that just means I’m not cut out to be a computer programmer).

Anyway, I think it’s great that Rosales is using his down time productively, and hopefully someone will find a new major league use for him soon.

Last Friday, MLB.com highlighted Dan Haren as the thirteenth pitcher to beat all 30 MLB teams, joining Al Leiter, Randy Johnson, Barry Zito, A.J. Burnett, Kevin Brown, Terry Mulholland, Curt Schilling, Woody Williams, Jamie Moyer, Javier Vazquez, Vicente Padilla and Derek Lowe, on a fairly meaningless list of people who pitched for a while in both leagues, since the addition of the Rays and Diamondbacks in 1998.

Winning the award for most insightful comment on the article:

Yes, I suppose that is true. Thanks, commenter.

Piggybacking on Albert Pujols’s decision to sue former host of “American Bandstand” Jack Clark for declaring on the radio that he “knows for a fact” that Pujols used steroids, the Angels star has decided to sue NotGraphs as well, for this post by Carson from last October, which stated:

[I]t’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Pujols played a not insignificant portion of the 2012 MLB season sans an effing knee.

Indeed, the NotGraphs post showed an enhanced photo of Pujols’s lower body, where you could see that his knee was entirely missing. Said Pujols:

I’ve said time and time again that I have two knees. I’ve been tested hundreds of times throughout my career and never once has a test come back showing that I have only one. It was irresponsible and reckless for Carson Cistulli to have falsely accused me of missing a knee. My faith in Jesus Christ, and my respect for this game are too important to me. I would never be able to look my kids in the eye if I only had one knee. Because they are short and I need to kneel and people with one knee can’t really kneel.

I am currently in the process of taking legal action against NotGraphs. I am going to send a message that you cannot act in a reckless manner, like they have, and get away with it. My hope is mostly that they stop posting about people’s mustaches. Only Jesus Christ can judge the quality of people’s mustaches.

NotGraphs is vigorously defending the action.

* PEDs in Pill Form: How They Travel Through The Small Intestine
* Swallowing steroids: a graphical journey
* The Post-Game Spread and How Much of it Gets Absorbed
* Chewing Tobacco: A View From the Esophagus
* Bartolo Colon or Someone Else’s Colon? You Be The Judge
* The Game I’ll Never Forget That Was Interrupted by Acid Reflux
* Sunflower Seeds: Should You Eat The Shell?
* Q&A: What happens when you swallow chewing gum?
* Are stadium hot dog calorie counts truly accurate?
* Photo Essay: What If Your Favorite Stars Had Gastric Bypass Surgery?
* Excrequial Carrera, and other players whose names can be tortured into digestive system puns
* Burping: Is it just for minor leaguers?
* Suspensions, and other ways to make medication easier to take
* This Day In Baseball-Related Vomiting

Reading the mind of every Mariner fan “@svenbranch: Steroids are supposed to make you awesome at sports. Jesus Montero proves otherwise.”

— Erik Knutsen (@ErikKnutsen) August 6, 2013

Jesus Montero suspended for performance diminishing drugs? #biogenesis

— Jeff Butterfield (@JesusSkywalker8) August 6, 2013

Jesus Montero tried to frame another player for his violations but with the pressure on he dropped the ball

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) August 5, 2013

@AutobahnBismark At the same time, you have to ask why Jesus Montero still sucked.

— Ben (@franzferdinand2) August 6, 2013

I feel badly for the player suspended for PEDs whose performance was awful. Take Jesus Montero. Hitting .208 with as many Ks as hits. #Sad

— Jim Kubinski (@NDcoachKubinski) August 6, 2013

Why is MLB suspending Jesus Montero? It's not like he got better…ever. Fat, slow, with no contact. #GiveHimAPityPass

— Evan Flay (@Number12ForLife) August 6, 2013

BioGenisis owes Jesus Montero a refund. I've seen him play – no performance was enhanced. #steroids #mlb #biogenisis

— Matthew Kennedy (@mjk315) August 6, 2013

The Mariners are pleased with Jesus Montero's significant improvement after being suspended

— Michael Patneaude (@MPLogick) August 5, 2013

"That whole trade was supposed to be Salumi for both teams and ended up being a gigantic turd sandwich…" http://t.co/9I2rMwThfW

— annikusrex (@sloeboris) August 5, 2013

Hmmm, that last one makes me hungry.

Is it possible to feel bad for Jesus Montero? Because I sort of feel bad for Jesus Montero.

Long, enjoyable Men’s Journal profile of Matt Harvey that makes me reasonably certain that, despite living in the same city, we will not be running into other.

This is not to say that Matt Harvey doesn’t seem like a decent enough guy, but, uh, I was on the math team in high school.

Harvey lives in a bachelor pad in the East Village, a downtown neighborhood known for its raucous bar scene, which he indulges in on occasion. “I’m young, I’m single,” he says. “I want to be in the mix.”

I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife in Midtown, a neighborhood not known for its raucous bar scene, or maybe it is but I’m not paying attention. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bar. It definitely wasn’t raucous.

With two hours until Harvey has to be at Citi Field in Queens, he decides he has time for some quick shopping. “Do you know the store John Varvatos?”…. Harvey eyes a linen blazer with about a million buttons running along the seam and a funky, upturned collar – a baroque garment more befitting a general in Napoleon’s army than a ballplayer. “Think I can pull this off?” he asks.

I think the last new piece of clothing I have is a polo shirt my wife bought me off the sale rack in Banana Republic, maybe a year ago. I did buy some new undershirts a few months ago. Does that count as shopping?

“Dirty martinis and music – that’s the big motto in our family,” he says, describing his extended Italian-American clan as a rowdy tribe, fond of letting loose as often as possible. “We get the booze going, and the music starts playing. Always old-school hip-hop. Jay-Z. Tribe Called Quest. The Pharcyde. My parents love that stuff.”

There’s half a bottle of red wine in the back of my refrigerator, and 7/8 of a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. The wine has been there for an amount of time that can be measured in months, is surely well beyond undrinkable, and probably wasn’t all that drinkable in the first place, since we bought it for $4 at Trader Joe’s. But I really can’t tell the difference. The Bailey’s was a gift the last time we had a party. I used a few tablespoons of it to make ice cream, and can’t think of anything else to do with it. When I crank up the Pandora, there’s a pretty good chance James Taylor starts singing.

Harvey mostly hangs with finance and marketing guys in their twenties and thirties.

That sounds terrible.

Still an awesome pitcher though.