Gorman Thomas threw the ceremonial first pitch at Sunday’s first game of the 2011 NLCS. Thomas is one of the seminal Brewers from the 1982 club which also challenged the St. Louis Cardinals in the playoff, albeit one round later. This is what Gorman Thomas looked like back then:

Thomas wasn’t born in Wisconsin — he’s actually a southern boy, from South Carolina, but that’s the kind of rugged facial hair we Midwesterners appreciate. If Robin Yount and Paul Molitor were the Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder superstars of that 1982 team, than Thomas is the Corey Hart — a power-hitting southern boy with wild facial hair (although Gorman pulls it off… a little bit better).

This was the first time I’ve seen Thomas outside of highlights and pictures from the heyday. But really, one look at the man swinging the bat in the powder blue and gold and then one look here, at the man throwing out the first pitch for the navy and barley, and, well, was anything else really possible?

Sure, we’ve gone from the total package to a classier, mustache-only look, but these are simply the things that happen with age. Good for Gorman — coming back to Milwaukee, supporting his team, and probably living the Wisconsin lifestyle. A true Wisconsin legend, in the flesh.

Observe, the Wikipedia page of one Eric Sogard:

(Click to embiggen. Like, a lot.)

Now, allow me to highlight some notable elements of said Wikipedia page.

1. I hadn’t heard this nickname for Sogard ever before, but in retrospect, it’s hilariously obvious. Check it out:

2. Said glasses:

3. Sogard. Home run. Record. Same sentence.

4. I have to be honest, that whole second round thing really dulls the allure of the story of that guy up there making it to the major leagues.

Eh. Still good.

5. I wonder how jean sales are in Oakland right now.

6. On that home run, the “# parks” according to Hit Tracker Online is zero. Not even one. Zero.

Yes, his second homer (against Koji Uehara, at that) went a respectable 374 feet and would’ve been out of 27 parks. No, I don’t care.

7. Of course. Of course he’s bunting. The two in-game shots are of him fielding a routine grounder… and bunting. This is his skillset.

Also,

Two Saturdays ago, I was at the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Madison. They have all these new big screen TVs, and on one of them, the Milwaukee Brewers were playing. Ryan Braun comes up to the plate in the sixth inning with two runners on. I tapped one of my friends at the shoulder, pointed at the TV, and said “Hey, he’s gonna hit a homer.”

Ryan Braun proceeded to a hit a homer.

Am I a genius? Yes. But not because of that. My claim was completely full of shit. But the overzealous home run prediction is a large part of my personal baseball watching experience. Prince Fielder up in an important situation? Home run. George Kottaras up in any situation? Home run. More often than not, I’m wrong, but I am rewarded with just enough confirmation bias and hindsight bias to keep on going.

In the bottom of the eighth inning of Wednesday’s thriller at The Trop, Evan Longoria stepped up to the plate in an utterly crucial situation. The comeback was beginning, as the thinnest part of the Yankee bullpen started to give way. After the Yanks basically handed the Rays three runs, Tampa was just a swing away from making it a one-run game with Longoria coming up.

I predicted a home run.

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On the repository of human knowledge known as “Urban Dictionary,” the third definition of “thunder thighs” is “a pair of big ass thighs.”

Observe, Brett Wallace:

Judging purely by the definition above (i.e, “a pair of big ass thighs”), Brett Wallace has thunder thighs. But, as you will most keenly observe, MLB.com’s GameDay most certainly sells said thunder thighs short:

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Gameday simply doesn’t have the ability to project total realism. I guess all technologies have their limitations. In Gameday’s case, it’s thunder thighs.

Last week, Carson bestowed upon us the brilliance of “Maybe it’s just society,” drawn from the mind of Vernon Wells and turned into pixels on this very space. For the uninitiated, observe, very much indirectly from the horse’s mouth (i.e. Vernon Wells):

Why would you waive your no-trade clause [to accept a trade to the Angels] and then opt out one year later? I never really thought about using it. You do a contract and you ask for certain things. That happened to be one I asked for and got. To be honest with you, I think about it as often as I think about the money.

Maybe it’s just society, but people put too much on struggling. All of a sudden, everything is negative — you’re a bad guy; you’re unhappy. It’s a struggle, yeah. But that’s all it is. I’ve struggled before. Baseball is such a different game. You can be an All-Star one year, struggle the next year and become an All-Star again. It is what it is. This is a great place to live, a great place to play. I’ve got a lot of good years left and I look forward to having them there.

Carson has created the meme, but what good is a meme if it is not sustained? So it is, without further ado, I present Some More Things That May Be Due To Society.

1. An objectively unfortunate Hamburglar costume.

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By now, you guys have probably seen Getting Blanked blog:

Oh my. I do believe I am getting the vapors.

This is the best logo in baseball history. Yes, there’s the Brewers ball-in-glove logo. Everybody knows about it. It’s awesome. But there’s just something special about the color combination and the retro feel and the all around good vibes I feel when I look at this work of mastery and art and just fantastical niceness.

Please be real.

The team-name font is the same as the leaked Marlins logo. The MLB logo is placed in the exact same place. The Marlins logo has already been confirmed as real. I like our odds. Just please be real.

The Boston Red Sox have been in an intense, high-stress playoff race as their team has crumbled during September, allowing the Tampa Bay Rays to climb back into the Wild Card race. Although this is bad news for Boston, this is good news for everybody else. Not just because of schadenfreude (although largely because of schadenfreude), but also because this means we get to hear David Ortiz say The F Word (i.e., “fuck”), one of my personal favorite pasttimes and something Ortiz is actually quite experienced with. Observe:

August 2009, on not receiving an RBI on what he thought was a base hit: “Fucking scorekeeper keeps fucking shit up.”

April 2010, on what he thought of sportswriters making claims on small sample sizes, including bonus non-fuck swears: “You guys wait ’til shit happens, then you can talk shit. Two fucking games, and already you fuckers are going crazy. What’s up with that, man? Fuck. Fucking 160 games left. That’s a bitch (note: unsure which expletive actually goes here). One of you fuckers got to go ahead and hit for me.”

June 2011, on Joe Girardi’s disdain for bat flips: “Fuck that shit.”

Monday, on losing the first half of a doubleheader to the Baltimore Orioles: “Fuck this shit.”

Tuesday, on Curt Schilling: “Fuck off.”

August 2011, on leaving 16 men on base: “Fuck.”

A diverse usage of one of the English language’s greatest sentence enhancers from Big Papi. One can only hope the Red Sox remain mired in their struggles just to see where he’ll go next.

Enclosed, one will find a photograph of Chewbacca, the gentle, hairy first mate of the Milennium Falcon with R.A. Dickey, the gentle, hairy knuckleballing pitcher for the New York Mets.

Does anybody else smell a spin-off? Or is that just Chewie’s fur?

(Shamelessly grabbed from Eric Nusbaum’s tumblr, where he declared he had “no words” to describe this picture, which is only slightly fewer words than I had.

Dallas Braden is excited.

See? I told you.

You, the reader, may not fully understand just how excited Dallas Braden is. I, the author, somewhat fortunately, do not understand just how excited Dallas Braden is. But you know who does? People on the Maury Povich show. Like this guy:

And this guy:

In fact, I think Braden actually might have been on Maury one of those times… I think we have the footage (which will be embiggened upon clickage):

Well, just allow me to say congratulations to Dallas on both fronts (the being able to throw and the not being the father).

Many thanks to Holy Maury Mother Of God for existing and having these great images.

In case you missed it — and I sincerely doubt that’s possible — Juan Francisco hit a really long home run last night against the Cubs. Compagno Cistulli already detailed the home run for us, as well as some stuff about emotions or aesthetics or something.

That’s one way to admire Francisco’s moonshot. Joey Votto and Jay Bruce present another:

Here’s how I imagine this scene playing out:

BRUCE: Hey Joey, did you see that home run Juan hit?

VOTTO: Yeah.

BRUCE: That one over there?

VOTTO: Yeah.

BRUCE: That was awesome.

VOTTO: Yeah.

Still, I can’t help but feel like something is missing, in a hastily photoshopped manner…

Yeah. That’s it.