Larry Granillo at Wezen-ball.com has quite the imagination. He followed up his odes to the World Series teams with this gem, a graphical representation of the current Hall of Fame members set to the tune of the periodic table. You’ll want to click here to see the full table in its resplendent glory.

Highlights of the table include the fact that he managed to group the 500-home-run, 3,000-hit, and 300-win clubs by color code, and the fact that the top-tier Hall of Famers are mostly in the top three rows of the chart. He also grouped the relievers and the defense-first HoFers, which serves to show how rare they are. In general, the best players trend towards the top and the right in most groups, too.

There’s plenty of smaller choices to bicker about, but one major choice – fundamental to the layout of the chart – concerns the baseball equivalent of ‘radioactive.’ Granillo goes with temperament, and that works to an extent. The ‘highly radioactive’ group consists of notable hothead Reggie Jackson, tough-as-nails Rogers Hornsby, and twitter superstar Old Hoss Radbourn.

But it’s a little strange to see the relievers right next to the ‘radiocative’ crew, and their placement on the left does not provide for a graded move from nice to nasty when moving to your left. In fact, that wouldn’t even be possible. And thinking about the chart in this way makes you wonder if the definition for radioactive may have come from a different place that could have served the chart better.

One of the most explosive conversations two fans of different teams can have is whether or not a player that once belonged to one of their teams belongs in the Hall of Fame. This only becomes more true when the player is borderline. Wasn’t the candidacy of Jim Rice one of the most talked-about and intense candidacies of modern times?

What if ‘radioactive’ was instead defined by the energy expended around a player’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame, and perhaps how borderline their candidacy was? Then we wouldn’t have to make decisions about the personalities of the players involved. Then we might be able to grade the chart from the most deserving on the right to those less deserving on the left. Then it would also suddenly make sense that the relievers were on the left, too.

Then again, this may be a little too much thinking about a moment meant for fun. At the very least, it’s certainly a chuckle-worthy chart.

If your household is anything like mine (read: rambunctious!), you have may disagreements from time to time. In my personal bungalow, one such discussion revolves around the San Francisco Giants closer, and whether his persona is all cynical and whatnot. I find Brian Wilson entertaining, no matter his motivation.

Well, The Beard just got a little weirder. There is now a Fear the Beard video game that features the eccentric closer battling evil monks, tomahawks and the like, all the while feeding on the energy of the crowd – personified by orange rally towels. Though game play is rudimentary, it is perhaps not the point.

“Fear the Beard: The Baseball Odyssey Game” was made on a site called GameSpark that allows amateurs like you and I to make our own 2D and 3D games. As the site proclaims, you can make “holiday games featuring friends, family and pets.” Making a game based on your family pet may sound abhorrent, but it also becomes a quick inside joke that all the family can enjoy. Rudimentary game play means your aunt can enjoy making Sparky eat all the pies in the house!

So this really isn’t about Brian Wilson. It’s about continuing to bask in the glow that is a world championship. It’s about having an inside joke with all the rest of the Giants fans. It’s about smiling just a little longer.

There will always be time to come back to earth and discuss things like Brian Wilson benefiting from wide strike zones more than any other reliever in baseball, as J-Doug at Beyond the Box Score did just this Wednesday. There will always be time for cynicism and analysis. For now, just jump on the trampoline and fire some fastballs at that monk coming from the left.

This past weekend, I attended Ron Shandler’s First Pitch Arizona event for the first time. While ingesting my weight in hot dogs and adult sodas, the following things occurred to me, and not in consecutive order:

• What a lineup Ron Shandler puts together for this event. This year, the event featured such fantasy baseball luminaries as Lawr Michaels and Todd Zola from Mastersball/ CREATiVESPORTS, Jeff Erickson from RotoWire, Steve Moyer from Baseball Info Solutions, Steve Gardner from USA Today, Jason Grey and Eric Karabell from ESPN, John Sickels from Minor League Ball, Joe Sheehan from JoeSheehan.com, Mike Siano from MLB.com, Lenny Melnick from FantasyPros911, Tim Heaney and Nick Minnix from KFFL, as well as Kimbal Crossley, a professional scout. Fantasy veterans may find it hard not to get a little jelly-legged.

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