Yesterday, font of journalistic integrity and “horrifying diarrhea sludge” Deadspin announced they had purchased a Hall of Fame vote from a BBWAA member/bribed that member to vote the way the site’s readers would like him or her to.

“Fun,” a lot of people seemed to think. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

You mean aside from the creeping stench of outright corruption in the voting process and of one of the few places left that was doing quality investigative sports journalism? Ok, I suppose that’s not enough for some people.

Well, I imagine nobody thought this through very hard. There are ramifications and repercussions coming, people, possibly including but not limited to:

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In an effort to get this show off the air faster, ABC pulled a fast one on us, dear readers, and showed an episode last week, even though it had originally said the show was on hiatus until this Wednesday. Their skullduggery is your gain this week, though, reader, as you get a super-sized double review and recap of the last two episodes. So far, this series has gone to great lengths to demonstrate the awfulness of all of its characters, and to portray humanity as a greedy, oblivious, selfish, and devoid of empathy. Let’s see if they can do better going forward. Maybe the extra time off has caused them to reevaluate the general tone of this unfunny dreck. I mean, if it can’t be entertaining, maybe it can be pleasantly benign.

Nope, it turns out it can’t.

Episode Seven opens with the team “shagging fly balls” in practice. While your Little League team probably put players into positions and spread them out, Coach Terry and The Cannon instead let their players huddle in a mass of squirming, shoving 10 year olds who jockey for position, all shouting “I got it” over each other until all of them dive out of the way at the last second, and the ball falls to the ground. Let it not be forgotten that Terry and The Cannon are, in addition to being rotten people, terrible coaches.

While “Regional Safety Officer” Sheldon Bickle (a paycheck-cashing John Michael Higgins) looks on, one fly ball hits Dong square on the head when he forgets to put up his glove to catch it. This is accompanied by actual Looney Tunes sound effects. Horrified at the lack of medical attention Dong receives, Bickle orders both The Cannon and Dick, the misogynist league president, to attend “safety school” (safety schools being a concept this show’s creators are probably very familiar with).

Meanwhile, Coach Terry stays late after practice with Dudley (the fat kid) because his parents forget to pick him up for what sounds like the umpteenth time. They’re divorced, you see, and far more interested in hating each other than paying attention to their lonely son. They even refuse to attend his games, because, as his father says “It’s not my custody day. I got plans. And besides, do I want to sit in the stands with my ex-wife yelling at me?”

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“You can call me ‘a source close to the family and familiar with the negotiations.'”

The life of a reporter covering Major League Baseball remains a difficult one. Not only has the job of a beat reporter expanded to require several blog posts and newspaper articles in a single day, but today’s scribes must also be ready 24 hours a day to break news. In the desperate race to break stories, they are forced to rely on new, and occasionally unreliable sources.

So it was yesterday that Texas sportswriter Jamie Kelly broke the news that David Murphy was going to sign with the Cleveland Indians, because Murphy’s daughter told everyone at day care she was moving to Cleveland (presumably prompting an tsunami of sympathetic responses and comforting pats on the back).  The news was relayed to Kelly, who told her Twitter followers:

David Murphy informed his daughter’s daycare that he is signing with the Indians. This is, again, per my source close to the situation.

— Jamie Kelly (@JamieSportsTalk) November 20, 2013

As it turns out, Kelly was absolutely spot on. But this sets a dangerous precedent where ballplayers’ children become not just adorable moppets who get to play on the field with their dads on Sunday, but legitimate sources for breaking news. Already, we’ve seen the following rumors crop up:

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It’s that time again. The time where I get to write one last post about the Ron Swanson Baseball Hall of Fame and then am forced to think of new and original posts for this godforsaken website, rather than just keep running variations on the same thing over and over. Honestly, I don’t think any of us are going to get what we want out of our time together going forward. After all, Notgraphs has been reduced to whatever this is, jokes about France, and is kept afloat practically singlehandedly by the diminishing returns offered by David Temple. And next week it’s back to Back In the Game recaps for me. Because I hate myself and you.

So let us revel one last time in the glory of Ron Swanson, patron saint of all that is worthwhile, and his acolytes, who were decided upon by you, the masses, like this was some kind of homecoming election. Once again, you have correctly identified and chosen to recognize the most popular, beautiful, and athletic people in your class. Congratulations to you, you sheep, you have confirmed my worst thoughts about you.

The leading vote getter was…

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A great philosopher and beloved dead uncle once said “with great power comes great responsibility.” To date, no one has deemed me worthy of receiving great power (and rightfully so; I would misuse it the first chance I’d get), and so I’m reduced to creating and maintaining a fictional Hall of Fame based on the teachings of fictional character Ron Swanson. This gives me some infinitesimally small amount of power, and since Uncle Ben never mentioned that, I don’t feel obligated to exercise any responsibility at all. As such, I am abdicating any and all responsibility in the selection process, save for organizing the candidates for your voting pleasure.

Based on your feedback, the new nominees are:

Wade Boggs – For mustache-having, For love of meat (fried chicken before every game) and scotch, For popularity with the ladies, and For unquenchable iconoclasm as expressed through his appearances on The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Cheers

George Herman Ruth – For love of meat and scotch, For popularity with the ladies, For unquenchable iconoclasm, For disdain of unnecessary rules and regulations, For general joie de vivre.

Bill Veeck – For toughness (lost a leg in World War II), For woodworking (carved an ashtray into wooden leg he received after losing leg in World War II), For love of meat and scotch, For unquenchable iconoclasm, For blatant disdain for unnecessary rules and regulations (hired Eddie Gaedel to pinch hit), For general distrust of authority. You know what, just go read this comment.

Satchel Paige – For love of meat and scotch, For unquenchable iconoclasm, For blatant disdain for unnecessary rules and regulations (jumped contracts constantly in his youth), For general distrust of authority.

Mickey Mantle – For love of meat and scotch, For general popularity with the ladies, For toughness (played on a bad knee his whole career).

Ted Williams – For love of meat and scotch, For having wives with similar names, For toughness (fought in both World War II and the Korean War, crash-landed a plane and walked away), For unquenchable iconoclasm

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A brief note: there is good news on the Back in the Game front. It has officially been cancelled by ABC, so our weekly torment will end. There is also bad news, and that’s that there are seven more episodes to burn off before this show disappears in its entirely. That’s actually one episode more than we’ve been forced to endure thusfar, so our torment will not end quickly. However, the show is off until November 20, meaning our torment shall be delayed. Thank heaven for small miracles. Now, how to torment you until then…?

In recent months, thanks to my six year old’s obsession with Transformers and Lego’s, I have become increasingly familiar with the deeply weird world of online toy reviews on YouTube. These reviews presumably help collectors decide whether they want to drop $125 for the new, two foot tall Metroplex at San Diego’s ComicCon, though they have also inspired The Boy to ask whether he can get the $400 Lego Death Star for his birthday or an original Shockwave off of Ebay for $120. Thanks, YouTube, for inventing new ways for me to disappoint my child.

These reviews, however, are available for damn near every kind of product, presented by presumably well-meaning people who have a webcam, a lot of extra time, and a generous spirit. You, perhaps, will benefit from their expertise. For instance, you might be asking yourself, “Self, how do I get my baby interested in baseball?”  Have you considered the Playskool Swing ‘N Score Baseball Toy?

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Almost two years ago, I made the mistake of empowering you, the reader, with the ability to create, from whole cloth, the Ron Swanson Hall of Fame, honoring the mustachioed dynamo equally skilled in woodworking, meat preparation, hoarding gold, saxamaphone, avoiding his job, and dispensing warm and sincere advice who elevates NBC’s criminally underwatched Parks and Recreation from sublime to divine comedy. I should have, like an enlightened, benevolent despot, made the decision for you, but it turns out I’m too lazy. You actually managed to do an ok job though, electing Old Hoss Radbourn, Ty Cobb, Nolan Ryan, Jeff Bagwell, and Lou Gehrig to be the inaugural class. To date, I’d say we have created the best fictional Hall of Fame based on a fictional character that has ever not actually existed.

With the offseason upon us, now we can turn our attention back to important things, such as choosing the second class of current or former baseballers to join this illustrious group. Thus will we stave off the creeping dread of winter for a short time and four months without baseball. Today, the floor is open for nominations in the comments section and in my Twitter feed, and will remain so until next Wednesday, when we will vote our consciences, because the only thing I respect more than a kindly king making the difficult decisions the rabble cannot is the stupid precedent I have already set. Repeat nominees from last time are allowed, so if your favorite wasn’t popular enough to make it before, you’re welcome to try again.

The established categories under which players, mangers, front office types, mascots, broadcasters, clubbies, groundskeepers, organists, and beer venders can be nominated include:

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Last week, I mocked Dick and The Cannon for treating Terry like she had the emotions of a twelve year old. I was wrong. In all of their terribleness, I missed something in these characters that this week’s episode of Back in the Game makes entirely clear. Not only are their own concerns about Terry’s emotional state, entirely valid, but it accurately reflects them as well. Everyone on this show, including Terry’s son, acts like an idiot child. Only one of them has a valid excuse for that.

In this week’s episode, Terry plans to go trick or treating with Danny, over Danny’s objections, dressing her almost-pubescent son as Raggedy Andy to her Raggedy Anne in a selfish quest to preserve her family tradition that will get her son beat up. But, when a former high school rival rekindles their competition, Terry can’t wait to ditch her son so she can go to Dick the misogynist league president’s costume party in a hotter costume. It’s not entirely clear why people like Dick, given that he’s a massive douche, but there seems to be an endless supply of attractive people at his party, where he makes them compete in stupid games to stroke his ego.

The Cannon, meanwhile, is standing watch in the cemetery ostensibly to keep kids from knocking over his wife’s tombstone, but also to renew his feud with another septuagenarian, as they keep adding details to their wives’ tombstones in a game of one-upsmanship. They wind up bonding over their love of their wives’ asses.

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San Diego State University has a proud tradition as a baseball school that produced such illustrious alumni as Tony Gwynn, Tony Gwynn’s son Also Tony Gwynn, Stephen Strasburg, Graig Nettles, Jim Nettles, Mark Grace, Tony Clark, Bud Black, Aaron Harang, Travis Lee, Jim Wilson, Justin Masterson, Dave Smith, and, of course, Al Newman. I’m sorry to say that that tradition, if it has not already been ruined, is in serious jeopardy.

That sounds harsh. These are still kids playing baseball after all, and perhaps they do not deserve to have their talents maligned so. I don’t mean this as a criticism to those players that the Aztecs have recruited, necessarily, who are undoubtedly doing their best with what meager talents they have. But I don’t know how such a fine program could have fallen so far as to recruiting the Jamaican bobsledding team from the 1993 smash comedy Cool Runnings:

I realize they’re running hard out of the box there at the 1:50 mark in that video, but I’ve got them timed at 16.42 seconds down to first base and they’re thrown out by several steps by the center fielder. As long as the game is played on flat, dry land, I don’t see them having much of a future, even at the college level.

Here are other scouting reports on some of the other Aztecs featured:

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“Will Maggie Lawson’s Terry get laid?” That’s the question at the heart* of this week’s episode of Back in the Game, the little sitcom that could that just got an order for two more scripts from ABC. So I guess I’ll be doing these reviews for a while longer.

*Heart, in this case, being loosely defined as a clump of spontaneously contracting  gray flesh that pumps a sludge-like mean-spirited toxic black goo throughout the body of the show.

That’s right, we live in a country where this amoral, unlikeable, thoroughly derivative affront to both the American Pastime and the concept of comedy not only outdraws NBC’s Parks and Recreation, but the people running it are encouraged to do more of their shitty work while the lovable underdogs of Pawnee are preempted by an SNL Halloween special and a live episode of The Voice. Fuck you, America. Freedom isn’t free, and you’re not earning yours. When we finally abandon our pretense of democracy and install a benevolent despot to rule us, he or she will make sure that those responsible for Back in the Game will all be shot, Michael Schur will get a medal for television, and an entire cable channel will be devoted to showing reruns of The Simpsons.

But back to the stupid plot for this stupid show. Despite this being a park solely devoted to Little League baseball and shirtless twenty-something body-hairless white joggers with rock hard abs who splash water from the drinking fountains in slow motion onto their chiseled pectorals, Terry is really into the mustachioed liquor distributor for the pizza place where she works. Fortunately, he happens to be at the park, helping to hang advertising for…liquor? I’m confused. It seems like he’s friends with Dick, the misogynist league president. Anyway, after some prompting, she asks him out awkwardly and he says yes. They hit it off, saying things that no real person actually says in conversation.

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