Back in the well-chronicled day, it was common for the Topps Chewing Gum Company to take photographs of baseball players in spring training, usually by camping outside Peoria’s only Sizzler steakhouse.  If said professionals were traded before their cards were released, Topps would simply break out the acrylics and airbrush a new logo on the cap.  Only trained professionals with jeweler’s loupes could tell the difference.

Drunk with power, the Topps executives decided to take this even further, by creating Rick Jones.  The plan was simple: using state-of-the-art Apple II computing technology, the company was able to create an amalgam of every single ballplayer in history.  They conjured up random statistics, including a solid 2.11 ERA at Winston-Salem.  They then slapped on a cascading waterfall of brown hair, a touch of neck-high chest hair for added virility, and as the piece-de-resistance, they added him to the Mariners roster.  Most regions of the country were not yet aware that Seattle even had a baseball team, much less who actually played for the team, and so the addition went unnoticed.

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Good morning, Internet denizens.  Be aware that you will find within the words of this post two pictures.  One of the subjects of said pictures is an 80 year old man who has managed the Chicago Cubs to within a fortnight of the World Series, been touched roughly by the divine hands of Pedro Martinez, and finished exactly two hits shy of the 775 he needed to take up permanent residence in the hall of fame of our hearts.  The other is a little freeloader, who, as of two weeks hence, has taken up residence in my house without paying rent, wreaked havoc with my sleep patterns, peed on my bed, and couldn’t be bothered to use her words.  Can you guess which is the baby and which is the Zim-baby?

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While the operating assumption is that most old-tyme base-ballists — at least those born right-wise — all looked like Blast Furnace O’Dwyer, recent curated images suggest this is not the case. In point of fact, some who played alongside the Boileryard Clarkes of our hoary past looked not unlike scaly, foreboding lizard-squires with eyes the size of large eyes. Please click and embiggen for lucky-best evidence!:

No doubt, you’ve heard your grandpappy drone on that “An otherwise blackhearted, upright tautara-man would’ve made that play! You should’ve seen those bleedin’ eyes they had!” Now you’ll know that it wasn’t just the scotch, medications and fast-approaching abyss talking.

(HT: The Internet)

When Lil’ Wayne was 16 he bought his first Mercedes-Benz, and when I was 8 I bought my first baseball cards: a crisp pack of ’97 Bowman.  A magical summer later (and almost a magical fall, until Edgar Rentaria broke my young Cleveland area-heart) I was hooked on the stuff, this particular set becoming a sentimental favorite.   Throughout the years I have come close to acquiring the complete set (the crown jewel being Jaret Wright’s RC, which I bought for twenty bucks at a card convention the March before the 1998 season*), but stopped when I discovered girls and drugs and D.H. Lawrence and stuff.

*Fun Fact: The Indians turned down a Jaret Wright-Pedro Martinez swap at  the exact moment I made this purchase.

Why am I thinking about this today?  Because when I did collect cards, I used to look at them – a lot – and one card that keeps popping into my head as I watch this World Series is Lance Berkman’s RC, an image I could never shake because of how goofy it is: Berkman, with that trademark boyish smile, leaning on a beat-up white truck (?) in the parking lot (?) of the Astrodome. 

This was a much simpler time in my life, a Wonder Years before all the teenage angst. 

Adrian Beltre’s RC card is somewhere in here too, and, although it’s not as memorable as Fat Elvis, it is charmingly awkward.  (Also, among his “Skills” listed on the back are the “classic wrists” of a future “HR machine”).

 On E-Bay you can get either one in pretty good condition for around 99 cents, while Jaret Wright’s card is gonna cost you at least a cool dollar – ADVANTAGE: Cleveland.

In case you haven’t heard about it, there’s been quite a bit of hubbub over chicken in Boston lately. Also, video games and beer. How anybody could think about blaming anything on these triumphs of humanity is beyond me, but what Dan Schaughnessy wants, he gets.

Meanwhile, one football writer in the area, Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe, really grabbed this one and ran with it:

I get jokes!

Unfortunately for others in the Boston football media, like Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald, such jokes often attract some very dense questions.

Maybe he was just hungry. Or maybe Hernandez is simply becoming the next vessel of a chicken-demon haunting Boston sports since October. I simply don’t think any reporter worth his salt can dismiss such a quality.

Or maybe he was just hungry.

Ed. note: readers be advised: you are about to learn at least six new euphemisms for going to the bathroom.

Ask not what you can do for your toilet, but what your toilet can do for you.

As part of his rehabilitation program, Giants’ catcher Buster Posey has been doing squats. Assumably, these are squats of the weight-lifting variety, but one never knows about these things.

If Backstop Buster decided he wanted to do some extra work while away from the trainer, he should simply choose to sit down when he pees. Normally we danglers stay upright when voiding our bladders, opting to perch ourselves upon the porcelain only when absolutely necessary, but maybe that’s just because we are ugly American’s who despise anything that could be construed as exercise.

Think about it, America. Getting off the throne is a good exercise for your knees and does, in fact, put pressure on your ankles. Posey may be called a pansy in the clubhouse, but he’ll have the last laugh when he can leap a tall building in a single bound.*

I have no knowledge of Backstop Buster’s diet, but I think it’s safe to assume that he isn’t dropping a deuce more than once a day. If this is indeed the case, sitting down while visiting the Tinkle Fairy will help him work out his damaged ankle and become nearly superhuman in the process.

*Claims made in this article are subject to scientific testing and common sense.

The video that follows, which is action-video footage of the greatest Lincoln-Douglass/Webster-Hayne blah-blah ever to grace the diamond, will not be safe for work unless your place of employment is a dirty-word factory, in which case I shall now search for you on LinkedIn.

This video has also been viewed more than a half-million times, so it’s quite possible you number among those lucky, teeming thousands. Still, some things, like the Uffizi or the liquor store, are worth visiting again and again. And so we shall …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl-4FSRYagc

The melodic progression of the debate peaks at the 2:04 mark, when the two gentlemanly combatants make love to the listener-viewer by discussing whether Earl Weaver will go to the Hall of Fame for winning games or for “f*cking up World Series.”

Back in 1976, when men were men and the drugs were just, just great, Philadelphians succumbed to what can best be described as one of the grooviest blood-borne soul-borne pathogens ever to roll across the plains, hills, dance floors, and sex parlors of America …

Some might question the verisimilitude of some parts of this audio recording. However, I have it on good authority that when Garry Maddox and Dave Cash have a conversation over Citizens’ Band Radio, it’s absolutely on the subject of the hottest thing in town.

Notice some fresh, oozing papules on the epidermis? You’ve got Phillies Fever, my friend.

What follows is a day or three old, but I’ve been stranded in the wilds of Nebraska for the last week, so a little slack, please.

Anyhow, Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who has sorta-kinda lost his mind in the most wonderful of ways this season, recently had this to say about maligned evil-doer A.J. Burnett …

“I encourage everybody to just break it down,” Cashman said. “Break it down. Compare him to other people. Look at his start-by-start. Look at his run support. If you smoke the objective pipe, I think the coverage on him would be a little smoother, more accurate.”

“Smoke the objective pipe.” Give this the weighty regard it merits: Brian Cashman asked the thronged New York media to “smoke the objective pipe.” If this doesn’t become a thing worthy of commemoration by t-shirt, then all the faith I’ve placed in CafePress as cultural barometer nonpareil has been in vain.

1. Why do baseball players spit so much? I understand that players who dip need to spit lest they ingest tobacco juice and vomit all over the place. And I understand that this was likely the origin of the spitting pandemic in baseball. Players who didn’t dip wanted to fit in with their teammates nevertheless. But why do players who don’t dip continue to spit all of the time? Do they not even realize it? Is it at this point a Pavlovian response to standing on a baseball field? Is it one of those things, like kneeling for prayer, the meaning and origins of which are entirely lost on those who keep the practice alive? It must be, because if the people who spit profusely for no functional reason whatsoever thought carefully about how little sense this behavior made, they would probably stop doing it.

2. Why do fielders get the benefit of the doubt at second base but not runners? By this I mean: often when turning double plays, the shortstop or second baseman may never actually touch second base with control of the baseball. Almost always, though, the runner is called out. Why aren’t baserunners granted the same amount of leeway when, say, legging out a triple? Could you imagine if baserunners just had to come within a “few inches” of touching second base? It would be madness. Why not make the bases bigger as a compromise?

3. Why do TV networks assume that former players are any better positioned to be analysts of the game than someone who, you know, studies the game? The answer is simple: they don’t. Networks hire former players to be analysts because viewers recognize the former players and thus feel more comfortable watching and listening to them. The networks don’t give a shit whether what is being passed of as “analysis” is actually anything of the sort. The real problem is that in having this sort of faux legitimacy as analysts conferred on them by networks, former players actually begin to believe that simply by virtue of being a former player, their opinion that Jacoby Ellsbury is a stronger AL MVP candidate than Jose Bautista, for example, is valid. And thus, the idea that former players’ status as former players means any nonsense that comes out of their mouths should be accepted as analysis becomes widely agreed among former players and fans alike. This is not to say that there aren’t aspects of the game former players are better positioned to comment on, but far too often they are expected to comment on exactly the things they aren’t qualified to comment on.