Because I am a man of many pressing obligations, I’ve cooked up one of those random-thingy generators. Mine will tell you what your nickname would have been had you played for the 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles. As you are no doubt aware, the Orioles of that vintage were a tough bunch of men. They drank all the liquor in America, they went decades without sleeping, they brawled against Norse gods, and they saw all of their children killed gruesomely by primitive farming equipment. All of these things are facts.

Anyhow, go here and find your 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles nickname.

Mine? “The Salty Bronco.”

While the Texas Rangers have developed into an enviable and successful organization, one problem remains: the hellscape that is Arlington in August. This is also a problem in other baseball locales, but, for instance, the Diamondbacks parry the crippling heat with a magic roof, and in Miami no one goes to games. So that leaves Texas with their suffering, heat-stroked masses.

On this front, the innovations underway in Qatar can be instructive. Qatar, of course, will host the 2022 World Cup, and Qataris have concerns of their own when it comes to hot-ass weather. Their solution? I’m surprised I even need to say this, but their solution is awesome, awesome, awesome robot clouds.

The linked article depressingly refers to these wondrous things as “blimps,” but — let’s be serious here — these are clearly wizard robot clouds that, in keeping with their magical nature, will not only blot out the sun but also protect us from the winged silverback gorillas that secretly roam our skies with the most sinister of intentions.

So your move, Nolan Ryan and company. Do you want your fans to continue boiling alive by the thousands in your dutch oven of a ballpark? Then do nothing. Do you not want your fans to continue boiling alive by the thousands in your dutch oven of a ballpark? Then make with the robot clouds.

Is this the best possible use for Google Alerts? If not, I’m thinking it’s close, at least.

H/T: Unfettered Joy

That Ron Gardenhire — the roll he is on! The Twins’ manager is without question this week’s leading quipsmith. First came yuks at the expense of Delmon Young, and now comes this restaurant-quality riff on the subject of The Twitter:

You can tweet that. Just tweet it. You don’t even have to write it. Just fire it through the Internet.

Aaron Gleeman promptly and rightly observed that “Just fire it through the Internet” should become a lasting thing — more specifically, a lasting t-shirt thing. First lo, then behold: It is now a t-shirt, and it is divine.

Classicists will recognize that “Just fire it through the Internet” was originally the battle cry of Diomedes, our pick to click in the Trojan War, but hosannas to Gardenhire for disinterring it in such fitting fashion.

And now a quick proofread of this post before I just fire it through the Internet!

While the Washington Nationals are trending upward these days, there’s no disputing that the franchise plucked from the wilds of Canada and dropped in the capital of the Milky Way has endured some fits and starts. Part of the problem has been some rather ham-fisted marketing initiatives. Fortunately, for the Nationals and their discontents, we’re here to help.

There’s really only one thing that needs to be done to make this into a model franchise. Better scouting and development? Higher payrolls? Louder rock music between innings? Change the nickname to “Nationalz”? No. Cooler uniforms? Yea, verily.

The Nats have yoked themselves to the evocative powers of the dead president, which is wise, because everyone loves every U.S. president without exception. However, the relationship between baseball and the great landowning Episcopalians of history needs to be strengthened just a bit. First, the Nationals’ new road uniforms will have this image — ideally by way of iron-on decal — emblazoned upon the jersey:

Clearly, that’s an un-doctored photograph taken from some authoritative history text. As you can also clearly see, that’s Lincoln and Washington, each a chest-haired colt of a man, in the throes of a vigorous, manly, virile, potent, sinewy, and rippled presidential wrestling match that will end with someone’s Viking funeral. Who wins? All of us, but especially the Nationals.

As for the Nats’ road uniforms, well, wars on foreign soil aren’t for the spineless among us, so the Nats need to project an image of ruthless and terrible confidence. The jersey image that follows has graced these pages before, and now it’s time to make it a part of baseball’s tapestry forevermore …

Not only is Teddy Roosevelt slaying the foreign Bigfoot hordes in this un-doctored photograph taken from some authoritative history text, but he’s also stout-hearted enough to offer up his belt buckle as a fallout shelter. But besides Bigfoot’s encroachments, what’s he upset about? Probably his baseball humiliations. This is precisely the kind of terrifying presence to which the Nationals should aspire, especially when far from the comforts of home.

Finally, in a nod to the last remaining president whose actual giant, stone disembodied head sits atop Mt. Rushmore …

Some of you might be thinking, “Hey, that’s one of those creepy droid things from ‘Dr. Who.'” No, it isn’t. That’s a board-certified photograph of Robot Thomas Jefferson, and I see no reason why every Nats player shouldn’t wear this exact cumbersome robot suit on the field of play (along with, of course, the appropriate jersey design concocted above).

Do these things, Nationals Baseball Club, and the Republic’s precious discretionary lucre will all be yours. Promise. And please let Mr. Roosevelt win a race before he commits even more justifiable homicides.

Headlines are a funny thing. They are designed to get your attention, or the attention of a search engine somewhere, while summing up the contents in a pithy way. Often they contain internet memes or SEO-optimization key words. Sometimes, like today, they contain both. /header #MLB #baseball

Over the years we’ve had some fun with the “Free Person X” internet meme, which most probably spawned from Free Mumia, but has since gone a little crzazlebeans, if you know what I mean, and baseball has taken the saying under it’s wing. Whether it’s Kila Ka’aihue that must be #freed from the clutches of the incompetent Royals, or Brandon Allen that must fight the good fight against the spaced invaders that wish to take his playing time, we’ve used that sentence construction to encourage young men to go against what’s wrong. Having been guilty of capriciously throwing the phrase around just last week, this is no finger-wagging piece, though.

Instead, call this piece the anthropological wanderings inspired by the title and subject of a serious piece by Larry Behrendt at It’s About the Money Stupid. In his latest, Larry examines the fate of young Lainer Bueno. The Venezuelan shortstop may not have a future in baseball, but attribute that mostly to a fateful combination of a lack of major-league talent (228/.336/.239 in Venezuelan Summer League) and the possibly unfortunate positive test for clenbuterol. The combination has him a free agent, and Larry thinks it’s an injustice.

Read the whole thing, do it. Afterwards, you may feel that our entry point to this article was all wrong today. Behrendt’s piece is a serious uncovering of the holes in MLB’s drug testing policy as it relates to Venezuelans and clenbuterol in particular. It looks like there’s a real reason the league may want to look at the fact that, according to “Scorecasting” by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim, Venezuelan baseball players are about 4 times more likely to test positive for drugs than their American counterparts. It may not just be about skeezy agents in Latin America. The beef may be the real meat to the story.

But the title, and even the article, can make a mind wander to other “Free” movements in baseball. The parallels may seem stretched, and its continued use may even seem to cheapen the phrase. On the other hand, injustice exists. And whether the injustice at hand is an unequal appropriation of playing time, an unfair exclusion from the sport, or an incarceration surrounded by real questions, it doesn’t deserve to continue. And if it takes a hashtag, a slogan, a link and a few re-tweets to uncover and document that injustice, that’s about the least we can do.

Scratch that, it’s the very least we can do.

While the actual baseball race in the American League Central should be compelling enough, there’s another pitched battle (baseball pun, free of charge) developing in Flyover Nation. This battle, naturally enough, is over proposed civic statues that will never actually happen.

In Detroit, home of the Tigers and Miguel Cabrera’s basest urges, there’s a movement afoot to construct a giant totem to the greatest half-man/half-machine to take back the streets since Nathan Hale. I speak, of course, of Robocop.

In Kansas City, home of the Royals and their discontents, the people want, automatically and for them, a statue of relentless tickler of funny bones Vicky Lawrence dressed up as everyone’s favorite rolling pin-wielding materfamilias, Mama from “Mama’s Family.”

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Men’s fashion — it’s so often a rich union of the awful and the too clever by half. The same, of course, goes for the male sports fan, who seems to take preternatural delight in assaulting good taste about the head, neck, shoulders, and groin. This enduring truth places before us a challenge, a bejeweled gauntlet if you will: what’s the greatest possible fan outfit that can be concocted using items presently available through the bellwether fashion portal that is MLB.com?

Since my professed loyalties are to the St. Louis Cardinals, I’m going to restrict myself to the fetching threads available at their designated Internet haberdashery. Come with me, won’t you? And don’t forget your Player’s Club cards!

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A bountiful source of debate among baseball enthusiasts and fans of other, ickier, less morally upright sports is whether or not it’s acceptable to say “we” in reference to your favorite team. The pro: It’s a harmless bit of unifying tribalism. The con: You do not, in point of fact, play for your favorite team. These are dearly held positions, to say the least. Neither side will yield, and the center cannot hold.

So in the service of a workable peace, I am here to pronounce from on high and with the certainty of Judge Lance Ito that using the first-person plural in reference to your team is acceptable — I do it myself — but only under certain inviolable conditions. Here, fans of stick and ball, are those conditions …

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You’ll recall that not long ago thinking-man’s powerlifter Leo Martin gave us a walking tour of Safeco Field’s latest culinary offerings. New to the menu was a delightful little pie known as the “Apizza.” Indeed, it looks like my kind of slice — thin crust, pleasingly blistered, and a sauce-to-imported-cheese ratio calibrated to please anyone who’s fond of Bach and cats. (Though I prefer Guided By Voices and dogs, please allow me to traffic in stereotypes in peace.)

But what about the others? What about those not cosseted away on the enlightened Coasts, those forgotten, teeming denizens of America’s Heart Attack Belt? Those who view a trip to the ballpark mostly as tidy rationale for a shootin’ match between their LDL and triglyceride levels? The Apizza, unlike brawling in churches, does not speak to them. Perhaps this will …

That, best friends, is a pizza topped with cheeseburgers, fries and McNuggets. So a little respect, please. If you’re interested in the evolution of this pizza, from this point forward known as “The Conway Twitty,” then please, please, please click here.

In the final photo, you’ll find that this pie is of course best served with Dr. Pepper, a tape measure, a throwing knife, a votive candle, what appears to be a 9mm semi-automatic, and barbecue sauce. I’m not sure what local ordinances will say about the constituents of such a “full-meal deal,” but everything’s a negotiation.

So, enterprising team owners who fear the turnstiles won’t click often enough during the upcoming season, know that The Conway Twitty is here for your measured consideration. If you put burgers, fries and chicken offal on it, they will come.

But they might not leave.