Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an earth television series, premiered in 1993. It is set beginning in 2369 on a space station run by the United Federation of Planets. The space station is located near a wormhole, which invites a variety of trade, politics, and eventually war. The commanding officer of this particular space station is Benjamin Sisko. Ben, born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2332, is the tragically widowed father of Jake Sisko (in short: Ben’s wife Jennifer was killed in the battle between the Borg and the Federation following the Borg’s assimilation of Captain Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation) in order to gain tactical information). And, in the great Trek tradition of humanizing its humans with one or two quirks that the viewer can relate to, Benjamin Sisko loves baseball.

I wish he’d look at me the way he looks at that baseball, knowwhatI’msayin?

On 24th century earth, baseball is largely forgotten, but kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts, of which our Ben is one. In the early DS9 episode “If Wishes Were Horses,” an alien impersonating Buck Bukai gives Sisko a baseball. That baseball becomes one of Ben’s prized possessions, taking on a symbolic importance throughout the show. It stays on Ben’s desk throughout his sometimes long disappearances during wartime, and disappears when he intends to leave forever. When he is around, it sits prominently at his desk (when he’s not tossing it in his hand while contemplating important decisions). Who is Buck Bukai, you ask? Ben Sisko’s favorite baseball player: Harmon Buck Gin Bukai, known as Buck or “Buckaroo.” Bukai’s rookie year in the Major Leagues was 2015. He played for the London Kings for four years before joining the Crenshaw Monarchs of the Planetary Baseball League (PBL). He also played for the Gotham City Bats and two other teams before rejoining the London Kings, this time of the PBL. Buckaroo was a fairly extraordinary player: a switch hitting shortstop who broke DiMaggio’s hit streak record in 2026 (with the Kings). Bokai’s career spanned over 25 years until he retired in 2042 after the Kings won one last World Series against the New York Yankees, the final game of which was attended by only 300 people. According to one Star Trek novel, this was the last World Series ever played on earth and Bokai hit the game winning run home run in the 11th inning of Game 7. I’m guessing he’d be your favorite player too, if you were Ben Sisko (and aren’t we all?).

The classic Star Trek attention to detail!

In episdoe 154 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, titled “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” Vulcan Captain Solok challenges Ben to a good old fashioned Holosuite baseball game. For those totally uninitiated in the ST universe, a Holosuite/deck is essentially a place where a computer simulates whatever type of reality you ask it to. Examples of this on Next Generation include a Sherlock Holmes episode and the hilariously titled western adventure “A Fistful of Datas.” Holosodes (I just made that up) of Star Trek series often represent a break from the outside world and a fairly contemplative and philosophical take on memories and dreams. At least in TNG and DS9, these episodes are almost always referential to some time on earth much closer to our present than the show and that’s what makes them fun and also totally ridiculous. Despite the cheeky costumes always featured in holodeck episodes, they often examine deep issues such as “what makes something alive?” (when a hologram develops consciousness). But this particular holosode doesn’t try to cast a new light on religion or race, humanity or logic. It is, like the baseball game is for the crew of the space station, simply a break. I guess that’s just how baseball is for people unlike myself who don’t use it as a tool to examine every other aspect of the universe.

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Here was the great Red Smith’s lede the morning after the Shot Heard ‘Round the World:

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

And here is the just awful Dayn Perry’s lede the morning after the Busch Putsch:

Nerp taaaaa duputoah ploopy snaarfgort baseball loorfgack the fuck? Derpy derp holy grappertom snarfglop. I am shitting out of my stupid mouth.

And so I am left with my drool, my indignities, my gaping maw, and this:

Baseball is love and religion and sex and food.

Some might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with boundless horrors.” Others — patriots, for instance — might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with righteous justice.” Judge for yourself, so long as you agree in advance to make the correct judgment …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRi59dhVawo&feature=player_embedded

At this point, you might be wondering what the puckish young lad in the Yankee cap did to merit such a shuddersome fate, other than the self-evident breach of wearing a Yankee cap in the first place. And, hmmm, I might be wondering why you’re not content to leave such matters to the relevant jurisdictional authorities. Perhaps, because of your dissension, the Republic finds itself in need of even more blood-soaked redress, eh?

I’d watch what I say and think, if I were you.

The Yankees may not have won the World Series, but, as ‘Da Post hastens to remind us, fans of same will kill your face if you happen to be a bloodthirsty, coconuts Pan-Arab despot …

And, as democratic upheavals shake the Middle East down to the bones, it’s worth remembering that Alex Rodriguez remains a big, fat jerk who poops his pants.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9kJw-kWQ8

I don’t technically need a reason to post the video above. It stands alone, and the test of time, as you certainly know by now. That’s the beauty of NotGraphs; under Chairman Cistulli, we roam free. But I actually have one. A reason, I mean: The New York Times wrote about the Milwaukee Brewers’ famed sausage race:

And just past first base, it was the chorizo, the one in the sombrero, who broke the orange tape as the victor.

How’s that for a sentence about a sausage race? The Times makes it so easy to visualize the race, to picture the sausages running for glory. In my mind’s eye, I can see the chorizo crossing the finish line, arms raised in triumph, ending with whatever the hell it is a victorious Usain Bolt does at the end of one of his races.

Obviously, no article about Milwaukee’s sausage race is complete without the details of what occurred at Miller Park on July 9, 2003. With one swing of the bat, history was altered. Pittsburgh Pirates then-first baseman Randall Simon’s life would never be the same. Nor would Mandy Block’s. Not after Simon struck poor Block, only 19-years-old at the time of her assualt, an innocent Italian Sausage running her first and last sausage race, with a bat to her head.

Our lives, too, were changed. We — society — knew that we would never, ever see or hear three people talking as seriously about a sausage race again.

The police report of the incident, which ESPN’s Page 2 were the first to get their hands on, was damning:

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If you carefully read the terms of service printed on every MLB game ticket, you’ll notice the following bit of muddled legalese:

XXIV(f): If Major League Baseball (hereafter, PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL CONCERN) can’t have you, then no one will.

A bit troubling, no? Indubitably so, but you might be left wondering how MLB wields such far-ranging plenary powers. The answer, which is also the correct answer? They take pictures of you at the ballpark and allow anyone with an Angelfire Internet Computer to ogle you and your native indignities. From the Computer Link:

Below are panoramic photos taken from the 2011 MLB postseason. Each panorama was created by stitching together hundreds of photos taken over a 20-minute span. By logging in via Facebook Connect, you can tag yourself, as well as friends who attended the game. You can even zoom in to identify individual faces. (Emphasis and bloodcurdling font mine, but should totally be theirs, too.)

Each of us is special, but each of us — above all, this writer — is also a misshapen idiot. If we wanted to be seen doing what we do at a ballgame — i.e., sweating, grunting at dot races, drooling on our foul-smelling shoes, screaming in tribal unison at the mascot with the t-shirt cannon, catching our breath from eating too fast, picking at scabs, idly probing our own orifices — then we’d log on to Chatroulette between innings. Some things, however, are best left unseen, and those things are we, the stinking people of the world.

So thanks, MLB, for ruining everything.

This one comes to us via the Answer Man himself, Yahoo! Sports’ Big League Stew’s Dave Brown. And, holy shit, the resemblance is, as they say, uncanny.

So you can imagine my disappointment reading Lookout Landing late last night, where Jeff Sullivan — who always brings it, one of my favorite writers — declared likeness comparisons to be so yesterday:

I’ve done it myself – I’ve done it a bunch – but I’m trying to stop, because everybody does it all the time, and it’s annoying. Rarely are the comparisons thought through, so they usually fail. Yet because people make bad comparisons so often, the occasional good ones suffer, because nobody wants to hear them anymore. It’s like a bunch of years ago when I was at school and Chappelle was still on. Drunk assholes would walk around loudly reciting the same lines over and over, and it killed the better Chappelle references for the rest of us. Just let us pretend to be funny by repeating somebody else’s funny!

Damn, Jeff. I feel you on Chappelle, but the beauty of the likeness comparison, at least to me, is that it requires little thought, both in it being put together, and in it being enjoyed. One of my life’s mottos is: “Enjoy the silly shit.” I try to. Every single day.

But Jeff understands. He knows that sometimes, even against better judgement, likeness comparisons must be done. Must be told. Must be shared. Which is why he compared Zack Greinke to Ron Roenicke last night. This, above, Yukon Cornelius and Jason Motte, frigging twins, is also one of those times.

Cornelius and Motte more than just look like one another, though. They also share the same line of work: they’re both prospectors. Yukon’s looking for gold and silver, and Motte’s looking for hitters to put away, and for saves. Almighty saves.

See, Jeff, a likeness comparison and some thinking through. It’s beautiful when it all comes together.

Thank you both, Dave and Jeff. May the two of you write about baseball forever.

The Florida/Miami Marlins, in advance of moving into a football-free abode of their very own, are busy re-branding themselves as the Señor Frog’s of baseball. First came the fashion-forward logo, then came the hat festooned with said fashion-forward logo. And now? Now comes … this. Click and fathom. My God, click and fathom:

That, friends and enemies, is what’s going to happen each time a Marlin (meaning, mostly, Mike Stanton) hits a home run. Once more for emphasis: This is going to happen.

Over at SBN, Grant Brisbee insists, with evidence, that this is a real, true thing conceived by, presumably, people paid in U.S. currency to conceive of things.

To what should one liken this thing? Would this be the output if Poseidon sexually assaulted Jimmy Buffett? Is it a rendering of the rarely glimpsed Kennedy Compound? Is this what “Eyes Wide Shut” meant? The entrance to a Very Infectious Seafood Restaurant where even children get the senior’s discount? Or just: The fuck?

Since the Marlins have already crossed the pastel-colored Rubicon, there’s really only one final step to take. Purchasers of season-ticket packages also receive … an evening of carnal pleasures with the Official Marlins Reverse Mermaid!

Undersea Baseball Yes!

In this space, this writer has, for reasons sufficient unto himself, occasionally likened pennant races to the behavioral phenomena of the animal kingdom. While this practice is borne of laziness, it’s mostly in the service of entertaining you, the muscled reader.

The Action Video Footage that follows, which is — and I don’t use this word lightly — awesome, is of a Darwinist brouhaha in the wilds of Africa. It also, fittingly for our purposes, makes for a tidy metaphorical retelling of recent base-and-ball events.

Your cast of characters:

Lions: The Red Sox and Braves.
Water Buffalo: The Rays and Cardinals.
Crocodiles: The Angels and Giants. Or perhaps just crocodiles.

Please enjoy the following Action Video Footage:

What can future opponents of the Rays and Cardinals learn from this? If you’re going to try to kill a baby water buffalo, then you’d best be quick about it. This is the playoffs, after all.

Every time we leave our homes, we face risks. If you are like me and you frequently bring your toaster into the bathroom in order to toast bagels while in the tub, you also incur significant risks while inside your home. But there is nothing better than a perfectly toasted bagel, so the reward justifies the risk.

Similarly, the convenience of being able to travel long distances in short periods of time justifies the risk associated with using any given mode of transportation. As a matter of fact, many people prefer to not even think of the risks when they, say, get in a car or mount their bike so as not to cause themselves unnecessary anxiety. Some, though, take comfort in the fact that the one-year odds of dying in a plane crash, for instance, are somewhere between 1 in 600,000 and 1 in 2,000,000 depending on the source you use.

So what is my point? On Wednesday night, the Tampa Bay Rays and the St. Louis Cardinals completed Wild Card comebacks for which the joint probability was 1 in 250,000, according to the brilliant actuarial minds over at Beyond the Box Score. We watched the whole thing unfold right before our eyes.

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