If you’ve seen Hunter Pence taking practice cuts on deck, you were likely left agape and bewildered. The swollen eyes; the mimed, by-rote hatchet chops; the hint of mouth-breathing — some call this menu of liturgies “The Murderer at large.”

Mr. Jimmy Rollins — man about baseball and town — was also struck by Pence’s crudities. And so he mocked them, and his well-intentioned mocking provides you with not only boundless joy but also your Daguerreotype(s) of the Evening.

First comes the power (click and marvel):

And then comes the glory (click and marvel):

The whole world loves you, Mr. Rollins. And so do I.

(Hatchet-chop: I Left My Heart in Ben Francisco)

While, at some point in the future of humanity, one man maybe won’t feel compelled to laugh at the site of another man taking it — where it is an object possessing some unfriendly combination of mass and velocity — taking it in the Most Important Organ, October 2nd, 2011 is decidedly not that day.

Accordingly, NotGraphs is pleased to present the following GIF — all 6.8 slow-motion megabytes of it — of umpire Tony Randazzo’s encounter with an Ivan Nova pitch in the dirt Saturday night.

Behold, schadenfreude:

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When we last saw Mark Reynolds, he was being complacent and inspiring an internet meme.

With one poorly/perfectly timed mouthful of sunflower seeds, hundreds of photoshops were born:

As it turns out, we may have been a bit premature in our judgments of Mr. Reynolds’s character. You see, recent .gifographic evidence via Orioles-Nation.com definitively shows him in a state of non-complacency:

In the ninth inning of Wednesday’s thrilling game against the Red Sox, Nolan Reimold hit a two out double to tie the game at three and Mark Reynolds went absolutely bonkers.

It appears that a mea culpa is in order. Mr. Reynolds, on behalf of everyone who drew conclusions about your character based on a single photograph, I apologize. BUT, on behalf of everyone who participated in perpetuating this meme by photoshopping that image of you into other photographs to humorous effect, I do not apologize. Those photoshops were hilarious.

Bouncing high five to Jordan Tuwiner of Orioles Nation for the master .giffery.

In this life it’s important for a man to know on which side his bread is buttered. The gentleman you see in the footage above is pretty aware that his bread is buttered on the Ranger side of things — which is why said gentleman takes it upon himself to return Kelly Shoppach’s third-inning home run back to the playing field almost as soon as it (i.e. the ball) departed same.

That’s just facts being facts, is what that is.

Merci buckets to JDanger at the FanGraphs Chat for bringing the author’s attention to this GIF.

No, you were not the only one stripped of everything but the most primitive urges by last night’s impossible events. In point of fact, even two seasoned MLB Network hosts, accustomed to Live Action Television and its treacherous proclivities, were left in mute awe, unable to do anything more than scamper and flop about like addled sand crabs. Click and witness:

The final absurdity — the Evan Longoria scream-off homer — proved too much for the fraying social contracts that weakened into gossamer over the course of the evening. But once Mr. Longoria ferried us from the realm of the “merely” unthinkable into a state of affairs nameless in all but the most atavistic of hunter-gatherer grunts (it is known as “oook tob noot blargh Kurt Stillwell blomph!”), the constructs and assumptions about us were reduced to embers. Messrs. Reynolds and Plesac did what any of us would do when faced with such an everything nothingness: they scurried. And then they murdered.

And now, thanks to regeneration through violence, they are ready for postseason. Are you?

After the operatic goings-on of baseball’s Night of Long Knives, I have the feeling that all of us could use a piping-hot plate of whimsy. Fortunately, funnyman Rod Barajas is here to help.

It has long been said that nothing soothes the fussy infant quite like a Rod Barajas. This is why Rod Barajas is available at boutique toy stores and corner pharmacies everywhere. And that’s to say nothing of the 15-pack of shrink-wrapped Rod Barajases on endcap display at every Costco the world over. Why is the Rod Barajas so popular among sleep-deprived parents? We already told you: nothing soothes a fussy infant quite like a Rod Barajas. Click and be amazed:

Next time the Rod Barajas will change Dee Gordon’s poopy.

3 am breastfeeding: Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness)

Every word on the internet to the contrary, the footage you see here seems to suggest that John Lackey — who has recently not only divorced his cancer-addled wife but also called her repeatedly to ask if her refrigerator is running — is not an unfeeling monster.

In fact, Lackey was roused enough by Boston prospect Ryan Lavarnway’s first major-league home run to offer a combination high-five/Top Gun-style hug to the young catcher.

When asked about the sequence after the game, Lackey said nothing, instead taking NotGraphs into his masculine embrace.

Because Oriole Jim Johnson plays for the Orioles, there’s a strong chance that no one — perhaps besides his teammates and Buck Showalter and Buck Showalter’s grizzled and nameless manservant — knows who he is.

In fact, there appears to be at least one reason to know who Jim Johnson is — and it’s embedded above these electronic words.

The footage you see here is taken from the ninth inning of Baltimore’s victory over Boston last (Monday) night. With a 1-0 count against Adrian Gonzalez, Johnson threw this 97 mph offering with 6.2 inches of armside run and 5.8 inches of “rise” (relative to a spinless ball, that is).

While the pitch was classified by Pitch F/x as a four-seamer, the dramatic movement — combined with the fact that a number of Johnson’s pitches are classified as two-seamers, too — suggests Johnson’s pitch might be either.

Of the 14 fastballs he threw Monday night, Johnson got whiffs on four of them (28.6%) — about four or five times the league average for swing-and-misses on fastballs.

In a potentially related story, every woman in the Baltimore area woke up pregnant.

Brooks Baseball. Brooks Baseball. Brooks Baseball.

In the fourth inning of Sunday’s Seattle-Texas game, young Italian gentleman Alex Liddi hit the third home run of his young career off of Ranger lefty Derek Holland. Among the diverse reactions to Liddi’s homer, ROOT Sports’ cameras found this gentleman’s — whose behavior might be best described as “angry” and “shirtless.”

“But Carson,” perhaps you’re saying, “shirtless isn’t a sort of behavior.” To which I reply, “Sure, maybe I know that, but try explaining it to star of stage and screen Carroll O’Connor”:

Amen to the very shirtless and angry Michael Barr for drawing the author’s attention to the above.

A lot of things in life aren’t fair. Like having to grow up in Florida, probably. Or how your parents bought Becky a car even though they never bought you a car and you got better grades than Becky and were involved in a lot of extracurricular activities.

Another thing that isn’t fair — to Yankee call-up Brandon Laird and to a lot of major leaguers in the future — is Matt Moore’s changeup.

The one you see here is from the second inning of Thursday night’s contest between the Rays and Yankees. It features 10.1 inches of armside run and 2.2 inches of “rise” — this, relative to league averages of 8.2 and 5.1, respectively, on the change. (A note: Pitch F/x actually appeared to classify some of his changeups as split-fingered fastballs, although it’s unlikely that he’s throwing the ball purposely different.)

In all, Moore threw 11 changeups against the Yankees and received swing-and-misses on four of them (36.4%) — this, for a pitch that receives whiffs on only about 12% of offerings league-wide.

Thanks to Brooks Baseball for Pitch F/x data.