The New Yorker’s most excellent Jeffrey Toobin is astride the current baseball news cycle because of his lucid piece on falling but not yet quite fallen Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Indeed, when, in the course of the same dispatch, you get Sandy Koufax to go on record, have an email conversation with the incarcerated Bernie Madoff and do such a masterly job of teasing out Wilpon’s insecurities that he plaints, “We’re snakebitten, baby!” you’ve got reportorial chops. But as great a scribe as Toobin is, let us recall that he’s also a baseball fan in outstanding standing …

That, readers glistening from hard-won sweat, is an image of Toobin’s laptop when he was on set and empaneled by CNN during the tedious run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Yes, Toobin — rather than listening, in rapt admiration, to Anderson Cooper’s handsome ruminations — was checking in on postseason base and ball. Since politics is a lodestone for all that is miserable about the stinking human animal, we should praise Toobin for this most righteous decision.

History teaches us that Paul Bunyan skipped out on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he had Marlins tickets, so it should be no surprise that Toobin, a distant cousin of Bunyan’s, is similarly inclined. Accruals of power helped along by vacant stares and scripted outrage or green, grassy baseball? Toobin chose correctly, and may all the gods bless him for having done so.

This BBTF thread yields this stirring image plucked directly from the history books …

Indeed, on this dark day all seemed lost until Blast Furnace O’Dwyer showed up and, with a righteous Christian fury on loan from Increase Mather, cudgeled that murderous thunder lizard into a dead, bloodied pudding.

Our fair game — and our world — were saved.

While tenured academics tell us we’re no longer in a recession, it remains, to a man, hard out there for a pimp. So it is uplifting to learn of a man like D-backs bullpen catcher Jeff Motuzas, whose enterprising spirit would’ve allowed him to thrive in the gravest of economic conditions. Remember when, as history teaches, a dust bowl descended upon Germany not long after the Treaty of Versailles kicked in and Okie Deutschlanders were reduced to paying for things with coal, serpent plasma and palpable regret? Jeff Motuzas would’ve been fine, thank you. Why is that? Because eating the reputedly inedible and letting Livan Hernandez konk you in the pills for cash makes for a downturn-proof income:

A recitation of Motuzas’s money-making exploits should come with a disclaimer: Kids, don’t try this at home. He has snorted wasabi and eaten horseradish by the bowlful. He has devoured a dozen donuts and guzzled 13 bottles of water. And this is the PG-rated version. “Tooz will eat anything except poop, urine and vomit,” Diamondbacks reliever Sam Demel said. “No, wait—I’m sorry. He will eat vomit.”

Demel cited the memorable day when a former teammate regurgitated some yogurt and slathered it on a potato chip for Motuzas. Demel also said he once saw Motuzas ingest a concoction of chewing tobacco dip spit and 3-day-old chili.

Pitcher Livan Hernandez became something of a sadistic benefactor when he arrived in Arizona in 2006. Motuzas said Hernandez once paid him $3,000 to drink a gallon of milk in 12 minutes. The two also hammered out a deal that permitted Hernandez to punch Motuzas in the groin for $50 a pop whenever he felt the urge. Motuzas would receive a $300 bonus after every 10th punch.

Motuzas, 39, freely volunteers his feats. How about the day he dry-shaved his armpits and left a thick coating of medicinal hot balm on them for an entire game? (“It burned so bad.”) Or ate 11 bananas in four minutes? (“That’s easy stuff.”) Or the time he let pitcher Dan Haren fire at him from close-range with a BB gun? (“He’d shoot me right in the earlobe.”)

Checking account reaching unimagined depths? Jeff Damn Motuzas would say you’re just not trying. Which you clearly aren’t.

No doubt, you’ve thumbed through Da Vinci’s notebooks and seen crude sketches of this:

That’s the Bottom’s Up beer dispenser, and, much like felt renderings of poker-playing dogs and season one of “Temptation Island,” it’s another of Da Vinci’s dreams for civilization that has been triumphantly realized. This innovation, obviously, will help beer vendors move product, and, much more importantly, it will also bring domestic swill to parched American lips that much faster. So it comes with little surprise that the Red Sox are early adopters of Jesus’s favorite thing ever.

As any good binge drinker knows, it’s the destination, not the journey, and the Bottom’s Up will help get you there faster than something that’s extraordinarily fast plus a tailwind. Until next summer’s release of the Bud Light Lime IV Bag, this will have to do.

Joe West has been known to kick the sh*t out of an ungentlemanly scoundrel or three, but he won’t kick the sh*t out of this one …

You’re welcome, Jim Joyce. The Great Ejector has laid aside his abiding and hardwired passion for ejections in order to make a simple, pedestrian out call and clean up the hash you’ve made of history.

Armando Galarraga, perfection is yours. Republic, you are saved.

(Manly hug to Navin, who makes love to Photoshop like few others.)

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.

Like any good blogger, Murray Chass is often angry about things — angry enough to bang Internet spoon on bloggy highchair. His latest bete noir, of which there are multitudes, is the imagined whippersnapper who’s responsible for the mollycoddling of today’s stick-and-ball bowlers. Grrr:

Pitchers have never had so many friends – in baseball itself and on the periphery of baseball. People keep coming up with excuses for pitchers and more crutches for them than for a legion of Tiny Tims.

Along with excuses, people keep lowering the standards for pitchers. People in my once proud profession are probably mostly to blame because the younger generation of baseball writers have led the rush to the dark side, believing their new view of statistics is more significant than the view of the older writers that has prevailed for as long as baseball has been played.

This, of course, is a common refrain. I’m not particularly interested in pitch-count arguments, but I am interested in bizarre physical extremes. So to make Mr. Chass and his band of renown feel a bit better, let’s think back to a time when pitchers truly were men among sniveling, rat-faced cowards like me. Consider this 1942 tale of brawn, flinty resolve and limestone testicles:

At Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo‚ one of the most memorable games in Japanese League history takes place‚ a 28-inning marathon (4-4 tie) between Nagoya and Taiyo. It takes three hours and 47 minutes and both starters‚ Michio Nishizawa of Nagoya and Jiro Noguchi of Taiyo‚ go all the way: Nishizawa 311 pitches; Noguchi 344. Games are not allowed to end in a tie because the league has to show off their fighting spirit‚ according to historian Yoichi Nagata. Because this is the last day of the spring schedule in the three-part season (spring‚ summer and fall)‚ closing ceremonies and awards are scheduled‚ so officials order the umpire to end the game. Nagoya uses only 9 players‚ and Taiyo‚ 10. Despite the war‚ the game is noted in TSN.

You know what real men do besides brawl in churches and use Valvoline to deep-fry falcon meat? They throw 344 mothertrucking pitches in a game.

Once, in a Diamond Mind league, I stretched out Scott Erickson to 260 pitches in order to allow my crippled bullpen to fight another day. And even though it was fake and on a computer and all that stuff (but we totally had girlfriends, so shut up), the notion of ritually abusing a fake computer pitcher to such an extent still struck my competitors as crazy. But 344 pitches in a single game of real-life, board-certified baseball? That’s crazy — as crazy as a gorilla with rabies, which, I am confident, is a thing that would be quite crazy.

My point in all of this? Murray Chass is a blogger.

On the afternoon of April 29, 1983, Cubs skipper Lee Elia treated Americans to the most gorgeous, most resplendent managerial tirade in the history of history. Please, drink humbly, thankfully and deeply of his perfect words, which will forevermore redound through the vaulted halls of this fine Republic.

Now fast forward to the year 2083, when Robot Lee Elia will regale the adoring Chicago crowd at Panda Express Ballstadium (formerly Wrigley Field) with a dramatic reading of Human Lee Elia’s sacred, inerrant utterances. By the way, the video that follows, because of Human Lee Elia’s sacred, inerrant utterances, is so not safe for the conventional workplace that I have not the words to warn you sufficiently.

Now, the power and the glory …

Who doesn’t love a good death threat? While this bit of sociopathy isn’t quite as beautiful as the recent lawsuit filed against P-Diddy, it’s still pretty crackin’ good.

Obviously, the best part is when threatener assures the threatened that the address on the envelope is indeed fake — just in case Mr. Smoky Joe Wood was pondering putting the fuzz on the scent or seizing the initiative and showing up for pistols at dawn.

Curiously, Mr. Wood wound up curiously dying at the curious age of 95. Suffice it to say, the Investigative Reporting Investigation Team is on it like something that adheres quite strongly to something else.

(Curtsy: Deadspin)

Dig:

Contrary to appearances, a reanimated Highpockets Kelly did not punch his way out of the grave and find the nearest diamond. That’s actually Arnie Beyerler, new manager of the Pawtucket Red Sox.

I don’t know much about his dugout chops, but Mr. Beyerler certainly has central-casting appeal: the fully germinated mustache, the plunging sleeves, the exposed socks, the weapons-grade leather belt that seems better suited for determined Catholic spankings rather than holding up a man’s trousers, the stevedore’s jawline, the vaguely menacing “hunter-gatherer” way in which he carries the bat … He seems like a man who knows a thing or two about a thing or two but won’t tell you about any of it.

From this point forward, he shall be known as … “Blast Furnace O’Dwyer.”

Ol’ Blast Furnace may never win a World Series, but I fully expect him to take back the streets in his spare time.

(Curtsy: Heard It From Hoard)