What follows marks the debut post from Andrew Kelly. Of Mr. Kelly, many have said, “He’s a liar.” Of Mr. Kelly, we say, “No, he’s not. He just has a gift for fiction.”

In what follows, Mr. Kelly recounts an episode — exactly as it totally, actually happened — that appears to bind these seemingly disparate ties together.

Are you Ms. Ruiz, apartment 212? You are? Ahem.

BEHOLD! I am Kegasus, the tasteless new mascot of the Preakness Stakes. But for the other 364 days of the year I manage Newport Villas for my good friend and brother centaur, Alex Rodriguez. First of all Mr. Rodriguez would like to apologize for any problems you’ve experienced. As you may know, in recent years he has been plagued by injuries, but this year is different. This year it will be his opponents weeping instead of the running sore on his buttock! And just as things will be better on the field, so they shall be off the field as Rodrigasus has sent you this to solve all your problems:

As you can see it’s a 4’ X 8’ duplicate of the painting on his bedroom wall printed on finest velvet! Here, let’s hang it over your window. So much better. Now you can’t see the broken fences around the complex. You can’t even hear Poot and NeNe conducting their business transactions in the parking lot. And this velvet is so luxurious that it would likely repel stray gunfire! Is not Mr. Rodriguez wise? Is he not generous?

And now, Kegasus away!

Oh, could you point me to the elevator? Those crumbling stairs are tough on the hooves.

Recently, over at Beyond the Boxscore, master Dave Gershman submitted (with skillfully embedded video) what he considered to be the top-10 baseball commercials of all time. While “all time” might signify an instance of waxing hyperbolic, the post is still recommended for anyone who likes (a) watching things and/or (b) avoiding other, more pressing responsibilities.

Constantly aware that there’s no gain in the absence of pain, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has endeavored to provide an addendum of sorts to Mr. Gershman’s list — namely, a collection of the five best baseball commercials never to’ve been made. The ideas, of course, are authentic; it’s just, for one reason or another, they proved unsuitable for America’s virgin eyes (and virgin other parts, presumably).

Here are those five commercial ideas, with the relevant synopses and reasons for never seeing the air.

Advertisement: “We I.D.” PSA with Craig Counsell
Synopsis: Counsell attempts to enter a Milwaukee-area bar with some Brewer teammates. While everyone else shows ID, Counsell realizes he’s forgotten his driver’s license. The bouncer, accordingly, refuses to let him in. Incredulous, Counsell walks away… and returns second later with a hastily made shiv, which he then uses to slowly and graphically eviscerate the aforementioned bouncer. When life’s last breath has left the victim’s mouth, the narrator says coldly, “This could have been avoided.”
Didn’t Run Because: Totally nauseating and scary.

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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.

If you’re reading this, you have undoubtedly heard about the cool new version of fantasy called ottoneu. According to ottoneu’s creator, Niv Shah, “[t]he name ‘ottoneu’ is derived from Otto Neu, a shortstop who played in one game in 1917 for the St. Louis Browns. In this game against the Yankees, he did not have a fielding chance or an at-bat.” Sounds reasonable, right? Catchy and obscurely baseball-ey? A likely story… too likely. But I was curious, so I dug deeper.

Does THIS look familiar, Mr. Shah?

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It warms my most Canadian of Canadian hearts to know that I’m not the only one enjoying the incredible Adventures of Joe West. You, dear readers, have too embraced The Great Ejector.

Joe West’s latest escapade comes courtesy of Maine’s finest, William Tasker, and has Mr. West on the high seas. Well, not exactly the high seas, but there’s water involved.

Witness:

Joe West is everywhere. Hold on tight, little lady, otherwise … you’re gone!

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While one can hardly blame French-Canadian elements for cultivating some hostility toward our fair game, why take it out on the poor semi-pro Ottawa Fat Cats and their awesome team name?

What am I talking about? This:

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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.

Above you see Yankee both-hander Pat Venditte. Yes, Mr. Venditte is a switch-pitcher, which is beautiful and angelic on a number of levels. As someone whose left arm is barely prehensile — it’s more of a lobster claw that on a good day could maybe pen an untraceable ransom note — I am ceaselessly amazed by anyone who can do anything with both hands. But Mr. Venditte can get professional hitters out with both arms, and that, in purely objective terms, is the greatest accomplishment in the annals of human history.

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Coming soon to a minor league park near you!

Replacement level players are, by definition, valueless. They are available in massive quantities, so cheap as to be practically free, and so bad that they can be easily replaced by picking a random player out of a hat – in short, they’re the baseball equivalent of a Twinkie. They may look and smell like baseball players, but you’d much prefer to have your 2 TAR (Twinkies Above Replacement) Ho Ho if you hadn’t dropped it on the floor.

But despite this, replacement level players do have an important role in major league baseball. No, it’s not that they’re necessary organization fillers: it’s that they’re some of the most entertaining, likable goofs this side of Bertie Wooster. I don’t know what it is – the interminable bus rides, the copious amounts of junk food, the prolonged exposure to minor league mascots – but something has a way of making them a bit….odd. Just look at what’s happened to career minor-leaguer Dirk Hayhurst. He’s progressed to the point where he must paint himself with polka dots before every game, and he won’t trot to the mound without his antlers in place.

And that’s why despite the overwhelming un-reception that Casey Fossum’s signing received from most Mets blogs, I want to come out and applaud the Mets for this signing. Yes, Casey Fossum stinks. Yes, he has long since left his heady days of youth and effectiveness behind him. Yes, he posted a 5.72 ERA in Japan last season and got demoted to their version of the minor leagues. BUT, Fossum dominates the league in three key areas: nickname, novelty pitch ability, and pitch face.

Nickname: According to his Baseball-Reference page, Fossum’s nickname is “The Blade”. Its etymology has been lost to the depths of time, but I’m sure it’s referring to his chiseled, badass 160 lb. frame.

Novelty Pitch: It’s not every day that you stumble upon a pitcher that throws a 50 MPH eephus pitch, let alone one that calls this pitch a “Fossum Flip”.

Pitch Face: I don’t know how Fossum’s face and body can contort into such shapes, but it’s truly a thing of beauty.

So Mets fans out there, don’t despair. Even if Casey Fossum reaches your major league club and loses you every game he pitches in, he’s still a more likable player than Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez combined, right?

You’ll die as you lived
In a flash of The Blade
In a corner forgotten by no-one
You lived for the touch
For the feel of the ball
One man, and his Eephus.

– The Casey Fossum Anthem, also known as “Flash of the Blade” by Iron Maiden.

Padres fly-catcher Cameron Maybin recently enjoyed a leisurely, industrial-grade meal at Panda Express. He then tweeted about the, um, lasting residue of said meal:

Never eat panda express sh*ts had me feeling awful for 2 days back on my grind tomorrow,, We got action…

Nothing surprising so far. If you eat meal with a higher sodium content than the tears of the Dead Sea — chow that’s best left to the iron-gutted frequent flyers and Food Court loyalists among us — then you risk violating your non-aggression pact with the digestive system.

At this point, you might be wondering why I didn’t just post an image capture of Mr. Maybin’s rather unremarkable tweet. However, examination at its most cursory has led me to believe that Mr. Maybin deleted said tweet. Why would he have done that? Gaslamp Ball, presumably after filing a daisy chain of FOIA requests, has arrived at the answer:

At some point Panda Express has left us all feeling, lets say, not so fresh. But when Cameron Maybin, the Padres new Center Fielder, complains of its sickening after effects and warns his twitter followers never to eat it… hilarity ensues. That’s because Tom Davin, the CEO of Panda Restaurants, is a member of the Padres Ownership Group.

Well, that’s a shame. It’s one thing not to be able to trust flesh lovingly prepared outside the service entrance of a Hot Topic. It’s another thing entirely not to be able to complain about it on your Internet computer.

Anyhow, if any “Cameron Maybin is in the best shape of his life” articles come your way in the near future, please be skeptical. Is it the new Charles Atlas workout that left him lean and angular, or is it the case of Montezuma’s Revenge perpetrated upon him by his employer?