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We are now soliciting nicknames for Demis Valdes’ bat.

Despite what I’d call a “thorough sacking” by barbarian forces, Dick Allen–pictured here as Imperator of Rome–gleefully signals a home run, presumably his own:

One only has so many ideas, is why Dick Allen is pictured here as Imperator Caesar. Related: I have had no new ideas since last week when I presented this post, which equates travel distance from Rome ca. 200 AD with the chance of each baseball team making the playoffs in 2014. It was received kindly; thank you, and will return this season so we can keep track of how far or close our beloved teams are or are not to that doomed paragon of the ancient world, Rome/The Playoffs(??). Until then, continue to be leisured and gentlemanly, even in the face of barbarian hordes, plague rats, backstabbing countrymen, et al.

My son, Micah, was born on October 8th of last year. So, technically, he was around for most of the postseason, but he was, uh, a little preoccupied. (As was I!) He’s still kind of preoccupied with most of the same pursuits — he’s sleeping on my chest as I write this right now, after his third breakfast of the day, if you want to arbitrarily call breakfast anything that gets eaten after five in the morning. But now that he’s able to pay a little more attention — a little — and is very interested in looking at whatever it is I am looking at, I expect it will be hard to keep his eyes away from spring training baseball, as much as I’d like to be able to say he has never seen even a flicker of a television screen. (Does it count as screen time if it’s on mute and I keep turning his head to face in a different direction?)

So I ask you, fine readers, how does a new parent like me set the stage for lifelong baseball enjoyment? I don’t care who he roots for, or if he roots for anyone at all, but in a few years it would be nice to have a little pal to take to the ballpark every so often. (Even if he only wants to be there for the bobblehead doll giveaway.) And even better if he wants to grab a team in my fantasy league, because maybe I’ll be able to bribe him with toys to get him to trade me his best players.

Spring Training is upon us, and Curtis Granderson, along with roughly 1100 other players in the various MLB camps, is in the best shape of his life.

That’s not because he lost 30 pounds (which would probably kill him), or because he added 20 pounds of muscles, or because some self-important yogi screamed “You shit on the inside!” at him, leading to an intense off-season yoga regiment that has given him the flexibility to kiss is own butt and reach pitches three feet outside of the strike zone.

Rather, it is because Curtis Granderson has been drinking lots of good old-fashioned water — “Michigan straight,” as we call in eastern Wisconsin.

I drink #water to refresh, stay better, get better, be better. @URH2O #DrinkUp. Ready for @mets #SpringTraining! pic.twitter.com/E3gXdNhMA5

— Curtis Granderson (@cgrand3) February 4, 2014

About 0.00025% of Earth’s water is freshwater accessible for consumption. Will it be enough to quench Curtis Granderson’s major league thirst? It will be interesting — and perhaps terrifying — to find out. Perhaps when he has finished drinking all of said accessible freshwater, he will move on to tap the underground aquifers, or to suckle Greenland’s dwindling ice caps.

And perhaps when he is finished with doing those things he will drink you, too, considering that you yourself are 60-65% water, some of which is, presumably, contained in your delicious, rejuvenating stem cells. Perhaps you will be so lucky to remain conscious long enough to witness the spectacle of Curtis Granderson cracking your stem cells like eggs on his major league countertop, drizzling their watery yokes down his very healthy gullet.

I don’t know about you but I am pencilling Curtis Granderson in for 45 homeruns and league-leading urine production.

Promising Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard, whom the club acquired as part of the trade that sent R.A. Dickey to Toronto, has been the locus of some attention today at the club’s camp in Port St. Lucie. Take the following meaningless quiz to guess which objects and/or people Syndergaard has and hasn’t been likened.

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Derek Jeter’s 20th major-league season will be his final one, the Yankees shortstop announced recently. As Mike Lupica noted in a stirring piece of investigative journalism from 2007 — and as Bradley Woodrum has elsewise confirmed in these pages just today — the Captain seems strangely immune to bad press. NotGraphs spoke with definitely a real scientist from American chemical company DuPont to inquire about their role in Jeter’s impeccable reputation.

For a player with such a long career, under such intense media scrutiny, and with rather a long list of sexy, famous ladyfriends — for all that, Derek Jeter seems to have remained almost entirely free of controversy. DuPont has had something to do with that, I understand.

Yes. We were able to devise a method by which to apply Teflon, our popular non-stick coating for pans, to his public image.

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I have, to varying degrees, taken to poo-pooing the democratic process on this site over the last two years. My point, to the extent I have one, is not that we should heavily invest additional power in the hands of those that already have so much, as it is that the majority generally sucks and really likes to do shitty things to the minority.

Nevertheless, there is a benefit to living in a country that encourages its lowly plebs to participate in the governmental process, and that is that we can make our voices heard. We can build consensus, and with a strong voice we can tell our leaders, in no uncertain terms, how to make this country stronger, better, and more fair.

To this end, I ask you to please get involved with a project that is very close to my heart. This summer, NotGraphs “editor” and general ne’er-do-well Carson Cistulli voluntarily left this country of his own free will and moved his entire life (which fit into two sensibly-sized suitcases, from what I understand) to the Paris, Texas of France, Paris, France. In the days since his ouster, America has learned to hope again. Now, Carson Cistulli wants to come back.

This ragamuffin of a man and all-around dirty person believes that, just because he has a passport and is a legal U.S. citizen, he should be allowed to again traipse his muddy feet across America’s fine white carpets, which we just got done cleaning. He wants to drag his whimsy and his obscure references and his drinking problem back to our doorstep, and he expects to be let in.

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Boyishly so,

and then dreamily so;

ruggedly so,

and craggily so, to the last;

indeed, reader, not unlike America.

On Wednesday, a mysterious cube-shaped package arrived in the mail for me. There was a return address, but no name. The package was coming from inside Milwaukee!

Inside the shipping cube was another cube, this one faux-gold and real-fancy:

Bird was very interested, as he is with the arrival of all packages.

Any baseball nerd would be sure at this point — as was I — that inside was a baseball. And sure enough! It was a baseball! And on it, the head of Carlos Gomez!

Thankfully, not the actual head of Carlos Gomez.
The Brewers need him to play centerfield this season!

At first, I thought it was a special Valentine’s gift from my belovéd betrothed. Which, I suppose the enclosed card could have supported — though it would mean, maybe, that she was trying to tell me something.

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In other words:

At least Harvey’s fall will be quite cushioned.