Last week, the Baltimore Orioles hired long time Oriole outfielder, one-time Oriole home-run phenom Brady Anderson to a Special Assistant role with the club. Outside of bringing the wisdom surprise 50 home run seasons to the Orioles front office, Anderson also brings the majesty of 90s sideburns.

Here is a memo Anderson sent out this morning to every Orioles player and front office staff member:

Let us now imagine what the 2012 Orioles roster will look like once this new iron fist of velcro cheeks has his druthers.
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Dear Arbitrators:

As you know, there are six criteria that may be considered during a salary arbitration hearing:

1. The contribution of the player during the previous season
2. The length and consistency of the player’s career
3. The record of the player’s previous compensation
4. The performance of the player’s club during the previous season
5. Any physical or mental defects the player may have
6. Comparable baseball salaries

Source: The Sports Economist Blog

In this hearing, we would like to focus specifically on element #5. The player in question has the following mental and physical defects that we believe indicate he should be awarded our submitted figure of $480,000, and not the player’s submitted figure of $11,000,002. Apologies for the length of our list.

1. Player’s right arm is three millimeters shorter than his left.
2. Severe seasonal allergies.
3. Lactose intolerance. Read the rest of this entry »

What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, Nyjer Morgan laid authoritative claim to the nickname “Dionysus with Rabies“. So Mr. Morgan has been added to our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling …

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Perhaps it is because I’ll turn 40 this week. Perhaps it is because Carson and I recently discussed Rob Wilfong. Perhaps it is because it is the offseason, and one does what one must in order to abide it. Or perhaps it is because I live close enough to Wisconsin that occasionally the Dairy State’s aesthetic courses through me unannounced and untrammeled. Whatever the reasons, the author chose to costume himself in an actual, real-live mustache for a period of roughly 24 hours. If not for his wife’s plenary powers over such affairs, he might still have it. Still and yet, for a time — for a fugitive, halcyon time — we were kings, you and I …

This is the offseason, and I grew a mustache.

One imagines that having something in the vicinity of half-a-billion dollars has its advantages — like, for example, being able to send one’s children to boarding school the very minute they’re born.

We who do not own the means of production have this advantage, however: never once, while sitting in the 300-level of Miami’s American Airlines Arena, has anyone been almost concussed-or-worse by the fastest, giantest living human.

Link courtesy Juan C. Rodriguez of the Sun-Sentinel.

I have one tattoo. It’s the tattoo equivalent of of one of those Best Friends Forever necklaces that thirteen year old girls buy at Claire’s at the mall: my best friend Mandy and I got them together and they both say “heart.” It’s on my wrist (get it? … I wear my heart on my sleeve) and I love it. It’s so cheesy and it makes me smile every time I look down at it and remember the insane personal pitcher drinking, jukebox memorizing, dive bar crying, talking shit about boys bender we were on together around the time we got them.

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It comes as no surprise that yesterday’s junket into the damnably handsome mind of Young Kevin Youkilis lit the Internet on fire and then made love to the flames. Were the writer’s interpretations chillingly accurate or nothing more than odious revisionism? On this matter, the Republic is as sharply divided as a fraction with rocky chasm running through it and within that chasm a painstakingly sustained demilitarized zone and within that demilitarized zone a river and a fence with razor wire and giant, violent border chickens — talons brandished, natch.

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The original fearsome facial hair.

Yup, Sergio Romo will get a bobblehead this year.

The facebook page that announced the event got 200-plus comments. The following sampling represents the entirety of those comments. Even Romo himself agreed.

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I’ll not bore you with the sequence of banalities that led me to do a Google Image search for “Don Russ,” but please know that I have done precisely this. In its origins it is, of course, an homage of sorts to the Donruss family of cardboard sports products. Google and its lidless eye sensed this straightaway:

No, I did not. I want Don. And then I want Russ. Herein fail not!

Thank you.

What follows are the two most compelling images that turned up, with the stipulation that the eligible photos must contain a guy named Don and a guy named Russ. First, we have this:

The caption tells me that the three men pictured above are, from left to right, Don, Russ and Higgy. It is 1957. Higgy appears to be a young Danny Thomas. Higgy. 1957.

Next:

Above you see Mark, Don and Russ. Russ is in favor of peace, while Don just wants a cold one and some barbecue chips. Ol’ Don. I like that guy.

This is the offseason, and I have been searching on the Internet for Don and Russ.

Return to Easter Mountain

Above is Luke Easter looking all bemused, badass, and Tunde Adebimpe at the same time. In these specs, it’d be difficult to tell whether he’d be prepping to weld scrap metal into an awesome toboggan for his niece, play a show in the Bowery with his genre-defying, brass-steeped side-project, or deliver a lecture on comparative literature — he seems equally capable of each.

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