Here’s a very accurate pie chart of all the thoughts I had this morning — many of them, it turns out, concerning Pirates outfield prospect Robbie Grossman.

Dear Leaguemates,

As you all know, our fantasy baseball experience this past season was, well, less than ideal. After the death of two of our owners in separate trade-related incidents, I think it’s time we rethink some of our rules. Obviously adding a new provision prohibiting the killing of fellow league members in trade-related circumstances is a no-brainer, but I think we need to go even further than that. To that end, I’m proposing a series of reforms:

(1) The job of commissioner– as Joe’s devastating illness so vividly taught us– is too big a job for one person. I propose one commissioner for rules, one commissioner for transactions, one commissioner solely in charge of mediating e-mail based disputes, one commissioner responsible for mediating in-person disputes, one commissioner tasked with resolving disputes among the other commissioners, one commissioner overseer, one commissioner who just needs to hold onto the checks and not spend everyone’s money (and it won’t be you, Joe– no matter what your medical insurance premiums cost now), and one commissioner in charge of spelling. For the last time, one of them is Zimmerman, and one of them is Zimmermann. And if anyone screws it up again, you’re going to be the next one dead.

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Young Kevin Youkilis is the only varsity athlete to be bullied by an asthmatic National Merit Semi-Finalist.

Young Kevin Youkilis uses flash cards to remind him of his deepest regrets and of the specific ways in which he will one day show them all.

Young Kevin Youkilis will not be voted “Most Handsome” or “Most Likely to Succeed”; Young Kevin Youkilis, in an informal and unsanctioned straw poll, will be voted “Most Likely to Try Too Hard. So Hard It’s Almost Adorable.”

Young Kevin Youkilis, if he’s honest with himself, is probably too old to identify so strongly with the full complement of male Peanuts characters. But sometimes he does so much it hurts. “Linus, man, I know,” he says at night while reading his tattered copies.

When Young Kevin Youkilis needs to half-smile for photos, he thinks of that time he saw Meghan Connelly’s bra. And baseball.

Young Kevin Youkilis’s hair has been called “frustration’s pelt.”

Although Young Kevin Youkilis’s hair is the only thing holding the sweat in, he still wishes his stupid hair would just go away.

It shall.

On Young Kevin Youkilis’s Trapper Keeper, which is festooned with images of geometric shapes and planetoids in determined orbit, he has written, “My heart and will are too big and mighty for Cincinnati.”

They are.

(Thank you[k]: Ducks on the Pond and my man Navin)

Wow, I thought ads in U.S. sports were getting out of hand — you can hardly see Mr./Sr. Yoenis Cespedes after he whomps the ball.

Oh, and for all us non-Spanish speakers, just a moment after the advertisement disappears, we can hear a proper pronunciation for “Cespedes.”

In my mind (which is largely the only place I hear wOBA or WAR or BABIP pronounced), I have been saying ces-PED-ees. But it sounds more like the pronunciation might be CES-peddehz real fast-like, y’know, to make it look like you can actually with comfort speak a second tongue.

Well, congrats to Cespedes. How’s it feel to blast homers knowing each additional majesty-arch (a fancy new name for home runs) is like a crank on the cash register (except cash registers don’t crank anymore — plus team rarely pay from cash registers anymore; most use simple Funds Devices that transfer paychecks directly to the nearest Cadillac dealership)?

It feels good, I imagine.

Dear friends,

I’m sorry.  Today, I wanted to write an article about that sport we all love.  No, not professional jai alai.  That’s much purer at the amateur level, where gamblers have only managed to corrupt and fix half of the matches.  I’m speaking, of course, about baseball.  It was going to be a great NotGraphs post, full of obscure references to 18th century British architecture, 19th century German philosophy, great 20th century mustaches, and of course, Dick Allen.

Alas, my go-to (okay, lets face it, my one and only) source for research, Wikipedia, was blanked out all day yesterday when I wanted to be preparing for this post.  It was a total bummer.  There was something about Congress taking away my ability to ever use the Internet again….Meh, it was probably nothing.

Anyway, since I have no way of confirming the following information, here are some important facts that might be true that I can’t verify:
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Joe West wants the Internet to be free. We stand united.

SOPA: You’re outta here.

Original image credit: Salon.com.

Dan McShane won on Jeopardy four times in a row last week, where he was introduced as a professional “Baseball Game Logger,” which is 1. the coolest job ever, except for maybe “Personal Shopper” or “Rock Band,” 2. not actually his job any more, as he is currently employed by Everyday Health, 3. easily confused for baseball b-logger, which led to this story being forwarded to me by at least two people who wanted me to know that “people like me” could win Jeopardy. He accumulated $64,001 in winnings, which he plans to use for “world travel”. The weirdest thing I discovered while researching Dan McShane is that, thanks to his sweatered youthfulness, he has developed somewhat of a cult following with the teenage girls on tumblr. Examples:

dan mcshane is his name. please dominate this game show for several days so your face doesn’t have to leave my screen anytime soon.

On a completely thinspo unrelated note…
I think I’m in love with the jeopardy returning champ. Dan McShane. Also John Green’s new book was amazing. Okay, back to thinspo.
Now do some sit-ups everyone!

wow jeopardy is stepping it up. this man is gorgeous. dan mcshane needs to win a billion more times then marry me. ok thanks

We’re not all gonna go dateless.

Dan has a twitter account.

Wherein I continue to milk this gimmick for all it’s worth.  Today, rappers doing baseball stuff all things National League Central.

Houston Astros

Houston has a pretty good rap game going, but not a great picture-taking/uploading/archiving of rappers wearing Astros hat going, so you get Paul Wall in jorts.

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Thanks to the presumably fine folks at Rising Apple, I have learned of the existence of pop artist David Kushner. I surveyed his Etsy page in the manner of a man about to spend money on things his wife will neither understand nor outwardly countenance, which, it turns out, is precisely what I am. Why am I so tempted to part with U.S. currency that would be better deployed in the service of things known widely as “basic essentials”? Eyeballs awake:

And …

I loathe the Mets of the 1980s, but, as with Goya’s macabre explorations of the Inquisition, sometimes sanctioned repugnance of awful scale yields pretty pictures. So it is with all of this.

And now I shall sell whatever copper plumbing I can find in order to commission a portrait of Ted Simmons necking with Lola Falana.

Clicking = Embiggening

As a resident of Madison, Wisconsin, I’m informed with some regularity that this is what democracy looks like — where this is a group of people who’ve gathered to express their frustrations with governor Scott Walker.

I don’t care to comment on those proceedings per se — except, perhaps, to say that Wisconsinites are skilled at gathering and staying gathered. Rather, I’d like merely to suggest that democracy probably looks like a lot of other things, too — for example, Prince Fielder celebrating concurrently (a) a game-winning home run and (b) his momentary victory over death.