Some marriages are built on passion and excitement. Some are built on a deep sense of trust and friendship.  Some are built on one spouse completely ignoring the feelings of the other.

For instance, perhaps Hall of Fame Manager Bucky Harris should have run his plan for the wedding cake past his blushing bride, Miss Elisabeth Sullivan, some time before their Autumn 1926 wedding attended by President Calvin Coolidge and The Big Train, Walter Johnson:

Then the newly minted Mrs. Harris would not have to try (and fail) to hide her complete and total disgust with her husband in front of the President and The Greatest Pitcher Who Ever Lived.  If there is one comfort to be taken from this picture, it is that Silent Cal appreciated a good glare, and offered to make her Secretary of the Navy.

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Mr. Bob Uecker is, of course, such a national treasure that he carries with him the unmistakable odor of treasure. No surprise then that, in addition to receiving baseball’s highest honor, he has also been belaureled by those who roam the killing floors of Wisconsin. Bear delicious witness:

The embiggening observer will note that Mr. Uecker, besides enjoying the full privileges of membership in the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame, is also known among Wisconsin meat-industry types as “Mr. Meat,” which, one assumes, requires him to wear on occasion an offal-stained pageant sash. I care not to imagine it any other way.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an earth television series, premiered in 1993. It is set beginning in 2369 on a space station run by the United Federation of Planets. The space station is located near a wormhole, which invites a variety of trade, politics, and eventually war. The commanding officer of this particular space station is Benjamin Sisko. Ben, born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2332, is the tragically widowed father of Jake Sisko (in short: Ben’s wife Jennifer was killed in the battle between the Borg and the Federation following the Borg’s assimilation of Captain Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation) in order to gain tactical information). And, in the great Trek tradition of humanizing its humans with one or two quirks that the viewer can relate to, Benjamin Sisko loves baseball.

I wish he’d look at me the way he looks at that baseball, knowwhatI’msayin?

On 24th century earth, baseball is largely forgotten, but kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts, of which our Ben is one. In the early DS9 episode “If Wishes Were Horses,” an alien impersonating Buck Bukai gives Sisko a baseball. That baseball becomes one of Ben’s prized possessions, taking on a symbolic importance throughout the show. It stays on Ben’s desk throughout his sometimes long disappearances during wartime, and disappears when he intends to leave forever. When he is around, it sits prominently at his desk (when he’s not tossing it in his hand while contemplating important decisions). Who is Buck Bukai, you ask? Ben Sisko’s favorite baseball player: Harmon Buck Gin Bukai, known as Buck or “Buckaroo.” Bukai’s rookie year in the Major Leagues was 2015. He played for the London Kings for four years before joining the Crenshaw Monarchs of the Planetary Baseball League (PBL). He also played for the Gotham City Bats and two other teams before rejoining the London Kings, this time of the PBL. Buckaroo was a fairly extraordinary player: a switch hitting shortstop who broke DiMaggio’s hit streak record in 2026 (with the Kings). Bokai’s career spanned over 25 years until he retired in 2042 after the Kings won one last World Series against the New York Yankees, the final game of which was attended by only 300 people. According to one Star Trek novel, this was the last World Series ever played on earth and Bokai hit the game winning run home run in the 11th inning of Game 7. I’m guessing he’d be your favorite player too, if you were Ben Sisko (and aren’t we all?).

The classic Star Trek attention to detail!

In episdoe 154 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, titled “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” Vulcan Captain Solok challenges Ben to a good old fashioned Holosuite baseball game. For those totally uninitiated in the ST universe, a Holosuite/deck is essentially a place where a computer simulates whatever type of reality you ask it to. Examples of this on Next Generation include a Sherlock Holmes episode and the hilariously titled western adventure “A Fistful of Datas.” Holosodes (I just made that up) of Star Trek series often represent a break from the outside world and a fairly contemplative and philosophical take on memories and dreams. At least in TNG and DS9, these episodes are almost always referential to some time on earth much closer to our present than the show and that’s what makes them fun and also totally ridiculous. Despite the cheeky costumes always featured in holodeck episodes, they often examine deep issues such as “what makes something alive?” (when a hologram develops consciousness). But this particular holosode doesn’t try to cast a new light on religion or race, humanity or logic. It is, like the baseball game is for the crew of the space station, simply a break. I guess that’s just how baseball is for people unlike myself who don’t use it as a tool to examine every other aspect of the universe.

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In 2012 there will be a new mascot stomping around the Frontier Baseball League, and his name is not Jack the Ripper, despite the overwhelming evidence on the contrary. Yesterday Dave Martin, the team president and general manager of the newly announced London Rippers, unveiled the team’s name and logo. The protests immediately began pouring in.

I only kind of look like Jack the Ripper.

But here’s the thing dummies, even though the team name is the Rippers and the mascot looks exactly like a cartoon version of Jack the Ripper it’s actually not. “Ripping a ball is used in baseball all the time,” Dave Martin told the London Free Press in an effort to explain the team’s name. But what about the mascot Dave???

The mascot’s name is Jack, but as in Diamond Jack, not Jack the Ripper. Apparently, Diamond is a “frustrated hockey player who found he could “rip” the cover off baseballs. Despite his talent, teams grew weary of the expense of replacing balls so Diamond Jack decided to form his own team in London, Ontario.” Or, baseball’s creepy version of Happy Gilmore.

“It’s Phantom of the Opera meets baseball. He’s a mysterious character who is somewhat edgy,” said Martin. “I think this is going to help redefine baseball in Canada. We wanted to make it fun and make it Canadian.”

Mission accomplished.

Fist bump to Greg for the investigative reporting.

Hey kids, this is Eric with a very important public service announcement.

Moving can be a difficult process — especially for teenagers. Being uprooted from an environment in which you have learned to thrive and saying goodbye to the friends with whom you have developed strong relationships for a strange new place where you don’t know anyone is an extraordinarily trying undertaking at such a critical juncture in your social and emotional development.

Often times, in such a situation, you may find yourself feeling pressured to compromise your values in an attempt to gain the approval and acceptance of a new social group. It may start with them asking to borrow your Algebra II homework at lunch so they can copy your answers. Then you may be tempted to have a drink — or many drinks! — at a party. Then you may meet a cute girl or  boy who manipulates you into sending revealing photographs of yourself to her/him over the phone (typically, in cases of “sexting” it is girls who are pressured to send photos). Then you may be offered illegal drugs under the bleachers of the school baseball field.

As much as you may desire to once again feel that sense of belonging you had at your old school, it is important that you remain true to yourself and resist the aforementioned temptations. In other words, don’t be like Jed:

“Kerry Wood” is a depressant commonly prescribed to treat anxiety associated with late-inning high-leverage situations. Taken recreationally in larger doses, however, it is addictive and known to produce effects similar to “Mark Prior” — a drug in the benzodiazepine family.

Just because you suddenly find yourself in an uncomfortable new environment does not mean you should abandon the principles that made you the person you are. If the people you aim to make your “friends” are pressuring you to do so, perhaps you should reevaluate your desire to establish friendships with them in the first pace.

Our efforts to bestow upon a deserving base ball-ist the nickname “Interrobang” is increasingly a cluster, and that cluster, armed with a certain zeal is starting to fuck. The first crack at it yielded a beautiful tie, and the second attempt also yielded a beautiful (albeit somewhat contrived) tie.

So now we must rally ’round the flag for a third and — one hopes (or doesn’t, if mounting chaos is your thing) — clarifying referendum. How, citizens, should we break this tie, which failed to break the first tie? To the Diebold Sybian!

Excellent choice!

Finally! Sweeping change around the Baltimore Orioles!

No, Peter Angelos hasn’t somehow disappeared, to ride out into the sunset as somebody capable or caring takes over the team. Sorry to get your hopes up, Orioles fans. What has happened, however, is a sweeping change in the team’s uniforms: the cartoon bird is back.

Personally, the hat with the realistic oriole that the team has been using since 1989 is one of my favorite caps in the big leagues. But, I know many people, particularly Orioles fans, love this look, one that hearkens back to the days of Brooks Robinson and some other people that probably played for the Orioles or something. And I certainly can’t complain — it’s a good look. Here are a few things I would note:

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Last week, and the week before, we explored the potential of Wally Moon’s unibrow to raise America’s economic and political standing in the world, power its nuclear ambitions, and inspire our journey to the stars.  But did you know that Wally Moon’s eyebrow has the power to travel through time?

I thought not.

It’s unclear whether Wally Moon’s unibrow has constructed a machine that runs off the brow’s middle third, or whether it is able to vibrate at the exact frequency that opens an Einstein Rosen bridge (or wyrm hole) to send Moon hurtling back through time, or whether it Moon’s unibrow simply awoke to find itself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not its own, and driven by an unseen force to change history for the better, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that its next leap will be the leap home.

But regardless of how Wally Moon found himself as a small town sheriff in the 1870s, he did.  And wouldn’t you like to know how the unibrow looks in a cowboy hat?  Yes, you would.  So let us now trace Wally Moon’s brief time as the sheriff of some random town in the American West:

1) Here we see Sheriff “Bender” accosted by young ne’er-do-well Larry Hanify, who fools the green lawman into thinking that heroic wagon train leader Hank McGrath is a murdering scoundrel.

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Will White was — and in some senses, still is — this man:

You, dear reader — likely bespectacled and alone in a little gray cubicle of life — will notice a strange tingling sensation in the anterior chambers of your eyeballs as you look at yonder picturegraph. This is the feeling of MAJESTY enrapturing your ocular cavities. Do not be alarmed, but do know you will likely require the visitation of a physician and/or mortician at some point today.

For above we have featured:

THE VERY FIRST EVER
GREAT MOMENT IN SPECTACLES HISTORY.

Yes, the faint, white circles around the honorable Will White’s eyes are nothing less than Baseball’s First Glasses (according to this spurious site). And couched appropriately beneath those darling rounds — why, the curled mustache of king.

Also he’s bald.

That, in the biz, is what we call, “A Grand Slamming.”

Will White was a pitcher for Red Caps, Reds, Wolverines, and Red Stockings, and pitched as old as age-31, which in modern years, is about 65 years old.

White’s career reached an obvious down-slope, however, when in 1885 he twirled a scant 293.1 innings of 3.53 ERA ball. A clearly broken man at that point, he pitched only three more games before presumably spending the rest of his days crawling through the depths of some grimy coal mine, drowning the sorrows of his ever-failing vision on cocaine-laced, alcohol-rich Coca-Cola.

The brother of this man, Deacon White, obviously got the first hit in the first inning of the first professional game in history.

And, unsurprisingly as Science has led us to understand that the Mustachioed Gent is in every wear Superior to the Smooth Lipped Ninny, the good Deacon White sports a lip fur salaried not only to catch soups, but fast- and curve-balls as well:

Why of course Deacon played for the Forest Citys, Bisons, and Alleghenys. What else would you expect?

This being the Space Age of the Computer Future, it behooves even the retired gentleman to cultivate a grasp of the ColecoVision and other emergent gadgets. As such, it’s heartening to see that the great Bert Blyleven, age 60, knows a thing or two about a thing or two about Twitter. Exhibit A:

If you’ve read Mashable and other authoritative guides to this social medium, then you know that the best way to announce oneself to Twitter Nation-State is to, a, tell Johnny Bench to kiss your ass and then, b, inform him when he’ll be home and in his bed with the lights out. Exhibit B:

If it weren’t already self-evident, then I’d tell you why this Tweet is the sign of an Internetting Gentleman of Triumph.

It’s possible there could be a better Tweet than this, but that Tweet would necessarily be a breathless dispatch informing us that you just saw Bert Blyleven at Cracker Barrell, pork chop upon gullet.