Apropos of nothing, except the author’s own interior examinations, here are some brief and confidently worded remarks on the best and worst months of the year from the point of view of a baseballing enthusiast.

If, at any point, the reader should find himself doubting the veracity of the following remarks, he (i.e. the reader) should draw his attention to how confidently worded they (i.e. the remarks) are and find himself duly staid by same. Should that fail to instill due reverence, then he (i.e. the same reader) should contemplate the embedded image of the Grand Canyon and allow himself to be awed duly by it — or, at least, by the idea of the Grand Canyon — and to retain that sense of awe while entering the following.

Now, those brief remarks, briefly.

The Worst: October
Whoever said “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” was misled — first of all, because the “whoever” in question is Alfred Lord Tennyson (i.e. a person that basically everyone agrees was really misled), but also, second, because we very clearly learn from the world’s most successful ethical models that the largest threat to sustained happiness is the excitement of the passions.

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Editor’s Note: The full original title broke FanGraphs (congrats Robert!), here it is in its entirety: Ryan Braun has the ability to hit for average and significant power and his fluid swing is compact and short with tremendous bat speed and a protracted follow-through and he is a pull hitter with strong wrists and he waits well on off-speed pitches and uses the entire field and he drives the ball no matter where it is in the strike zone.

That’s all pretty true.
Let’s go with that.
Put that in the lead-in, in fact.
Hell, make that the title.

It has to be titled “Ryan Braun.”

Oh.

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The story of Uganda’s Little League team is both inspirational, and sad: A few months ago, Uganda’s Rev. John Foundation Little League team made history by qualifying for the Little League World Series, becoming the first African team to ever do so. They were bound for Williamsport, Pennsylvania, or so they thought, until their visas to the United States were denied. The New York Times has more:

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Citizens:

We have a first in the annals of “Nickname Seeks Player”: a tie. Indeed, Messrs. Nyjer Morgan and Mike Stanton both garnered the exact same number of votes, and that means an urgent, hastily assembled and palpably corrupt run-off is in order. Vote below, but remember: Present your papers to the uniformed constabulary or be walloped by his oxskin glove and placed into a holding pen alongside other foul-smelling members of the newly disenfranchised …

The ward heeler thanks you for voting as instructed. Now leave, lest your fruit cart be overturned daily until you see things our way.

UPDATE: Two commenters have a love of chaos that matches my own. Take it way, citizens:

TartanElk says:
November 15, 2011 at 1:30 pm (Edit)

Please be a tie

Yirmiyahu says:
November 15, 2011 at 1:57 pm (Edit)

I say that, before voting, EVERYONE should click on ‘view results’ and then vote for whichever guy is trailing at the moment.

WHAT PARTY CAN YOU GO TO WHERE I AIN’T THERE
YOU BITCHES ACTING LIKE YOU DON’T CARE

Ol’ Dirty Bastard shows up in the strangest of places. Like when you’re trying to find a new statistic to evaluate the old, dirty bastard-ness of baseball players. That’s a place where he shows up.

Good thing we got the dudes at SabeanMetrics (tagline: When the Best of the Worst Combine) to resuscitate (bad choice of words?) the hip hop icon. They recently unveiled wODBPS — weighted Ol’ Dirty Bastard Plus Slugging. Apologies to Bobby Abreu, the AL champ in 2011, because the Carlos Lee photoshop just makes too much sense not to post.

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Papelbon continued by referring to Charlie Manuel as his “personal Norman Schwarzkopf,” Bud Selig as “a Ban Ki-moon-like figure,” and his NL East foes as “[redacted] frigging [redacted].”

Camus once said that we are all ashamed of beauty. For years, I believed this to be true. But then I saw Rowland Office.

He is beautiful, and I am not ashamed of him.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Not just a leading 20th century theologian anymore.

Each year, a number of new terms enter baseball’s colorful lexicon. Below are the twenty new words and phrases for curveball. To gain entry, each term has to have been used or overheard in a “legitimate” baseball situation — that is, either on a diamond, in a press box, or in one of Craig Counsell’s numerous and vivid erotic dreams.

Here are this year’s entries, arranged in alphabetical order:

Breathtaking Short Film
C Cup
Crotch Winder
Freudian Slip
Furious, Spinning Lap Dance
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He’s not in the Hall of Fame, but Dave Parker’s legacy is firmly cemented in shirt form:

Quick internet research shows that this shirt is at least two years old, but I just saw it yesterday. On a person. Walking the streets of Cincinnati. Here’s the original image:

The good ‘ol days.

Yes, caption, yes those were the good ‘ol days. Most frequently asked questions:

1. Where was this taken? At Pirates spring training, Bradenton, Florida, 1980. (by legendary SI photographer Walter Iooss Jr.)

2. Who’s the dude chilling in the back? Pitcher Grant Jackson, then a relief pitcher for the Pirates.

3. Is that just a cigarette? One can’t quite be sure, but preliminary reports point to no…

A recent blog post from Chad Moriyama:

As the story goes, Matt Kemp‘s 2010 was ruined because he was distracted due to his relationship with pop star Rihanna. No, it wasn’t his horribly flawed swing that was to blame, because that would require actual analysis, it was his girlfriend (and if that sounded like a canned scene from “Moneyball“…yeah).

So as I’ve come to expect, with the recent rumor that they are back together again, Dodgers fans have resumed flipping out over whether to sign him to an extension or not, fearing the 2010 down year more than ever.

Causing me to scour the Internet for even more dangerous-to-baseball couples than Matt Kemp and Rihanna. A brief photo essay:

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