Here was the great Red Smith’s lede the morning after the Shot Heard ‘Round the World:

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

And here is the just awful Dayn Perry’s lede the morning after the Busch Putsch:

Nerp taaaaa duputoah ploopy snaarfgort baseball loorfgack the fuck? Derpy derp holy grappertom snarfglop. I am shitting out of my stupid mouth.

And so I am left with my drool, my indignities, my gaping maw, and this:

Baseball is love and religion and sex and food.

Well, that was quite the Game Six.

Where are you going to watch Game Seven? I’m going to be hanging out with Patrick Newman in Palo Alto at the Empire Tap Room. Good beers, better baseball/TV setups than other Palo Alto bars with good beers, should be empty enough at happy hour Friday to carve out a spot for the game. If you are in the bay area, you can even take the train there, sorta. Meet me there?

I don’t promise that the game will be as good as Game Six (how could it be). Or that anyone nearer to you will respond on this post to let you know where they will be tonight so you can meet up with them and talk nerd. But I feel like I need to do this, Game Six was that good. I haven’t even cleared this with my wife or the Dark Overloard yet. F it, I’m a rebel.

So! Where are you going to watch Game Seven tonight?

What to do you when your favorite player annoyingly takes advantage of his post-Messersmith/McNally liberties and leaves you with a jersey-shirt that serves as nothing better than a reminder of those grim treasons? You improvise like a champion’s championship champion:

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

It gets hot in these rhinos.

When one reads the play-by-play transcript of World Series Game 5, one is reminded of some of the finer works of Eugène Ionesco.

This is not an excerpt:

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Despite the fact that it happened only just 15 years ago, many people have forgotten Wade Boggs’ overthrow, by force, of the New York government and his brief and frightening reign over that same city.

The photo you see here captures Boggs in 1996, just moments after having wrested — along with a small but loyal faction of the city’s police — wrested control of the city from then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

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A friend pointed out that I misspelled Saltalamacchia in a previous post.

I figure I deserve to be punished. And so why shouldn’t I make the punishment fun?

If you haven’t wasted at least a few hours doing pointless baseball (and non-baseball) quizzes over at Sporcle… well, I’m about to ruin your productivity forever. Because even if you don’t like the quiz I’m about to link you to, I’m pretty sure something over there is going to suck you in (or you are far more immune to the distractions of the Internet than I am… though, really, if you were, would you be reading NotGraphs?).

My self-inflicted punishment for misspelling Salty’s name is that I’ve created a quiz to test how well you can spell the hardest names in baseball (current players only). Yeah, that Marc guy is one of ’em.

Good luck.

[First one with a perfect score wins… about $40,000 less than the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. My last spelling bee was in 4th grade, when I was eliminated from my district’s competition by misspelling halibut. For more than twenty years, I didn’t eat halibut, in silent protest. That streak was broken due to an unfortunate choice of entrees at a wedding a few years ago. I think it must have been something like “halibut or garbage?” because I honestly don’t remember what would have possibly made me choose the halibut and end my lifelong strike. I have not eaten it again since. For those who haven’t already clicked over to the quiz– or a different post!– by now, I spelled it “h-a-l-i-b-i-t.” How many fourth graders frequent the local fishmonger and study the price list??? I’m still convinced it was the pronouncer’s fault. The winning word was refrigerator! Refrigerator!! But I’m over it. Really, I am.]

Some might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with boundless horrors.” Others — patriots, for instance — might characterize the action-video footage that follows as “brimming with righteous justice.” Judge for yourself, so long as you agree in advance to make the correct judgment …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRi59dhVawo&feature=player_embedded

At this point, you might be wondering what the puckish young lad in the Yankee cap did to merit such a shuddersome fate, other than the self-evident breach of wearing a Yankee cap in the first place. And, hmmm, I might be wondering why you’re not content to leave such matters to the relevant jurisdictional authorities. Perhaps, because of your dissension, the Republic finds itself in need of even more blood-soaked redress, eh?

I’d watch what I say and think, if I were you.

We believe, and by we I mean right-thinking North Americans, that mustaches and spectacles are inherently good. Indeed, one Dayn Perry scours the Internet day and night searching for the finest in spectacle- and mustache-related content. He has made NotGraphs your one-stop shop for spectacles, mustaches, and spectacles plus mustaches. Veritably, this site is the world’s foremost authority on spectacles and mustaches.

But, alas, I am here as the cold shower to your clearly aroused state, regarding said facial accoutrements.  As my dear grandmother likes to remind me when I steal her prescription medications, too much of a good thing is bad for you. To wit, I ask…nay, demand…you behold the evolution of one Kenneth Allen Phelps:

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He was practicing for game six.

What Tony La Russa was thinking: “How the f*ck do you spell Rzepczynski?”

Image courtesy Reuters via Daylife.

Rangers manager/America’s favorite cackling bedlamite Ron Washington is, as you are probably aware, bald. But he is not bald in the sense of merely being in possession of a hairless top floor, like, say, Lex Luthor. Rather, Wash’s baldness contains multitudes. This you shall soon see …

So multitudinous is his baldness that we now have a category called “Great Moments in Baldness.” If not for Ron Washington, there would be no such thing as a Great Moment in Baldness. The inverse formulation — if not for Great Moments in Baldness, there would be no Ron Washington — is obviously not true. But still.

This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.