Which is why I did this. Inspired by things the TBS team has actually said. More playoff announcer nonsense invited in the comments.

While it goes without saying that NotGraphs has, in its lone year of existence, become the standard by which literary-minded and generally marvelous baseballing websites are judged, I’ve always been of the opinion that it (i.e. NotGraphs) would be greatly improved if only it were possible to acquire writers who were more talented and attractive and better and smarter and better than the ones already writing for the site.

Fortunately, as a product of our most recent — and only slightly drawn-out — talent search, the dream that I’ve dreamed so hard has become a reality.

In fact, it’s with great pleasure that I introduce four new writers to the site — each of whom is better and more physically fit than any of the site’s current stable of writers.

Regard:

Robert J. Baumann received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas and has had poems published in/at 3:AM Magazine, DIAGRAM, and Shampoo — i.e. journals that you’ve never heard of, but which are important nevertheless.

Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a real-live novel satirizing the world of corporate law and described by USA Today, not for nothing, as “wickedly amusing.” He’s also had work published by McSweeney’s.

If you’re familiar with Paul Lukas’s UniWatch, then you’re likely already familiar with Summer Anne Burton, who is (a) an Astros fans and (b) drawing every member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year at her site Every Hall of Famer.

Cody Wiewandt was a four-year Varisty football player at sporting powerhouse Oberlin College and is very likely — although no one can prove it — the secret lovechild of George Plimpton and Alan Alda. You can read his work at The Paris Review.

Thanks to the joke-cracking excesses of Sophocles, it was, for a long time, no longer funny to make puns out of people’s names. For centuries this was a reliable source of Comedy Gold and, on more than one occasion, spared the stinking human animal from extinction. Inevitably, though, fresh produce wilts, and comedy is and has always been a nutritious vegetable.

But, lo, despair not! When French industrialist Jean-Sebastien D’Internet, for whom the Internet is named, invented the moving image in 1997, puns made out of names were disinterred and revived as a thing that can be useful and even amusing. Doubt this? Take off your tight-fitting doubting pants, click, and then bear awed witness:

You see, the Cruz Missle, unlike its nefarious progenitor the (Pablo) cruise missile, does not end lives, destabilize right-wise monarchies and violate non-aggression pacts. It “merely” wins important baseball games and perhaps our hearts. Check that: especially our hearts.

Many able baseballing commentators have noted that the media coverage of Texas Ranger (principal) owner and president Nolan Ryan is perhaps exaggerated relative to his actual role in assembling the team currently playing in the ALCS — for which achievement general manager Jon Daniels and his colleagues are largely responsible.

For me, personally, it’s fine. Daniels certainly deserves credit, but the media will always tell the most interesting available story — and that’s Ryan. The thing I absolutely can not tolerate is how super judgmental Ryan has become recently.

Like, consider this interaction I had with the former ace pitcher just last night:

Me: Hey, Nolan Ryan how do you think these shoes look with these pants I’m wearing?

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This man is after our women.

I don’t have facts to back this up, but my unfailing intuition* tells me that, if there’s one problem with marriage in 2011, it’s that we ask too much of it.

*Or “mostly unfailing,” I should say. One time my intuition told me to go all-in on Crystal Pepsi. Turns out that was a “bad” “idea.”

Where our grandparents — survivors of war, Depression, and uninspired TV programming — were happy merely to find a spouse with most of the limbs in most of the right places, the husband and wife* of the modern era are now expected not only to tolerate each others’ stupid faces for 50-plus years, but also be best friends, accomplished lovers, and, in most cases, caring parents.

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Hi Bud! It’s me, Eric.

I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on things. That’s okay. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you are.

The reason I’m writing today is because I have some ideas which I believe represent improvements on your own ideas. This is not to say that I think your ideas aren’t already good. Rather, I think I can make them even better.

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This one comes to us via the Answer Man himself, Yahoo! Sports’ Big League Stew’s Dave Brown. And, holy shit, the resemblance is, as they say, uncanny.

So you can imagine my disappointment reading Lookout Landing late last night, where Jeff Sullivan — who always brings it, one of my favorite writers — declared likeness comparisons to be so yesterday:

I’ve done it myself – I’ve done it a bunch – but I’m trying to stop, because everybody does it all the time, and it’s annoying. Rarely are the comparisons thought through, so they usually fail. Yet because people make bad comparisons so often, the occasional good ones suffer, because nobody wants to hear them anymore. It’s like a bunch of years ago when I was at school and Chappelle was still on. Drunk assholes would walk around loudly reciting the same lines over and over, and it killed the better Chappelle references for the rest of us. Just let us pretend to be funny by repeating somebody else’s funny!

Damn, Jeff. I feel you on Chappelle, but the beauty of the likeness comparison, at least to me, is that it requires little thought, both in it being put together, and in it being enjoyed. One of my life’s mottos is: “Enjoy the silly shit.” I try to. Every single day.

But Jeff understands. He knows that sometimes, even against better judgement, likeness comparisons must be done. Must be told. Must be shared. Which is why he compared Zack Greinke to Ron Roenicke last night. This, above, Yukon Cornelius and Jason Motte, frigging twins, is also one of those times.

Cornelius and Motte more than just look like one another, though. They also share the same line of work: they’re both prospectors. Yukon’s looking for gold and silver, and Motte’s looking for hitters to put away, and for saves. Almighty saves.

See, Jeff, a likeness comparison and some thinking through. It’s beautiful when it all comes together.

Thank you both, Dave and Jeff. May the two of you write about baseball forever.

Perhaps you woke up this morning and, while undertaking the ablutions necessary for triumph at the office, in the gym and in the bedroom, thought to yourself: on this day, I shall not lay eyes upon a nude Jose Reyes and a Chris Carpenter freshly pruned of his base-and-ball chemise!

Know that these espousals were as hollow and empty as hollow and empty things:

That, of course, is Jose Reyes, his surely tensed organ blanketed by artful shadow, as part of an ESPN the Mag feature that will make you feel various feelings.

Are we done here? No, we are not done here …

When one’s co-workers are transformed into a shouting and leaping throng of bodice-rippers, it is known as “Success in Business.” Today, if you Move Enough Product, the same might happen to you.

In summary: Jose Reyes is naked, and Chris Carpenter is working on it.

(Bestripped gratitude: BuenoWaino)

You have the old man of the group, the antlers.

Hey Mickey you so fine, you blow my mind, hey Mickey.

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The image you see below is from a series of otherwise rather stupid photos of people wandering through haunted houses and making the precise faces you would expect to be made by those who wander through haunted houses. All of this is forgettable save for the harrowed young man in what appears to be a one-off cap of the dear, departed Expos …

Is he frightened of the imaginary ghouls afoot? Perhaps. Or has he worn that exact mug of unflinching horror ever since the moment he learned of the Bartolo Colon trade? Yes, it turns out. It also turns out that this is … your Daguerreotype of the Evening.