And there’s not much more to say, is there? These Ports of Stockton, they are good at celebrating.

With his home run last night, Chicago (AL) third baseman Brent Morel now has seven of those things (i.e. home runs) in the month of September, placing him third in that respect behind only Ian Kinsler (9) and Adrian Beltre (8) — i.e. players who’ve established a track record of doing such a thing.

The present author has already written a brief love letter to Morel’s recent performance at FanGraphs’ main page, but has left some things unsaid that can only really be understood by bearing witness — awe-filled, pants-offed witness.

To that end, I’ve embedded below — and attached the most hilarious commentary you can imagine to — all of Morel’s September home runs, beginning with this one:

9/3: Off Brad Penny. In which Tiger fans are not happy, having just realized — one assumes — that they live in Michigan.

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Our ongoing quest, in the manner of the noble knight-errant, is to assign players to cool nicknames rather than indulge in the tired, shopworn paradigm of assigning nicknames to cool players.

First, though, a brief jaunt through our Nickname Seeks Player Vaulted Halls of Honor:

“Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
“Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks
“$45 Couch” – Yuniesky Betancourt
“Liván Hernández” – Liván Hernández
“Frog in the Pot” – Carlos Zambrano
“Aqua Velva Man” – Chase Utley

The nickname up for grabs in this episode? It’s “Victorian Sex Rebel”!

The writer was reading a review of this book, and his first thought was not, “This is potentially an important addition to existing socio-historical scholarship.” Rather, his first thought was, “‘Victorian Sex Rebel’ would make a fine nickname.” And so it is.

Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:

The Victorian era was, of course, a time of restrained passions. One did not do certain things in polite company. Sometimes, one did not do anything in polite company. Indeed, for the bodice-ripper to exist, there must first be the binding oppression of the bodice itself.

So the Victorian Sex Rebel was one whose mighty will, heart and loins could not be harnessed by the times. Or it could be someone whose contrived image was at odds with his inner malaise. Something like that.

Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:

Bo Belinsky made baseball love to innumerable foxy ladies while the 60s were still the 50s. Joe DiMaggio affected an image of impossible grace even though he was, at heart, something of a miserable weirdo. A pilot killed a drunken Lon Koenecke with a fire extinguisher. So there was at least something Victorian Sex Rebellish about Mr. Koenecke, since I can’t imagine that being killed by a pilot with a fire extinguisher was ever a thing no matter how unruly the times.

Guiding, Determinative Query:

Which current major-league player should be nicknamed “Victorian Sex Rebel”?

The convention floor, which, appropriately enough, is lousy with sex hammocks, is now open for nominations …

Marketing Executive #1: Hello everyone and thank you for coming in today. Here are your Blue Sky thinking sheets.

Andre Dawson: Uh? My Blue Sky sheet’s blank.

Marketing Executive #2: Yes, it’s a blank sheet for you to use in our brainstorming exercise.

Andre Dawson: So why did you call it… never mind.

Marketing Executive #1: Okay it’s time. Please clear your minds. Listen only to the sound of my voice as I soothe away the outside world. We’re ready for inspiration here, and we’re opening our minds. Slowly opening our minds. Slowly exploring the darkness, and expanding above this room.

Jeffrey Loria: You’re fired.

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By now, you guys have probably seen Getting Blanked blog:

Oh my. I do believe I am getting the vapors.

This is the best logo in baseball history. Yes, there’s the Brewers ball-in-glove logo. Everybody knows about it. It’s awesome. But there’s just something special about the color combination and the retro feel and the all around good vibes I feel when I look at this work of mastery and art and just fantastical niceness.

Please be real.

The team-name font is the same as the leaked Marlins logo. The MLB logo is placed in the exact same place. The Marlins logo has already been confirmed as real. I like our odds. Just please be real.

Here at NotGraphs, our fondness for base-and-ball-themed cakes is what all the kids are talking about. So tonight it is with enthusiasm that is at once half-bridled and half-unbridled that the writer presents your Daguerreotype of the Evening …

As you can plainly see, the above cake recreates some randy grabbing on the part of Mr. Rodriguez — a sequence of decisions and violations known among the moneyed and genteel as, “The Presumptuous Cad and His Discontents.”

(Unsolicited fondling: Sports Pickle)

Are you this man’s homeboy?

If there are two things you should take from the post you’re currently reading, the first of those things is that the author, Carson Cistulli, has listened to at least one hip-hop song in his life and won’t hesitate to leverage that experience into the title of a blog post about baseball.

The second thing you should know is how Brandon Phillips has an understanding of the free market and won’t hesitate to leverage that understanding into awesome quotes that an author like myself can steal for his own blog and get bigpageviewsuccess!!!

Despite the fact that Reds GM Walt Jocketty has made it clear he’ll be picking up Phillips’ $12MM option for 2012, Phillips was in a mind Wednesday to consider time future. Regarding life after his present contract, Phillips said the following within earshot of MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon:

No bueno. This is my last contract. There is no homeboy hookup. I just want to be paid what I am worth.

Just so we’re all understanding here, allow me to provide a glossary for the blockquoted text.

Homeboy Hookup = Hometown Discount

Paid What I Am Worth = Market Value

No Bueno = No Effing Bueno

There is a time for build-up, for laying the foundation for the dramatic arc. There is a time for rhapsodizing, for setting to thunderous poetry the miracles of this life. And there is a time stand in quiet, humble, human reverence as the marvels unfold. This is one of those times …

And now let us weep.

The Boston Red Sox have been in an intense, high-stress playoff race as their team has crumbled during September, allowing the Tampa Bay Rays to climb back into the Wild Card race. Although this is bad news for Boston, this is good news for everybody else. Not just because of schadenfreude (although largely because of schadenfreude), but also because this means we get to hear David Ortiz say The F Word (i.e., “fuck”), one of my personal favorite pasttimes and something Ortiz is actually quite experienced with. Observe:

August 2009, on not receiving an RBI on what he thought was a base hit: “Fucking scorekeeper keeps fucking shit up.”

April 2010, on what he thought of sportswriters making claims on small sample sizes, including bonus non-fuck swears: “You guys wait ’til shit happens, then you can talk shit. Two fucking games, and already you fuckers are going crazy. What’s up with that, man? Fuck. Fucking 160 games left. That’s a bitch (note: unsure which expletive actually goes here). One of you fuckers got to go ahead and hit for me.”

June 2011, on Joe Girardi’s disdain for bat flips: “Fuck that shit.”

Monday, on losing the first half of a doubleheader to the Baltimore Orioles: “Fuck this shit.”

Tuesday, on Curt Schilling: “Fuck off.”

August 2011, on leaving 16 men on base: “Fuck.”

A diverse usage of one of the English language’s greatest sentence enhancers from Big Papi. One can only hope the Red Sox remain mired in their struggles just to see where he’ll go next.

Were one to construct a sort of pantheon of modern religious thinkers, it would, of course, be difficult to neglect such personages as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and — if you’re the sort of person who considers “Protestantism” a thing — Paul Tillich.

Another name you’d be loathe to forget is the one belonging to White Sox field manager and mouthy Latin gentleman Ozzie Guillen, who yesterday blew the entire world’s mind via his comments (rendered lovingly into tweet form by the Sun-Times‘ Chris De Luca) regarding a sort of cryptic hybrid polytheism as yet unconceived in extant scholarship.

Specifically, Guillen speaks of (a) a personal god belonging to White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and (b) what Guillen calls the “real” god. Though Guillen clearly differentiates between the two, he fails — or, perhaps, coyly neglects — to note whether any other gods exist in this compelling and rich half-mythology.

It’s for his simultaneous brilliance and stubborn opacity that Guillen has frequently been referred to as “Derrida in a ballcap” and, other times, as “an effing a-hole.”