It’s time for another installment of “Shorter Baseball Columnists,” in which we read mainstream baseball columnists and marginalized bloggers like Murray Chass so you don’t have to! Let us begin!

Shorter Mike Lupica: Hot Sports Opinion: Yankees-Red Sox games sometimes last too long.

Shorter Bill Plaschke: How much do I love Peter Bourjos? Enough to refer to his “dazzling dignity.”

Shorter Lake Cruise: The Cardinals’ ongoing embrace of Mark McGwire might kill your children.

Shorter T.J. Simers: Report immediately to your comfiest reading chair, because this is going to be about moi.

Shorter Murray Chass: New York Times, if I can’t have you, no one will.

Shorter Jerry Green: Stop giving me the high-hat: Justin Verlander is the MVP. And that’s my lawn you’re standing on, you whippersnappers and jackanapes. Ah, the dickens …

The “Shorter” approach to Internetty commentary traces back, as best as one can tell, to Daniel Davies.

Just your typical Triple-A lifer.

If only Fernando Perez was a better ball player. Then again, if he was, it might be unfair to the rest of the men in the world. He’s — forgive the fawning — an excellent renaissance man even without good baseball results at the time being.

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In keeping with the prevailing NotGraphs winds on this Monday, it’s only appropriate that your Daguerreotype of the Evening capture the gentle social mockeries of which the Skull-and-Bones Man is so fond. And so it is that we encounter these young Washington Nationals neophytes dressed up like the small, blue habitues of every child’s favorite Jonestown analogue …

As ‘Duk helpfully notes, that’s Rosin Bag Jesus Stephen Strasburg as philosopher-king Papa Smurf and that’s catcher Wilson Ramos as Smurfette, who, logic suggests, is charged with servicing the entire colony.

For all of her many virtues, Hannah Ehrlich — of River Ave Blues and the Twitters, respectively — occasionally forces innocent bystanders to think the dark thoughts. Nor is there a more representative case of her doing so than in the tweet you see embedded above, in which Ehrlich asks us to imagine what Nick Swisher would do with magic powers, had he access to them.

After a brief period of “vomiting” — followed by a longer period of “talking to my therapist” — I’ve finally come to terms with the mental pictures Ehrlich’s question generated. Now it’s my intention to thrust those same horrible mental pictures into the bespectacled reader’s mind, as well, via this entirely original, single-question quiz.

Hope you don’t fail!

In which the decreasingly Royal We insert various passages representative of the Western Canon into works of Dick Allen, thus adding to those various works the grandeur of perspective.

In today’s episode, Dick Allen finds himself decked in the gold and green garb of the Oakland Athletics, unsure of what purpose he serves baseball and of how it serves him. The date is June 19, 1977, and the Athletics, led by Bobby Winkles, face Francisco Barrios and the Chicago White Sox in the second game of a doubleheader. It is a dark and stormy night.

Top of the 7th, Athletics Batting, Behind 1-4, White Sox’ Francisco Barrios facing 4-5-6

• Wayne Gross singled to center.
• Earl Williams grounded into fielder’s choice to pitcher, Gross out at second.
• Willie Crawford walked, Williams to second.
• Jim Tyrone grounded out to second, Williams to third, Willie Crawford to second.
• Dick Allen pinch hits for Tony Armas (CF), batting eighth.
• Dick Allen took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and put it against the ball’s agony and the ball came over onto the outside corner, its stitches almost touching the edges of the plate.  Allen dropped his shoulders and put his foot forward and lifted the bat as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more strength he had just summoned, into the ball.  He felt the wood go in and he he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.
• Dick Allen struck out swinging.
• Dick Allen to tears. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought.  He never knew how easy it was.  And what beat you, he thought.  “Nothing,” he said aloud.  “I went out too far.”  He returned to the dugout and dozed, dreaming about the lions.

0 runs, 1 hit, 0 errors, 2 LOB. Athletics 1, White Sox 4.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Literature Into Works of Dick Allen.

Earlier today, the wise and enterprising Bradley presented us with an equally the rookie hazing of an equally wise and enterprising team: the Tampa Bay Rays, who went the route of forcing rookies to dress up as various characters (and apparently, one rookie was dressed as a pregnant green fairy) because, you know, they’re rookies. Those bastards.

The Diamondbacks are no stranger to this anti-rookie ideal, but they chose to go with a much different method of hazing the new meat, something a bit more straightforward in its shame.

Bikinis! How embarrassing!

I’m honestly not sure who gets hazed worse here, the rookies who have to wear the bikinis or those who have to look at them (especially you, the reader!).

Also, the question is raised: how in the world do people who spend so much of their lives in Arizona (or even Reno, if they were down in Triple-A) end up so white in the middle of September? I, for one, am concerned about the levels of Vitamin D around the Arizona clubhouse.

As the distinguished parlor-dweller may have noticed, the Football-Caliendo-Industrial Complex is once again inflicting itself upon polite society. Yes: The NFL, where even the commercial breaks have commercial breaks, is back!

Still, it might come as a bit of surprise to learn that the two gentlemen tasked with using English words to describe the 11 minutes of foot-and-ball action, tease the upcoming season of “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.” and, more generally, Move Product, seem as unmoved by all of this as the baseball loyalist of noble breeding. Embiggen and regard!

And the people say: Viva baseball.

Long before he mastered the finer points of agriculture — and, if these history books are correct, even a couple of years before he discovered fire — man had considered deeply, and with great depth, the art of spitting.

Because it comes out of your mouth, is kinda gross, and you can do it onto your bros, spitting is fun. But don’t take my word for it — take Yankee catcher Russ Martin’s.

Held out of Sunday’s game in Anaheim due to a thumb injury, Martin used some of his free time to expectorate. Above, we see Martin practicing a classic, single-stream situation. Below, the Yankee experiments with what I believe would be called a “pulse” technique.

When asked about his skill, Martin replied by saying that he does birthdays and wedding — but mostly weddings, if you know what he means.

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Every MLB team has a lot of fun with rookie hazing, typically requiring the young ‘uns to dress in the most humiliating of outfits to celebrate their entry into the Wealthy World. The Rays are no exception to this tradition and last night put their rookies through the rigors:

Well, the Rays are not satisfied with just the tradition, choosing to break Halloween’s monopoly, playing themed dress up on most every road trip.

Observe their recent Grunge Theme for their road trip to Seattle earlier this year:
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I have never been excited about anything for 15 seconds as much as Hanshin Tiger fans are excited about baseball for 15 minutes …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x8sLOs_q3s

People with no taste and incorrect opinions say baseball is boring. May they be roused from sleep and then deafened by the partisans of the Hanshin Tigers.