Since the last time we visited the NL Central through the prism of the animal kingdom, things have changed without actually changing all that much. By that I mean, the Cardinals enjoyed a spirits-buoying sweep in Milwaukee, but their odds of making all of this worth anyone’s while continue to hover around the stupid-face 1% mark. In other words, the Brewers are still going to win the NL Central despite this week’s happenings and at great hazard to the Republic.

With that said, those Brewers, presumptive and future NL Central champs, may have felt a little something recently. Clicky-click!

You shall win this thing that we both covet, Brewers, but you shall carry the wounds of war with you always.

(Playful bite: IHC)

Tonight, as I was watching my beloved Phillies take on the Marlins at Sun Life Stadium I noticed something awry with MLB.com’s normally excellent Gameday application.

I call the attention of the NotGraphs jury to the below screencap:

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For those of us who prefer altered states of consciousness, in which awesome things are even more awesome and awful things are not half-bad at the moment, to soulless arbitraging, today is a good day …

It’s the best rivalry in media softball: the notorious potsmokers vs. the financial power brokers. High Times swept the season series with Wall St. Journal Thursday, eking out victory in the 11th inning and making themselves favorites in the upcoming NYMSL playoffs.

The resin at the bottom of the bowl — now that’s my kind of derivative! Amiright?!

Jung Bong!

In my last post, I gave you my early picks in each league for the extremely uncoveted Least Valuable Player award. Today we take a look at my Top 4 picks in each league for the equally uncoveted Sigh Young Award, honoring those courageous men who put their elbows, shoulders, and faces on the line every day for your entertainment.

Let’s jump right in.

AL Sigh Young:

1. Brad Penny 

While Brad Penny’s inability to get strikeouts (3.74 K/9) doesn’t do him any favors against Major League hitters, it has apparently been a blessing in his dealings with members of the opposite sex. If she is in showbusiness and she is attractive, Brad Penny has probably been with her at some point.

I don’t understand it. He’s Brad freakin’ Penny. Which is to say: they can’t be with him because of his pitching abilities and they can’t be with him because of his looks (unless he has cornered to market on women who are into guys that look like ogres). There must be some piece of this puzzle that is missing. Fangraphs has a stat called E-F, which measures the difference between a pitcher’s ERA and FIP — a shorthand way of determining whether a pitcher has been lucky or unlucky. I would like to propose a new stat: E-D, or, ERA minus desirability of the pitcher’s significant other (on a 1-10 scale with 1 being most desirable and 10 being least desirable). Brad Penny currently has a 4.07 E-D. Brad Penny is getting extremely lucky. This run is almost certainly unsustainable.

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You can tell Brandon Belt is a gentleman because he wears his Giants jersey over a collared Van Heusen. You can tell he’s America’s sweetheart because of his loving ways with a baby giraffe …

Brandon Belt: I could just eat him up.

(Giraffe hug: With Leather)

It’s been a while, I know, but today seems as good as any to resurrect NotGraphs’ award-winning feast-days series.

#Feastmode!

Life: Drungo Hazewood’s actual, real-life name is Drungo Hazewood. Actually, it’s Drungo LaRue Hazewood. Even better. He major league career was six games long, in late September and early October, all the way back in 1980. Five at-bats. No hits. Four strikeouts. But a run scored: Drungo the pinch-runner.

Spiritual Exercise: In the minor leagues, Drungo could hit. He only got a cup of coffee in The Show. But at least he got a cup of coffee in The Show.

Prayer for Drungo Hazewood

Drungo Hazewood!
I wonder: What was going through your mind,
When after you hit .583 in spring training in 1980,
The Orioles still sent you down.
Earl Weaver kept it real:
“I’ve never cut a guy hitting that high before,” Weaver said.
“But he was making the rest of us look bad with that average.”
Oh, Drungo!
Even back then, the Orioles were the OrioLOLes.
Were you mad?
Sad?
Resilient?
You worked hard, and earned your call-up.
But it didn’t last long.
They never last long when you’re only 21-years-old.
“I’ll be back,” you must have said,
You must have thought.
You have to believe.
Three years later, Drungo, your baseball career was over,
Without a hit.
Damn, Drungo.
But it wasn’t all for naught;
There was the Drungo Ice House,
In Austin, at the University of Texas,
Named in your honor.
But, wait, that’s gone now, too.
What’s left?
The memories, Drungo.
And the statistics.
Six games, and five plate appearances.
You’ll live forever.

Image courtesy The Great Orioles Autograph Project.

While Gentleman Zack Hample is the acknowledged expert on retrieving foul balls, tonight’s Daguerreotype of the Evening reveals the true secret to finding one’s way to a valueless cowhide souvenir. Regard …

If you are the paterfamilias, becapped in blue and pictured above, then you may have taken your son to the tobacconist, introduced him, and said that he too will one day be a Winston Man. You know as well as anyone that Smooth, Delicious Winstons are the elixir for maladies ranging from the blues to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to catarrh to the sexless existence. Nothing will conduct you up the ladder to a better life quite like Winstons on your lips and at the ready in the breast pocket of your camelhair blazer. The steely snap of a Zippo means that Gentlemen are about to do Business.

Men do lots of things. Gentlemen smoke Winstons.

If you are the fresh-faced lad pictured above, then you smoke Winstons because good things happen to those who smoke Smooth, Delicious Winstons. Good things like … a foul-hit base ball!

Boys do lots of things. Young Men — Young Men who get invited to the cotillion — smoke Winstons.

Brian Wilson is on the disabled list. His beard is not.

Fear the beard, my friends. I do.

In an attempt to fully bastardize the idea of “the royal we,” I have decided to throw my hat into ring of inserting Dick Allen’s name into works of literature. Get ready to have your toes stepped on, Navin and Dayn (but mostly Dayn, you with the talent and originality and what-not).

In this episode, we move to the realm of Westeros, from George R.R. Martin’s A Game Of Thrones — a land where we can be well assured that Dick Allen would be a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how to take his pleasures.

“Why do you read so much?”

Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet away, regarding him curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this some kind of trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister.”

Tyrion sighted. “You are remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, twelve?”

“Fourteen,” the boy said.

“Fourteen, and you’re taller than I will ever be. My legs are short and twisted, and I walk with difficulty. I require a special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of my own design, you may be interested to know. It was either that or ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver’s grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all the poorer. Things are expected of me. My father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of these little ironies. My sister married the new king and my repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the honor of my House, wouldn’t you agree? Yet how? Well, my legs may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I prefer to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, Dick Allen has his warhammer, and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. “That’s why I read so much, Jon Snow.”

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

Red Sox fans are effing everywhere.

I’ll use the word diaspora in conversation sometimes not, as you might expect, to convince other people of my intelligence, but rather merely to give my own self the (perhaps false) impression that my three years in grad school — where the word is ubiquitous — were not entirely a waste.

Beyond that sad, sad autobiographical aside, the concept of fan diaspora — that is, the phenomenon of a fan from one place living in another, totally different place — is a legitimately interesting one. The topic is treated on a scholarly level by Jon Kraszewski in an article from 2008 on Pittsburgh Steeler fans in Fort Worth, Texas, and invoked again just today by Kurt Mensching of SB Nation’s Detroit Tigers blog, Bless You Boys.

Mensching (and reader Todd Jones Mustache Ride) want to know where all the out-of-state Tigers bars are located. Because NotGraphs is a general-purpose blog, allow me to ask a more general version of Mensching’s question — namely, “At what bars do any out-of-state fans watch their team?”

From experience, I know that the Riviera Cafe, located in the West Village, Manhattan, is a Red Sox bar. So is the New Old Lompoc on the West side of Portland, OR.

Where else do people watch games, though? Besides their own homes, I mean. This is need-to-know information.