A.J. Burnett has millions, yet his discontent is so strong that it has its own soul and prehensile tail. The Daily News has not yet reported that he wakes up at 3 a.m. each night to sneak downstairs and weep in the dark, but one assumes they will and he does.

“City to Burnett: Drop Dead.”

So what does a man look like when the dual burdens of Job and Frodo are heaped upon him, when all of New York blames him for the presumed failures to come and the rent, which is too damn high?

He looks like this. Always.

(Yo, image: Getty)

In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

In today’s episode, Mr. Dick Allen wanders — but wanders with purpose — into Arthur Rimbaud’s aria of the debauched, “Evening Prayer” …

I spent my life sitting, like an angel in a barber’s chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.

Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can’t ignore,

And like the Lord of Hyssop and Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates Dick Allen’s shoes.

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

With so much of his time being spent executing things, today’s busy executive isn’t always in a position to enjoy every single game every single night on the entire baseball schedule. It’s to address this situation, undoubtedly, that Major League Baseball offers condensed games at their Media Center landing page.

The author has spent some time forming opinions about these condensed games, so that you don’t have to. Here they are (i.e. the aforementioned opinions), delivered in an authoritative voice via the magic of bullet point.

Regard:

• The first thing one will note is that the condensed games are delivered sans commentary — i.e. with natural ballpark sounds only. This is perhaps the best thing about them. Though commentary — especially when deliverd by broadcasters like Vin Scully or (in this author’s opinion) Len Kasper or Don Orsillo/Jerry Remy — though commentary certainly has its place, the quality of it is pretty uneven across the league. And while calls of dramatic plays can certainly enhance the experience of same, commentary is generally most effective during the game’s more subdued intervals. As the condensed games are composed almost exclusively by action, it’s a pleasure to participate in the ballpark sounds alone.

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A couple days ago, we here at NotGraphs utilized our powerful power to facilitate a crowdsourcing effort of great relevance to our “human” “condition” — namely, to determine whether, in fact, the image above represents the perfect golf swing.

A total of 104 votes were cast — many of them by living people — with a distribution very similar to this one:

No.	54	42.19%	
Yes.	25	19.53%	
Other:	25	19.53%

The general feeling is that, in fact, we are not seeing the perfect golf swing in the embedded image.

Of note are some of the answers provided in the Other column, as follow.

This is a man who’s been exposed to Gamma Radiation. Don’t make him angry.
Sound advice.

Yes, if you happen to dwell in the world of Tron.
Some cursory research validates this claim.

Inverted stapler. Tommy John candidate.
Science-y!

Polls are a cheap way to drive traffic to a webiste.
By his own admission, this answer was submitted by reader glassSheets.

glassSheets’ mom is a cheap way to drive traffic.
“Snap” is the word for which you are busily searching.

African or European?
A troubling question for these troubled times.

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 Fay Vincent: I noticed an awkwardly worded sentence in the Times. Sportswriting is dead.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: A very wealthy guy showed up at a Sox game.

Shorter T.J. Simers: Don Mattingly and James Loney have a positive outlook on things. I don’t like that at all.

Shorter Kevin Kernan: Regarding the Yankees, it’s quite possibly time to start panicking.

Shorter Jim Souhan: It’s too bad the Twins have money.

Shorter Murray Chass: I like bunts.

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

Click on the above image, and view it in all its embiggened glory. That’s the least you can do for that lady; she deserves it.

If that’s her reaction to Dan Uggla extending his hit streak to 30 games, and it was, imagine how she might celebrate, should Uggla get there, a 40-game hit streak. Or 50-game hit streak.

I don’t even want to think about 56. I worry. I can’t help it.

Photo credit: The Associated Press, via daylife.

We receive quite a bit of mail here at NotGraphs’ headquarters, much of it inappropriate either in a sexual way or spiritual way or other type of way.

That said, we occasionally receive correspondence of some merit, too. Below are three recent examples of same, with responses of varying quality.

(Note: got a pressing question or incisive comment for NotGraphs? Feel free to fire it through the internet to not+tips@fangraphs.com!)

Now, on to the letters:

Is it okay to bring a baseball mitt to a game? My friend says it’s not something for adult men to be doing, but I don’t really see the ish.

— Shawn in Shawnee

If it makes you feel better, Tony, I wear my mitt all the time and everywhere — at home, at a restaurant, and, yes, at a baseball game. I just never wear it on my hand, if you know what I mean.

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I tend not to worry about the fate of the United States of America. Through two bungled wars in the Middle East, Hurricane Katrina, a mortgage and financial crisis, the debt ceiling fiasco, the most partisan of partisan politics, and today’s threats of another recession, I’ve never doubted the American spirit. When faced with adversity, America endures. I’ve always believed that.

Until yesterday, when I watched video of two grown men tussle for a foul ball that landed in a trash bin at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. There was nothing exceptional about those two Americans, and their despicable actions forced me to ask a most difficult question: Where did America go wrong?

After much deep introspection, I know that America hasn’t gone wrong. It might be on the brink, but I still have hope for you, our southern neighbors. Because those two clowns at The Trop don’t represent America. Not the one I know, and have experienced. I still believe in America.

The foul ball episode in Florida reminded me of one I had at the ballpark about a week and a half ago. I was at the Rogers Centre SkyDome with two of my mates, the Texas Rangers in town, on a brilliant summer evening. We were seated in section 116, first base side, row 37, only three rows from the section’s entrance. The game began, and immediately we knew: We were in foul ball territory. A couple of screamers landed to our right, and our left, and I told the boys to stay alert. I had a feeling we’d get a turn, that there’d be action.

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NotGraphs readers who are also fans of science (or charlatans who pretend to be fans of science but have just seen that one episode of the Fox program House) are likely familiar with the heuristic known as Occam’s Razor. If you are unfamiliar with Occam’s Razor, it essentially states that when presented with two or more competing hypotheses, we should tend to the one that requires making the fewest new assumptions.

But I am not here today to talk about Occam’s Razor. I am here to introduce to you an exciting new heuristic that can help us better understand and even predict human behavior. Well, the behavior of one human.

It is called Bud’s Razor and I have defined it as such:

Given any issue on which he must make a decision, the wrongest decision is the one Bud Selig is most likely to make.

While this has been in the testing phase for the better part of a decade, the recent three game suspension handed down to Shane Victorino and only Shane Victorino for a brawl that saw Ramon Ramirez peg him with a pitch and charge the plate and saw Eli Whiteside (feebly attempt to) tackle Placido Polanco — which I accurately predicted using Bud’s Razor — has confirmed its usefulness.

Not quite convinced? Let us look at some test cases.

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I was but a young lad when Hall of Famer Jim Palmer began doing print ads for Jockey underwear — ads that presented Palmer to the world as the thinking man’s beefcake. Survey them, and you’ll find in his gaze not the slightest hint of embarrassment. He’s not exactly reveling in the moment, but he exudes the sense that there’s nothing at all untoward about going through one’s day clothed in nothing more than decorative grippers. As it turns out, he was right.

I would like to think that what follows is the exemplar of the genre. Please quaff deeply …

His pallor is a bit on the “nuclear fallout” side — a nod, I am quite sure, to the mounting Cold War tensions of the day. The place he went to tan, no doubt, had “parlor” in its name. He is lifting weights but not heavy weights. After all, one must remain lithe and pliable if one is going to make love to America. One must also remain quick and agile in case America’s husband comes home at the wrong hour.

The chest hair is ample enough to suggest the thumping masculinity just beneath, but it is sparse enough not to suggest a lower-evolved sort. Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull or Riunite on ice? Jim Palmer serves the latter. The body wave atop him? Thank you, Wella Balsam shampoo and asbestos-lined styling dryer with attachments.

And what’s he looking at? Perhaps a second paramour has arrived. “What are you doing here?” Jim Palmer asks. “As long as you’re here, please join us. Would you like some Riunite?”

The massage oils are imported. Sometimes, he warms them in a fondue pot.