So I read Cistulli’s write-up on home runs he gave up and I’m like what about me? You got your pitchers and you got your hitters is what I say. I mean the hitter is like half the equator so I’m here to tell you my side. I mean I didn’t face Cistulli but I faced pitchers just like him and man let me tell you they didn’t like me one bit.

They were all like scoot back! Scooooot baaaaack! Ha ha oh man it was awesome. This one kid Rusty he piped a fastball and man that thing was still rolling when I touched the plate. Yeah back then we didn’t have fences. And the ground was pretty hard because I guess they forgot to water the grass but man I hit that thing far.

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On Thursday night against the Chicago Americans, right-handed Clevelander Danny Salazar recorded 10 strikeouts against just 18 batters; produced a single-game xFIP of 0.51; and yet somehow conceded five runs, all earned, over 3.2 innings (box). A cosmic miscarriage of justice, one feels compelled to describe it as.

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While Communist Europe sleeps, Dean Anna homers into the lean American night.

While Communist Europe stamps its feet impatiently, Dean Anna eats contentedly beside the fire a stew made from stinging nettle and bonedust.

While Communist Europe wails like a child, Dean Anna fashions a crude but effective tourniquet from the uniform sleeve of the just-dead.

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The life of a knuckleballer is different than most lives, but it is still a life in the end. It starts, it stops, and the middle is spent exclusively thinking about how it will stop. Some other stuff also happens.

R.A. Dickey has had some stuff happen. Some heavy, some uplifting. Some may say he is in a good place, now. He plays a game for a living. Sure, but only once every five days. The rest are spent sitting, watching, thinking about how it will all stop. He does make a good deal of money, yes, but soul currency is what he’s most interested in — trading goods or services for enlightenment. He wrote an acclaimed book, but writing books comes with sad little details like dealing with publishers and literary agents. His book may have been optioned into a movie, but he has little say in that. He just gets to deal with movie agents, which are just literary agents with better haircuts.

And so here he stands, getting paid in foreign money to play a game in an enormous room on fake grass in Toronto — Toronto being an old Huron word for “shitty New York.” All this and how this all will stop is on R.A. Dickey’s mind. He is not real. He is a phantasm tasked with haunting his own consciousness. He is not human. He is not dancer.

He needs to feel alive again. This will happen at the expense of Dexter Fowler’s bat.

This coverage of Jayson Werth’s bat flip from Wednesday night — which bat flip directly proceeded a grand slam against Miami’s Carlos Marmol — is belated in the sense that ca. 18 hours have passed since it actually happened.

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This is Daniel Watts. His name will be unfamiliar to you. One reason for that is that he plays High-A ball for the Visalia Rawhide. But there is another, more sinister reason.

Odds are, you have run across someone named Watts. There were 86,000 of them in these United States, at last count. The redoubtable Anglo-Scottish surname comes in at #324 on the list of most frequent American surnames, ahead of such commonplace handles as Norris, Vaughn, Terry, and Bush. By sheer chance, at least five Wattses ought to have appeared in the major leagues by now. Yet no Watts ever has.

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Andrew Cashner – mugshot of a mullet pic.twitter.com/RUTkJc2unJ

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 31, 2014

I think his fantasy ceiling just collapsed.

#Rockies call up Josh Rutledge. He literally just walked in. Corresponding love coming…

— Nick Groke (@nickgroke) April 9, 2014

For those having a difficult time conceptualizing this particular major league transaction, here is a visual aid courtesy of the NotGraphs InfoGraphs Department:

Super many thanks to Paul Agnello for keeping up the love vigil and handing this bit of news to us.

Earlier this afternoon, celebrated and young Cincinnati outfielder Billy Hamilton produced a run entirely by means of his generational footspeed — which sequence of events Jeff Sullivan documented slightly later this afternoon for the pages of FanGraphs.

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There is a common saying bandied about when a particular thing is easy to make fun of ; “The Joke Writes Itself.”

As a writer of comedy jokes, these moments are always welcome. This is one such moment.

Watch:

Listen: