“And therefore Joe West sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” – Genesis 3:23

Japan continues to tremble. The new footage that comes in, almost daily, of the incredible destruction wrought by Mother Nature, serves as a humble reminder of the power of forces beyond our control.

The recovery effort continues. So, too, does life. Just not the way it once was. And the Japanese, our baseball-loving cousins, much like the United States after 9/11, “are contemplating whether baseball can play a role in comforting a reeling nation.”

I believe baseball — professional sports, in general — is most effective in times of tragedy, and crisis. For a short while, baseball can serve its purest of purposes: distraction; respite.

Once upon a time, I was a proud supporter of the New York Yankees. For six and a half weeks, from September 18, 2001 until November 4, 2001, I rooted for the Yankees as if they were my own.

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Joe Blanton is both (a) a pretty good, probably underrated, major-league pitcher (averaging 2.9 WAR per season over his six-year career) and (b) not as talented as his Phillie rotation mates. It’s the latter of these points that makes for the slightly awkward SI cover pictured here.

Perhaps it’s my imagination, but there appears to be a second distinction between Blanton and his teammates — namely, the ability (or lack thereof) to express a cohesive message visually.

Using the part of the human brain designed to read facial expressions, one gets a pretty clear sense of what four of the pictured pitchers is trying to say here, as follows:

Roy Halladay: [In a German accent, if possible] Weakness repulses me.

Cliff Lee: I’m staring into the sunshine of my talent.

Roy Oswalt: Were circumstance to dictate that I hunt for my own food, this wouldn’t be any sort of a problem.

Cole Hamels: Not until you’ve holstered your gun, sir.

Joe Blanton, though? It’s not clear. If one sees his expression, it’s only through a glass, darkly. What, Joe, is going on in those eyes of yours? What language is it that your goatee speaks?

Because I am a man of many pressing obligations, I’ve cooked up one of those random-thingy generators. Mine will tell you what your nickname would have been had you played for the 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles. As you are no doubt aware, the Orioles of that vintage were a tough bunch of men. They drank all the liquor in America, they went decades without sleeping, they brawled against Norse gods, and they saw all of their children killed gruesomely by primitive farming equipment. All of these things are facts.

Anyhow, go here and find your 19th-Century Baltimore Orioles nickname.

Mine? “The Salty Bronco.”

While tenured academics tell us we’re no longer in a recession, it remains, to a man, hard out there for a pimp. So it is uplifting to learn of a man like D-backs bullpen catcher Jeff Motuzas, whose enterprising spirit would’ve allowed him to thrive in the gravest of economic conditions. Remember when, as history teaches, a dust bowl descended upon Germany not long after the Treaty of Versailles kicked in and Okie Deutschlanders were reduced to paying for things with coal, serpent plasma and palpable regret? Jeff Motuzas would’ve been fine, thank you. Why is that? Because eating the reputedly inedible and letting Livan Hernandez konk you in the pills for cash makes for a downturn-proof income:

A recitation of Motuzas’s money-making exploits should come with a disclaimer: Kids, don’t try this at home. He has snorted wasabi and eaten horseradish by the bowlful. He has devoured a dozen donuts and guzzled 13 bottles of water. And this is the PG-rated version. “Tooz will eat anything except poop, urine and vomit,” Diamondbacks reliever Sam Demel said. “No, wait—I’m sorry. He will eat vomit.”

Demel cited the memorable day when a former teammate regurgitated some yogurt and slathered it on a potato chip for Motuzas. Demel also said he once saw Motuzas ingest a concoction of chewing tobacco dip spit and 3-day-old chili.

Pitcher Livan Hernandez became something of a sadistic benefactor when he arrived in Arizona in 2006. Motuzas said Hernandez once paid him $3,000 to drink a gallon of milk in 12 minutes. The two also hammered out a deal that permitted Hernandez to punch Motuzas in the groin for $50 a pop whenever he felt the urge. Motuzas would receive a $300 bonus after every 10th punch.

Motuzas, 39, freely volunteers his feats. How about the day he dry-shaved his armpits and left a thick coating of medicinal hot balm on them for an entire game? (“It burned so bad.”) Or ate 11 bananas in four minutes? (“That’s easy stuff.”) Or the time he let pitcher Dan Haren fire at him from close-range with a BB gun? (“He’d shoot me right in the earlobe.”)

Checking account reaching unimagined depths? Jeff Damn Motuzas would say you’re just not trying. Which you clearly aren’t.

Will McDonald at the Royals Review did it again. His paragraph to Eric Hosmer written in the style of The Golden Bough is brilliant. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s a great excerpt:

A near universal fear existed that Hosmer’s prodigious fly balls would knock out the sun, depriving the world of Spring. In some parts of Eastern Bavaria, each winter Hosmer’s name was forbidden to be spoken aloud until St. Dentlin’s Day in mid-March.

Imitation is flattery, so pardon us for stealing the idea. Here, for you, is a poem about Will Venable, in the style of Walt Whitman. I dunno, maybe it will make sense. It’s just a natural extension of my man crush on the power/speed lefty stuck in a lefty-killing ballpark. Of course, it’s 99% stolen. Mad libs!

With All Thy Tools

WITH all thy tools, mighty Venable,
(Standing strong, serenely confident, overlooking the field,)
Power, discipline, speed, vouchsafed to thee—With these, and like of these, vouchsafed to thee,
What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving;)
The gift of Perfect Athleticism fit for thee—What of that gift of gifts thou lackest?
That missing ability to make contact? that swing, hit, fly fit for thee?
Not that swinging, swinging, swinging – strike three.

Like the better films of Woody Allen and/or a gun that shoots knives, today’s feast day is aimed simultaneously at the heart and the head.

Life: Along with Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, Brian Jordan was a notable two-sport athlete of the late 20th century. Unlike Jackson and Sanders, however, Jordan’s major league career was both long and successful. Over 15 years, he slashed .282/.333/.455 (105 wRC+), with his best years coming in St. Louis and Atlanta. More notable, though, are Jordan’s fielding exploits: per TotalZone, Jordan ranks 26th all time with 148.0 runs saved above average. All told, Jordan accumulated a 33.3 WAR for his career — or about four wins for every 650 plate appearances.

Spiritual Exercise: Do with your soul what Brian Jordan is doing with his entire body in the image below. Repeat until excellent.

Brian Jordan!

In your cameo appearance on daytime drama The Young and the Restless you played a sensitive urban police chief who, looking out over a city full of ceaseless toil and pain, weeps a lone, plaintive tear.

During your slightly longer appearance in the right fields of baseball’s National League, you saved more runs than almost any player ever — never once crying, so far as anyone knows.

Now, you’ve been given the role of a lifetime — as the subject of a feast in a canon of fake saints! The distinction, you’ll admit, is impressive. A piece of advice, though: don’t just rest on your laurels. Being merely a wreath fashioned from a shrub of the same name, they’d be crushed under the weight of someone your size.

At the end of January, my colleague and actual townsman Jackie Moore invited the wide readership directly into the eye of his brainstorm so’s to contemplate, hand-in-virtual-hand, the best and brightest of fantasy-team naming.

With two months having passed since that post, and with baseball on the proverbial doorstep, it makes almost too much sense to revisit Jackie’s original effort and to see what late March has to offer us in the way of excellent appellating*.

*Of course it’s a word. Shut up.

Master of the Genre Rob Morse has offered a couple of examples via Twitter (pictured above).

Here, you can see the team names for the FanGraphs ottoneu League, too:

Mr. Chris Cwik has tickled me near, if not directly on, the funny bone with Wookie of the Year. Paul Swydan’s Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net is a nod to a post-apocalyptic future sure to occur right after the apocalypse. Team Dark Overlord speaks for itself — unlike David Appelman, whose servants generally speak for him, lest he tires.

So, what say you, commentariat? Have we advanced in this important area of human development? Or are we descending into a dark, dark age?

The Process Report 2011 (available in PDF form or paperback), the new Rays annual from R.J. Anderson, Tommy Rancel, and Nicholas Macaluso is out, and it does not disappoint. The analysis and stories from the TPR writers as well as a host of others (including a foreword from our own Jonah Keri and a chapter from our own Joe Pawlikowski) provide excellent insight into the Rays and their upcoming season.

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While the Texas Rangers have developed into an enviable and successful organization, one problem remains: the hellscape that is Arlington in August. This is also a problem in other baseball locales, but, for instance, the Diamondbacks parry the crippling heat with a magic roof, and in Miami no one goes to games. So that leaves Texas with their suffering, heat-stroked masses.

On this front, the innovations underway in Qatar can be instructive. Qatar, of course, will host the 2022 World Cup, and Qataris have concerns of their own when it comes to hot-ass weather. Their solution? I’m surprised I even need to say this, but their solution is awesome, awesome, awesome robot clouds.

The linked article depressingly refers to these wondrous things as “blimps,” but — let’s be serious here — these are clearly wizard robot clouds that, in keeping with their magical nature, will not only blot out the sun but also protect us from the winged silverback gorillas that secretly roam our skies with the most sinister of intentions.

So your move, Nolan Ryan and company. Do you want your fans to continue boiling alive by the thousands in your dutch oven of a ballpark? Then do nothing. Do you not want your fans to continue boiling alive by the thousands in your dutch oven of a ballpark? Then make with the robot clouds.