Sometimes, the headline alone does the — germane pun forthcoming — heavy lifting, and the need for further throat-clearing is obviated. This, right now, is one such instance …

This has been the pensive visage of LaMarr Hoyt — 1983 AL Cy Young winner — sloppily Photoshopped onto a screengrab of a question about weightlifting, which — i.e., the question about weightlifting — was originally posted to a Camaro message board.

This we know: All those TV shows about Bigfoot and UFOs – or, in extreme cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs, or, in extremer cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs in search of the Loch Ness Monster engaged in a subsurface mating ritual with Jimmy Hoffa, or, in extremest cases, Bigfoot-piloted UFOs in search of Ron Washington’s most effective bunt strategy – always end the same way, right? They end, in uniform fashion, with a provocatively ambiguous pronouncement that supports the mystery by hinting at the possibility that it just might be solved, probably in the next episode.

This we also know: During baseball’s off-season free agency period, there is now and always a “mystery team” that offends tradition by competing with the Yankees for the privilege of spending the equivalent of Kiribati’s gross domestic product on a 33-year-old right hander who might make 26 starts.

Now, standing in tandem here, are these twin pillars of the known unknown. That’s right, fellow sleuths: There is a mystery team, and by the end of this piece you might or might not know that the mystery team is still a mystery.

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Last week, the author began a five-part series recounting notable home runs he’s conceded during his life as a nearly decent baseball pitcher at various levels.

Previous Installments: One / Two / Three.

Date: April, 1998
Level: High School
Place: Nash Field at Milton Academy in Milton, MA (Link)

One advantage of having relocated my dumb body to Paris, France, this past fall is that it’s allowed me to become acquainted with a comestible known as mille-feuille (proncounced meal-FIE, roughly). While there are probably variations on the theme of same, mille-feuille is generally speaking a dessert composed of multiple, alternating layers of a leaf-thin puff pastry and then custard-type cream which, when consumed all together by an adult man, gives him a desire in his heart to impregnate the whole world at once.

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To make the image bigger, either a) click the image, b) put your face closer to your computer screen, or c) do both of those things.

Torii Hunter, via Instagram:

Mat Latos

Al Alburquerque, 2012 (I believe this is his ex-wife; he is currently married to a base)

Miguel Cabrera

Cabrera’s wife used to be married to Joe Dimaggio

And here are Alburquerque and Cabrera’s mates together on Family Picture Day

Reverend Pat Robertson, Senator and future presidential candidate Rand Paul, and former and future presidential candidate Rick Santorum have all pointed out that the progress of same sex marriage in this country will inevitably lead us down the slippery slope to people being able to marry their pets. “You mark my words,” said Robertson, “this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent.”

Now here we have a picture of Torii Hunter kissing an alligator. Think about that. We are already to the point where a player who as recently as 2012 told reporters he would be “uncomfortable” having a gay teammate because “as a Christian…in all my teachings and my learning, biblically, it’s not right” has already succumbed to the hedonistic lifestyle of fornicating with reptiles. This stalwart defender of the faith has been corrupted, as has red-blooded American male dating Kate Upton Justin Verlander, who looks on, rock hard, with what appears to be great erotic excitement. It could even be a male alligator for all we know.

What hope do any of the rest of us have but to just give in and storm our local pet shops? I, for one, am going to buy a turtle. God help us all.

The state of Minnesota is a terrible place to live right now. It snows one foot per day here. The days it doesn’t snow, it’s 87 degrees below zero. The cars that can be started are getting stuck on the roads, wedged between parked cars, or left idling in the middle of the street as the drivers decide that mid-trip seppuku is their most appealing destination.

But Spring was coming. Baseball was coming. Miguel Sano was coming. Maybe not right away, but the Twins’ big-bat prospect was almost a shoo-in to get some time in the bigs this season, and with him would come a promise — of tomorrow, of success, and of winters with a little more sun, if perhaps only metaphorically.

And now, Sano is out. The winter of the late summer will remain. We are bumbling through a second date after a promising first. We are gold miners enticed by some swindler’s surface sparkle. We are Minnesotans. We are reminded.

I can’t imagine how the guy could be an angel like this…It is human to err…Derek hasn’t made many errors that I’ve been able to witness.

– Joe Namath

On Monday in Tampa, footballing legend Joe Namath imputed nothing less than a supernatural lack of frailty to Derek Jeter. We numbers-minded people at NotGraphs were startled, to say the least, by Namath’s assertion. After all, a cursory search reveals that Jeter has been scored with no fewer than 243 errors over the course of his major league career, not to mention the Southern Atlantic League-record 56 errors he committed at age 19. In hopes of resolving this paradox, we contacted Mr. Namath by phone¹ with the intention of showing him some video evidence of Jeter’s miscues. Unfortunately, we were only able to locate three such videos on YouTube, and Namath was quick to refute each one. Excerpts from our conversation follow:

Namath: “Yeah, I was there. What you don’t see is that Ross smeared some kind of foreign substance on the ball before he hit it. I mean whatever the stuff was he really lathered it up good. The thing would have been damn near impossible to catch. Typical Sox garbage.” [Namath did not elaborate on how Cody Ross managed to doctor the ball from the batter’s box.]

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I noticed something today, with my eyes and brain. Take a look at this picture and tell me if you see/think what I saw/thought:

Actual don’t tell me. Just keep reading. Here’s what happened in my brain, the brain filling your brain with words and pictures that are unrelated to the work you should be doing:
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It is often said in English that one “can’t get blood from a stone.” Why such a thing must be specifically established remains a mystery — and lends almost nothing in the way of credibility to the human race.

The point of this post, however, is to say that something quite different than attempting to extract blood from a stone is attempting to locate internet footage of N.C. State left-hander Carlos Rodon striking out an opposing batter by way of his breaking ball. Indeed, no more than five minutes of research this afternoon has yielded the animated GIF embedded above — of Rodon on February 21st striking out what appears to be Appalachian State’s Alex Leach by way of his (i.e. Rodon’s) breaking ball.