As you’ve probably heard, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw recently signed a contract that will pay him more American dollars than you will earn across all the many lifetimes that Lord Buddha bestows upon you, even if you embezzle from your employers and/or diligently cut coupons.

As a result of his enviable windfall, the young lefty has been subject to a multitude of business proposals, probably. What follows is a not-at-all fictional record — or half-record, if you will — of just one of those.

There is the whir of the elliptical, the whine of the overhead fan.

Through the hum and drone comes a pulsing tone.

The young man picks up the cell phone and presses it to his ear.

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Promising Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard, whom the club acquired as part of the trade that sent R.A. Dickey to Toronto, has been the locus of some attention today at the club’s camp in Port St. Lucie. Take the following meaningless quiz to guess which objects and/or people Syndergaard has and hasn’t been likened.

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Derek Jeter’s 20th major-league season will be his final one, the Yankees shortstop announced recently. As Mike Lupica noted in a stirring piece of investigative journalism from 2007 — and as Bradley Woodrum has elsewise confirmed in these pages just today — the Captain seems strangely immune to bad press. NotGraphs spoke with definitely a real scientist from American chemical company DuPont to inquire about their role in Jeter’s impeccable reputation.

For a player with such a long career, under such intense media scrutiny, and with rather a long list of sexy, famous ladyfriends — for all that, Derek Jeter seems to have remained almost entirely free of controversy. DuPont has had something to do with that, I understand.

Yes. We were able to devise a method by which to apply Teflon, our popular non-stick coating for pans, to his public image.

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Pujols on Jeter: "On and off field, he's the way you want your kids to grow up, Only Jesus is perfect, but he's pretty close to that guy."

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) February 13, 2014

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I have, to varying degrees, taken to poo-pooing the democratic process on this site over the last two years. My point, to the extent I have one, is not that we should heavily invest additional power in the hands of those that already have so much, as it is that the majority generally sucks and really likes to do shitty things to the minority.

Nevertheless, there is a benefit to living in a country that encourages its lowly plebs to participate in the governmental process, and that is that we can make our voices heard. We can build consensus, and with a strong voice we can tell our leaders, in no uncertain terms, how to make this country stronger, better, and more fair.

To this end, I ask you to please get involved with a project that is very close to my heart. This summer, NotGraphs “editor” and general ne’er-do-well Carson Cistulli voluntarily left this country of his own free will and moved his entire life (which fit into two sensibly-sized suitcases, from what I understand) to the Paris, Texas of France, Paris, France. In the days since his ouster, America has learned to hope again. Now, Carson Cistulli wants to come back.

This ragamuffin of a man and all-around dirty person believes that, just because he has a passport and is a legal U.S. citizen, he should be allowed to again traipse his muddy feet across America’s fine white carpets, which we just got done cleaning. He wants to drag his whimsy and his obscure references and his drinking problem back to our doorstep, and he expects to be let in.

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While one might reasonably suggest that giant LSU junior and future/former major-leaguer Lyle Mouton isn’t technically flipping his bat in the two animated GIFs embedded here, it’s also entirely the case that Mouton’s intentions are identical to those of the bat flipper. “I have all the talents,” Mouton announces with his actions — not unlike boy poet Arthur Rimbaud, that is, who said the same thing over a hundred years earlier in French words.

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Boyishly so,

and then dreamily so;

ruggedly so,

and craggily so, to the last;

indeed, reader, not unlike America.

On Wednesday, a mysterious cube-shaped package arrived in the mail for me. There was a return address, but no name. The package was coming from inside Milwaukee!

Inside the shipping cube was another cube, this one faux-gold and real-fancy:

Bird was very interested, as he is with the arrival of all packages.

Any baseball nerd would be sure at this point — as was I — that inside was a baseball. And sure enough! It was a baseball! And on it, the head of Carlos Gomez!

Thankfully, not the actual head of Carlos Gomez.
The Brewers need him to play centerfield this season!

At first, I thought it was a special Valentine’s gift from my belovéd betrothed. Which, I suppose the enclosed card could have supported — though it would mean, maybe, that she was trying to tell me something.

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The occasion for the poorly crafted jokes below is not a definitely scheduled, certain-to-happen roast of former top Oakland prospect and actual major-league right-hander Todd Van Poppel. Rather, it’s how the author inexplicably woke up in the middle of the night, found it difficult to fall back asleep, and subsequently challenged the internet to amuse him until such a time as he became drowsy again — which he did, eventually, but not before also learning from WebMD that insomnia is a major symptom for no fewer than dozens of fatal conditions.

Were such an event to occur, however — that is, a roast of retired pitcher Todd Van Poppel — the author would at least have seven jokes already written for it.

These jokes, in particular:

1. Your career was so short, if it were a literary form, it’d probably be the epigram.

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