Well, that settles it: I’m done with cocaine.

H/T: Things I Never Threw Away.

On May 20th, the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team is going to invite a former STATS Inc. intern, a Stanford economics graduate, a former All-American athlete, a College World Series record holder, a diabetic, a man with a Wikipedia page containing over 6,300 words in it, a man who eats bullets washed in the tears of his enemies and a few of his friends, and an active major league baseball player in the booth.

Figured it out yet?

THEY’RE ALL ONE PERSON.

That’s right, Mr. Super Sam Fuld will be joining the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team in the booth to talk about sabermetrics. What?! That’s right. Those fancy acronumbers and oozer ratings.
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Seneca, quoting Epicurus, writes in his Moral Epistle No. 11 that one should — in order to conduct oneself as virtuously as possible — one should “Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them.”

Seneca continues:

Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.

While I won’t attempt to guess at which Master the reader has chosen for these purposes, allow me to take for granted that, for probably 50% or 70% of our readers, said Master is probably the fictional character Alfred Ogilvie of both 1976′s The Bad News Bears and 1977′s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.

Indeed, Ogilvie possesses the three virtues most cherished by this publication: he’s bespectacled, is facile with baseball numbers, and, as the above image indicates, enjoys the company of women in high-waisted fashions.

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For the low, low price or $8.99, you TOO can have a keyboard covered in balls — just like the pros!

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A must for the Leisured Gentleman.

It’s $348, and Coach is, frankly, ridiculous, but having a wallet that looks and feels like a baseball glove just make sense, dammit.

H/T: It’s a long season.

Dayn Perry and I are recording his stupid weekly podcast appearance at 8pm ET tonight (Tuesday).

Feel free to submit questions or comments or court summonses in the comment section below — although, I’ll be shocked if even one person cares what Perry thinks about anything.

The Wall Street Journal released their Best and Worst Jobs of 2012 list yesterday. It is an interesting list, aside from one glaring omission (click to embiggen):

If you’re partial to connoisseur’s baseball — the kind of ball-match in which runs are earned by grit, moxie and a toiler’s ethic — then yesterday’s Orioles contest should be to your liking:

Much as one does not merely walk into Mordor, a major-league team does not merely stride onto a diamond housing the ball-ists of Manatee Community College and expect to escape without a brawler’s bruises. If it consoles, then know that the vanquished Orioles share the yoke of the defeated with the mighty likes of Indian River State College and Polk State College and the University of Tampa junior-varsity squad and Florida State College-Jacksonville.

Indeed, not all who have dared square off against Manatee Community College have been as fortunate as Palm Beach State College and Chipola College and Seminole State College and Broward College (twice) and Florida State College-Jacksonville (thrice) and Polk State College and, well, quite a number of others, actually.

But no, not every team can be so kissed by the fates — so groped by the fates like a coquette on a Tokyo subway — as to escape the presence of Manatee Community College without a loss. Although that University of Tampa junior-varsity squad tied them at one point, it seems …

Anyhow, one might notice the gallery of tossers that the Orioles faced upon the yesterday …

Doubtless, the reader will be reminded of that solemn piece of base-and-ball doggerel, penned by Grantland Rice when he worked the MCC beat like a flatfoot on the Bowery …

So chins up, Orioles of Baltimore: for countless others have met such a fate!

But not Hillsborough Community College, it turns out.

The staff at FanGraphs makes an annual trip to Spring Training, seeing as how we are all in this virtual workplace and occasionally need assurance that the people we are talking to online are in fact real, carbon-based creatures. Here is footage from that assurance ritual:

Have you seen this, friend?

I like the looks of it. I am going to Borchert Field. I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys.

Part of me — the good part — hopes that the Tripoli Arab Patrol is a patrol made up of Arabs rather than a patrol in search of Arabs to be patrolled. But I’m still going to Borchert Field. I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys.

The Tripoli Arab Patrol is world-famous throughout Shrinedom, so it can’t be all bad. I’m told a band will play. I enjoy a good Sousa march. I’ll hope for a Sousa march, and I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys.

It will all unfold harmlessly, you see. The fun will approach such levels that a circus will come to mind. Or a riot. Would you call a riot “fun”? They promise laughter. I often find myself asking, “What’s so funny?” I ask this of myself sometimes when I’m alone. But I’ll go anyway to Borchert Field. I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys. “Who even has the energy anymore?” is something else I say a lot.

Milwaukee Gas Light Company is a name I can trust. Twenty-five cents sounds reasonable. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself in a grand stand. I’m on a budget like the rest of us. Does this look like scabies to you? No, not that. I hadn’t even noticed that before.

Yes, I suppose I shall watch them play baseball on donkeys.

I remember lying on the roof as a boy and looking up at the stars in mute suspension and talking about what scared me. I don’t believe I ever mentioned donkeys or Shriners. So I shall go to Borchert Park. The more I think about it, though, it seems quite possible that I would’ve mentioned donkeys and Shriners. That will give me something to think about on the bus.

“Should I watch them play baseball on donkeys?” is something I’m starting to ask a lot.

“Nite” sounds more promising than “night,” doesn’t it? “Night” carries with it the threat of menace. Or at the very least the threat of not getting to bed at a decent hour. I have a routine, you see. I suppose, though, that “nite” means the same thing. Stands to reason. They probably just spelled it that way in order to save space.

I don’t think I’m going to go see them play baseball on donkeys.

What do you think happens when you die?