Brian McCann is the hard-hitting catcher for the Atlanta Braves. Arn Anderson once teamed with Tully Blanchard to haunt the squared circle and our dreams. Both are Gentlemen of Verona. They are also quite possibly the same man …

In the upper left of the abovely embedded image, you see Arn Anderson dressed up like Brian McCann. Mr. Anderson has gone so far as to dress himself in baseball woolies and surround himself with central-casting teammates. He points menacingly at the opposition, which is what wrestlers are wont to do. Why is he going to such lengths and depths? Because he might as well be Brian McCann.

In the bottom right of the abovely embedded image, you see Brian McCann adopting the buffalo stance known as “Looking Like Arn Anderson.” Observe his hairy, sweaty skin the color of hamster bedding. Admire his championship belt, which signifies, by turns, the rewards of valor and or deeds of a dirty nature already done. Why is Brian McCann going to such lengths to look like Arn Anderson? Because he might as well be Arn Anderson.

This has been the zipper- and latex-clad, becocked work of the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team.

Young Marty Brennaman often refers to his choices in neckwear as “the Cadillac of ties, baby.”

Young Marty Brennaman knows that sometimes a gentleman prefers roasted lamb with mint jelly, and sometimes a gentleman prefers a hot dog and beans.

Young Marty Brennaman is convinced that today’s kids would abandon that loud “Rocking Roll” music if they’d just sit down with a belt of Dewar’s and give Artie Shaw a listen.

Young Marty Brennaman was once afflicted with a case of Montezuma’s Revenge during a brief stopover in Porter, Texas. “Curse this town,” he said as he crossed the county line. “And curse the unborn sons of the sons of this town.”

Young Marty Brennaman is proud of the sliding bench seats in his Buick. “You like these, toots?” he’ll say. “It’s like a flying sofa, sweet cakes.”

After a show and a relaxing, belt-loosener of a seafood dinner, Young Marty Brennaman has been known to promise a skoit “a night of steakhouse-recipe love-making, doll face.”

Young Marty Brennaman is still annoyed about that unopened pack of Parliaments he left over at Paul Hornung’s coop.

Young Marty Brennaman can dance to that, so long as that dance is the “Hully Gully.”

Young Marty Brennaman surveys the future before him and says, “I think I’ll do this the Marty Brennaman way.”

(Image — handsome image — first spied at BTF)

Matt Kemp — Chevalier Matt Kemp — wears what appears to be a double-windsor knot. He does this because he is a gentleman. He is festooned with a pocket square. On occasion, he uses it to wash his hands of the entire affair. He is not a frequenter of locally sourced whores. This is because he need not pay for the hubba-hubba.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is paid millions for being good at baseball. But even if he were not good at baseball, he would make the same amount of lucre from various wealthy patrons of the gorgeous and obliging.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is Business Handsome.

In the Admiral’s Clubs of America’s hub airports those who travel for the love of the transaction are seeing Chevalier Matt Kemp on the cover of this, the magazine of choice for the toads of American balance sheets and the pallid, doughy bodies in which they are encased.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is not of them, and Chevalier Matt Kemp is not among them. He dips his balls in their beggared habits.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is Business Handsome.

Young Dale Sveum’s feathered part is symbolic of the deep fissures within: for Young Dale Sveum loves rebuilt engines as much as he loves baseball as much as he loves lady ass.

Young Dale Sveum boasts a necking technique that Sally Callahan, among others, has termed “The Gentleman’s Agreement.”

Upon first laying eyes upon it, Young Dale Sveum described his bow tie as being “sexy antifreeze in color.” When the haberdasher at After Six Formal Wear told him it was “really just light blue,” Young Dale Sveum cut him a hard look. “You and I,” Young Dale Sveum said, “we shall call it ‘Sexy Antifreeze,’ won’t we?” To this day, the patron may request such an exact hue of neckwear at After Six.

Once in Algebra II, Young Dale Sveum found himself idly doodling “I have a passion for passion” on the front of his Mead three-ring binder. He hurriedly scribbled it out, mostly because he knew it was true.

While some great figures of the past held a preternatural belief that they would one day enjoy an appointment with history, Young Dale Sveum always believed he’d have a make-out session with history punctuated by some sweet under-the-bra action.

Although it is usually a signifier of indigence and misfortune, living out of a van sounds pretty damn far-out to Young Dale Sveum.

Young Dale Sveum will be voted by his classmates as “Most Likely To Marijuana.”

After Young Dale Sveum helmed a cabal of jocks in ritually abusing freshman Bernie Stimpner, Stimpner, upon negotiating his way out of the trash can outside the cafeteria, declared: “Dale Sveum will one day be a great leader of men.” And so he was.

(Image courtesy of Chicagoist)

Like most of us, I knew him only as the almost spectral presence who delivered sex-drenched commands and remorseless taunts from on high. He paid us in corsair’s doubloons. He claimed to have invented new smells and colors. He lifted not barbells but paid whores left pliant from hours of driving coitus. He carried a razor in his sock. His voice was so gravelly that actual gravel spewed from his maw. If a man is something dimensionless and awful to behold, then he was man. He was David Appelman.

This past weekend, in the deserts of America, I met him. By way of introduction, he beat me with a cactus and then kissed my fresh wounds. Such is his power. Such is his malaise. Like someone from a Garcia Marquez novel, Appelman is followed everywhere by a pack of menacing tarantulas. “My spider-sons,” he calls them. His appetite for illegal drugs and sex as locus of control is both boundless and without bound. As he ravishes you on whim, the only consoling knowledge is that whatever he’s doing to you at that moment is but a taste of the horrors ahead. You can always buy another bodice, he tells you. I saw him brawl with Christ. David Appelman is an animated urge.

We are not equipped to remember our births, which is a necessary survival device. We are also not equipped to remember the precise things that David Appelman does to, at and on us. We cannot, lest we combust from vice and rot. Every so often, though, the gossamer parts, if only for a moment, and you remember something about him. He is hairy beyond plausibility. His member is untold and prehensile. It turns out there is an eighth deadly sin.

I am in need of physicians.

Young Mets left-hander Jon Niese had some work done.

As a before and after shot, this is pretty impressive. The Before has Niese growling at a celebrating foe or contemplating spoiled chicken, the After has (perhaps) a fawning female in the crop.

As a comment on society’s pressure to confirm, this might be less impressive. Niese, planning on the surgery for aesthetic reasons anyway, turned the story into a BSOHL story quickly. He told ESPN’s Adam Rubin that the rhinoplasty “helped a lot with [his] running” and “working out. As far as the mound, I’m not sure.”

And as some baseball fans roll their eyes, Mets fans might laugh at the next trick Niese played. When all else fails, #blamebeltran. What does Carlos Beltran have to do with his nose job?

“He wanted me to have a new nose,” Niese said about Beltran. “So he offered to pay for it. I was just like, ‘All right.’ Then it turned into seeing doctors and to getting it fixed.”

The forever smile went into the hereafter yesterday. Even with preparation, it was difficult. A picture and then some lamentations for our service today.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had never before in my pointless existence used the phrase “cocksure cocksman” until I laid rheumy eyes upon this image of Ricky Bottalico:

That’s Ricky Bottalico. Those are the kind of pythons you can’t buy in a pet store. And this has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

(Reluctant tug-job: Hitting the Cutoff Man)

Last night I was drinking in a bar in Chicago, mostly because drinking in a bar in Chicago is what sustains me and allows me to suffer existence. So I was drinking a selection of German lagers when I saw this hanging above the bar:

I am aware that the photo is sideways. I have the skills and even the will to right things in this regard, but the awry-ness of it suggests a certain absurdity and even a soft defiance of a kind. So it shall stand.

Pictured above, I am told, is “the owner’s brother.”

The owner’s brother is not a man who uses “high tea” as a verb. He is not a man at all; lo, he is a damn man. There are damn men who smoke while fishing. The owner’s brother is not such a damn man. There are damn men who fish while smoking. The owner’s brother is indeed such a damn man.

He probably favored that shirt because it lets the guns breathe a bit on a summer day. He’s probably not sure that the Cubs really are America’s team. He’s entirely sure that he’s about to take a piss off the boat slip.

Owner’s brother, let’s you and I make it through another day.

(Gratitude most righteous to Noel for his beery companionship and flash photography)

A line — a beautiful line — from Charles Baudelaire:

See on these canals those sleeping boats whose mood is vagabond; it’s to satisfy your least desire that they come from the world’s end.

A line put to action: