Brawlin’ Bartender.

Dayn Perry did a all-drinkers team, and I’ve done an all-ugly team, but there’s one team in between the two that deserves mention. It’s the cast of characters on the beer-league baseball team that make up the Best Bar in Baseball.

Walk in the front door, and the first person you’ll notice is Jon Rauch. That’s because he’s both the bartender at this mythical bar, as well as the tallest, meanest-looking tatted biker type you might find in baseball. He’s the tallest person in the major leagues, but he’ll more likely be proud of a lesser-known stat: he’s the tallest person to hit a major league home run and it came off of Roger Clemens. He’s not a man of a ton of words, though, so you’ll order your Lagavulin neat or your Old Rasputin Nitro (of course this bar has good whiskey and craft beers, why wouldn’t it) and look for a seat at the bar.

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Mike Krukow: Seabiscuit likes beer, I didn’t know that.
Duane Kuiper: The guys in the truck say it’s obvious: Cain is a horse.
Mike Krukow: That was… ah.
Duane Kuiper: [laughs]
Mike Krukow: Ahh. I love here.
Duane Kuiper: What are you talking about, that could be one of our kids out there.

This was presented in complete reverence for the broadcasting team for Matt Cain and the San Francisco Giants.

I left New York for California in the summer of 2010, and though New York City is the best city I’ve ever lived in (compared to Negril, Hamburg, Atlanta, Mountain City (population 2500ish), Vero Beach, Boston, Palo Alto, San Francisco, London, Jersey City, and Menlo Park in that order), I don’t rue the move too terribly. Weather is only part of the reason — Beer figures in greatly too.

11 of the top 50 craft breweries (by volume) were in California last year, and if you pushed it out to 100, you might see even more of a share for this great state. San Diego seems to pump out a new craft brew prospect with upside every year. It was named the best beer city in America by Esquire last year. And home brewing is rampant here, where the weather is ideal for ales, and more people have garages with space for all the trappings.

So maybe it’s no surprise that three of the four California ballparks I’ve visited — AT&T and PetCo parks in particular — blow Citi Field’s beer selection out of the water. It may not even be the fault of the planners, it may just be a fact of geography.

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Felix Cortez Reyes Sarris was born yesterday afternoon. Now all eight-pounds-plus of him is barreling towards a career squaring the barrel or barreling the best.

Or not, of course. Whichever sport he plays or doesn’t play is going to be fine by me. A name like Felix puts him on a list with many notable baseball players, but it’ll also give him something in common with a revered economist.

But you know the trite-and-true saying:

“Give a man three baseball names and and a baseball in his left hand, and he’s probably headed towards being a LOOGY at worst.”

Today’s billet-doux pairs for us, the made-love-to readers, base-and-ball squads with representative cans and bottles of wholesome, nutritious alcohol. In some cases (pun!), of course, there’s room for Lincoln-Douglas debate as to the fitness of the union, but an abundance of right-wise American vigor is found in the effort. Please click and admire both girth and artifice:

It is pleasing to me, the Bonapartist scribe, that my preferred team, Cardinaux de Saint-Louis, is paired with my preferred existential lubricant, the stout.

In the end, though, this changes nothing …

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)

“Nama biru” is Japanese for “draft beer.”

Go to Jingu Stadium in Tokyo for a game — it’ll cost you half as much as the Tokyo Dome, and you’ll get to see the same game.

You know what will stick with you? The little things. You see, they have baseball in Tokyo, but they don’t call it that. They call it basebaru. Same thing, but a little different. Maybe it’s the metric system, or maybe it’s just society.

The beer experience fits right in — baseball with a little dash of shoyu.

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‘Tis the season for resolutions, so let’s perceive of ourselves as better people for just a second. No worries about the sex of the title, these will work for fans of any gender. As you’ll see, these resolutions represent a two-pronged approach to this whole betterment thing. A little for the body, a little for the heart, and a little for the mind.

* I resolve to run more often … so that I can eat and drink as poorly as I want at the game.

* I resolve to put down my computer, phone and book so that I pay complete attention … to the game.

* I resolve to be more thrifty and spend less, perhaps by brewing more of my beer at home … so that I can afford to go to more games.

* I resolve to read more and fully research everything … that could make be a better fantasy player.

* I resolve to tell the people I love that I love them more often … so they don’t mind when I ask for the television for the game later.

* I resolve to learn something new … about baseball.

* I resolve to help others … dominate fantasy leagues I’m not in.

* I resolve to get organized … gotta get all those baseball cards in the right order.

* I resolve to spend as much time as possible with my son (due in early April) … and, of course, put the ball in his left hand as much as possible. Even LOOGYs get paid.

Cognitive dissonance is a heck of a thing.

Like, I like Frank Thomas. He got a little sanctimonious at times, and his head was kind of misshapen, but he also was on the front of the first $20+ card I ever got in a pack (1990 Stadium Club, now on sale for $1), and for like seven years at the beginning of the 1990s he was like straight fire unleashed on the league. For those seven years he had a .330/.452/.604 line… 835 walks to 528 strikeouts…

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What was that you were saying again.

Walk up the first base side of the 100 level at ATT Park and you spot the premium brew stands every once in a while. Sierra Nevada. Heineken. Anchor Steam. Blue Moon. Meh. Better than the alternatives but nothing to really pen the proverbial letter home (or beer review) about.

Turn the corner towards the outfield and your appraisal of the park shifts more positive immediately. For one, you’re looking out at the bay, down at McCovey Cove. And then you scan left and you get a view like the cameraphone snapshot above. Does it really matter what beer you have in your hand when appreciating that view?

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