Minneapolis — Considerable speculation has flooded the internet blogs regarding Albert Pujols‘s motives for throwing his glove at Angels teammate Erick Aybar following the club’s 6-2 victory over the Twins on Wednesday (box).

In point of fact, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has learned that the gesture was in response to an ongoing argument the pair have regarding the utility of deconstructionist thought.

“Pujols, he doesn’t recognize the internal contradictions of philosophical discourse,” Aybar said when reached for comment. “The moment we attempt to utilize rhetoric in the service of describing metaphysical reality, we have obscured reality.

Said Pujols in response: “I regard Aybar’s claims only as an attempt to deliberately obscure discourse and nothing else. He argues against language until it no longer exists.

“So how I do refute him? I throw my glove. ‘Deconstruct that,’ I said. Q.E.D.”

By a process known as embedding — which oughtn’t be confused with a different process for which the author has become famous around the home and office — I submit for the reader’s consideration video from last week of Chicago White Sox right-hander Jake Peavy discussing with equal parts enthusiasm and modesty a recent minor-league outing he made, which video reveals to anyone who cares to watch that Jake Peavy is remarkably pleasant.

“Apropos of what, precisely, are you doing this?” the reader might be asking. To which hypothetical question, I reply: “No pretense is necessary. Good behavior is always relevant.”

In an effort to reinforce the popular notion that all sabermetric analysts are poorly socialized nerdbones with unfortunate hair cuts, Brian Kenny and the producers of MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential have invited FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron to appear on today’s (Monday’s) edition of that program.

Kenny, for his part, does a good job with the show. He appears genuinely interested in asking, and attempting to answer, smart questions about baseball. Furthermore, he has a head of hair that will outlive us all.

The show broadcasts at 5:30pm ET — with what appears to be another showing at 7:30pm ET, for those viewers whose abdominal muscles aren’t fully cramped after pointing and laughing during the first.

From Tom Verducci’s column on his Hall-of-Fame ballot comes this little (Chicken Mc) nugget:

It was not preventing me from voting for Bagwell in 2010, but a development gave me pause just as I was filling out my ballot in his first year of eligibility: a perplexing interview in which Bagwell condoned steroid use and attributed his bulk to “eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and . . . working out,” making no mention of the andro, the beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate, the zinc tabs, creatine and whatever else.

Once more with the relevant portion in the town-crier’s all caps for maximum emphasis:

“EATING 30 POUNDS OF MEAT EVERY SINGLE DAY”

Like you, I don’t know whether to believe that Jeff Bagwell indeed made a habit of eating the equivalent of four human newborns every day, but I think I shall believe it anyway. Jeff Bagwell ate 30 pounds of meat every day. Thank him for the memories, but pity the hellscape of his colon.

(Nom nom: BTF)

As I am wont to do, I was recently reading Woman’s Day and ran across this championship bit of information, which was under the ever-evolving rubric of “Things You Can Put in the Dishwasher”:

4. Baseball Hats and Visors
“The dishwasher is a fantastic way to make sure hats keep their shapes,” says Linda Cobb, a cleaning expert who is also known as the Queen of Clean. Put hats on the top rack, head opening down, on a separate wash cycle from dishes because you can’t use dishwasher detergent (many contain bleaching agents). Instead, fill the detergent cup with borax, found in the supermarket laundry aisle. Run a regular cycle without the heated dry option, then place hat over a glass or jar to dry. Reshape brim while damp.

Slipping in (tee hee) a transparent double entendre like “reshape brim while damp”? That’s sooo Woman’s Day.

This has been a post about putting your hat in the dishwasher. This is the offseason.

It is well known that the Yankees, proconsuls to all that is gnarled and dark, exist primarily not to play base and ball but rather to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. As though we needed proof beyond what horse-sense confides, here’s a particularly damning GIF. Click and be appalled!

Little explanation is needed, but that’s a young fellow in a Yankee cap at the funeral of the late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, who was coconuts. Kim was, of course, a vicious despot, so it should come as no surprise that the young man in the cap was a sanctioned emissary dispatched by the Yankee front office in order to ensure a post-transition diplomatic relationship with DPRK!*

Patriots awake!

(Secret handshake of the resistance movement: UniWatch)

^{* Not true, but still …}

The recent base-and-ball hootenanny provided us with several storylines. One of the most prominent, of course, is Jeffrey Loria’s success in unloading all dis gold bullion and all deez doubloons in exchange for the lives and efforts of baseball players. Which leads us to …

Behold, perhaps the most important Google Map of our times:

Point A is the Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas, Texas, which I’m told will be the location of the 2011 MLB Winter Meetings. And, should you care to click and embiggen, the annotated window shows the presence of that bastion of American culinary mastery: Medieval Times Dinner And Tournament.

Consider, for just a second, the possibilities here. Imagine, a joust between Ed Wade and Ruben Amaro over which prospect is included in their next inevitable deal. Imagine, Billy Beane hustling an entire restaurant with his revolutionary way of building a joust team. Imagine, Mike Rizzo stuffing his face with a giant mutton chop and spilling the majority of a stein of mead all over his lap.

Endless possibilities, as you can plainly see:

And this only scratches the surface. Be sure, we here at NotGraphs plan on detailing a variety of scenarios we can envision between the executives of the game we love and the greatness of Medieval Times. You just can’t get this coverage anywhere else, you guys.

Breaking news from WPVI-TV Philadelphia’s Jeff Skversky:

As much as this just sounds like Lenny Dykstra is canceling his autograph session to have a street fight with Jose Canseco (which I imagine would go something like this), this fight is going to be something far more civilized: boxing.

Canseco has already begun a career in MMA, but it hasn’t gone well. Dykstra doesn’t have a boxing or MMA career that I can find, but he is “fighting for his good name:”

Lenny is fighting for his good name in baseball. Lenny’s life for the last two years has been upside down mainly because of snitches. Canseco is one of the many rats that have diminished Dykstra’s career.

Because, you know, that’ll help.

As far as the actual fight goes, I’ll take the 6’4″, 240 pound Canseco over the 5’10″, 167 pound Dykstra.

Although, to present a counterargument: Nails. Can’t bet against Nails.

Brayan Pena expresses the gratitude of millions.

I don’t know what the coverage of baseball was like last night for those of you in the U.S. of A., but up here in the Great White North sports coverage needs a bit of help with priorities. They were talking about games in Florida, Maryland, and other sordid little burgs, but hardly mentioned the story they should have led with: Bruce Chen‘s eight innings of shutout ball (somehow matched by Carl Pavano‘s nine) in Minnesota on an emotional night that might have been Chen’s last game in a Royals uniform.

We are all reeling from the emotional night at Target Field, but those who may have happened upon one of my FanGraphs chats know that this is particularly difficult for me. While I celebrate the greatness that is Chen, it is time to bid the meme him farewell.

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