Rollie Fingers will be 66-years-old in August. He threw his last pitch 27 years ago. But he’s still got the best mustache in baseball.

And, yes, I know, the resemblance to Robert De Niro is frigging uncanny.

H/T: My man, and Deadspin night editor, Erik Malinowski. Follow him. He won’t do you wrong.

When Bad Company announced through song that they, as a collective, were “ready for love,” the about-to-be-ravished were left to wonder: “What does a man who’s ready for love look like?” The answer, it turns out, is this:

Word on the streets of America and Hollywood is that Mr. Berkman’s tickler is faux. It matters not. The Ray-Ban Aviators are real, and the zests and vitalities behind the mustache are real. This reinforces an age-old dictum for us: one need not have a damn mustache in order to have a damn mustache.

A mustache is, ipso facto, hair astride American lips, but it is also knowing which responding officer to punch first. It is having sex in a hallway. It is using a coupon to buy a motorcycle. It is stashing pot in a gun.

Lance Berkman’s mustache is not real because it is too real.

(Image courtesy of my soon-to-be primary employer)

BEHOLD! THE WORLD’S MOST INSTRUCTIVE SPECTRUM, THE MUSTACHE-SPECTACLES SPECTRUM:

THIS IS THE MOMENT THE PROPHETS FORETOLD, WHEN THEY SPAKE:

…AND THERE SHALL COME A SPECTRUM, A BEAM OF WISDOM AND ETHNICITY THAT STARTS THICK AND FUZZLED AND CURLING AROUND THINE UPPER LIP, BECOMES THINNED AND VAGUELY HISPANIC WITH AN AFRO SQUEEZING FROM YONDER CAP, AND ENDS PURE AND PURELY BESPECTACLED, YET MILDLY UNSURE IF THE PICTURE HATH YET BEEN TAKEN — AND YE SHALL UNDERSTAND THE LOCKED CAPS AND WHY WE HATH TO YOU GIVEN THEM. LET IT BE SO. (AXFORD 5:9)

NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE — LENNY SAKATA, WILLIE MUELLER, AND DANNY BOITANO.

DANNY BOITANO, WILLIE MUELLER, AND LENNY SAKATA. ALL ONE TEAM, ALL ONE SPECTRUM, BUT EACH A SEPARATE GLORY.

Perhaps it is because I’ll turn 40 this week. Perhaps it is because Carson and I recently discussed Rob Wilfong. Perhaps it is because it is the offseason, and one does what one must in order to abide it. Or perhaps it is because I live close enough to Wisconsin that occasionally the Dairy State’s aesthetic courses through me unannounced and untrammeled. Whatever the reasons, the author chose to costume himself in an actual, real-live mustache for a period of roughly 24 hours. If not for his wife’s plenary powers over such affairs, he might still have it. Still and yet, for a time — for a fugitive, halcyon time — we were kings, you and I …

This is the offseason, and I grew a mustache.

The original fearsome facial hair.

Yup, Sergio Romo will get a bobblehead this year.

The facebook page that announced the event got 200-plus comments. The following sampling represents the entirety of those comments. Even Romo himself agreed.

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Update: The voting is closed.  Old Hoss Radbourn, quite properly had the most votes with 94.  We’ll use that as a baseline, assuming no one could be foolish enough to not vote for him.  75% of 94 is 70.5.  We’ll round down to 70.  Which means that our inaugural Ron Swanson Baseball Hall of Fame class is as follows:

Old Hoss Radbourn, 94 votes

Ty Cobb, 89 votes

Nolan Ryan, 80 votes

Jeff Bagwell, 70 votes

Lou Gehrig, 70 votes

Frankly, that seems reasonable.  You win this round, John Locke.

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When our country was born, our founding fathers mistakenly bestowed upon us a republic, in which the will of the people would determine the course of our nation, rather than an enlightened despotism based on the whims of Ron Swanson, as Thomas Hobbes had been advocating all along.

And so, since our Belovéd Swanson is barred from ruling by decree due to the Constitution and the fact that he is indeed fictional in nature, it falls to us, the multitude, to choose for him who belongs in his Baseball Hall of Fame.  I don’t like it any more than you do, but such is the will of John Locke, who fricking ruins everything.

Yesterday, you recall, we proposed several candidates.  Today, we will choose the introductory class for the Ron Swanson Baseball Hall of Fame.  Everyone on the original list I proposed, as well as those players and managers both nominated and seconded in the comments section are available for your vote, and you can vote for multiple candidates.  As with the regular Hall of Fame, a candidate requires 75% of the vote to make it in, unless no one achieves that threshold, at which point, we’ll just give it to the top three vote-getters or something.  It should be chaos…glorious chaos…which will demonstrate once and for all how stupid John Locke was.

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Whether you know it or not just yet, you are a devotee of the greatest of men.  No, I’m not talking Wally Moon.  I’m not talking about Dick Allen.  I’m not even talking about Vin Scully.  I am talking, dear friends, of Ron Swanson.

Swanson, the heavily-mustachioed dynamo whose presence elevates NBC’s Parks and Recreation from sublime to divine comedy, is equally skilled in woodworking, meat preparation, hoarding gold, saxamaphone, avoiding his job, and dispensing warm and sincere advice.  His Pyramid of Greatness is not a mere suggestion.  It is an essential way of life, if we are ever to save ourselves from ourselves.

And so it was with great enthusiasm this afternoon that I waded into a Twitter discussion spurred by Wendy Thurm about whether Ron Swanson would elect Jack Morris to the Hall of Fame on the basis of his mustache.  My position, that Swanson would not respect Morris’ mustache given that it looked like an unkempt squirrel who came to rest and slowly aged on Black Jack’s upper lip, was not expressed.  But my firm belief, that if Ron Swanson told us to we should immediately elect Jack Morris, was.

Indeed, it’s my belief that, not only should Ron Swanson’s position on Jack Morris carry the day, but his position on all baseball players should be considered sacrosanct.  And it is in this spirit that I ask you to help me choose Ron Swanson’s Baseball Hall of Fame.  The following is a list of nominees.  Feel free to add your own in the comments.  We shall show New Hampshire how democracy is done tomorrow when we vote on the candidates.

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It was a different time, you understand — 1987, or ’88. A time when men like Billy Jo Robidoux and Mark Funderburk were the flying buttresses in the architecture of baseball — beautiful appendages that distract from the innermost works of the structure. Or something.

It was also a time when baseball cards like this were possible:

They gaze on, each to no great end.

The random pairing of players, the dissimilar orientation of the photos, the misspelling of Billy Jo‘s name, the prospect emblem in Johnny Rocket’s font — all of these were only possible in the 1980s, when anything went up one’s nose.
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On October 28th of this year, longtime Cardinal right-hander Bob Forsch threw out the ceremonial first pitch for that team’s World Series-clinching Game Seven victory. Less than a week later, Forsch was dead, having suffered an aneurysm at his Tampa-area home. He was 61.

Though his corporeal form has passed, Forsch assuredly lives on in the memory part of the brain of the few Cardinal fans who’ve come equipped with that organ.

He also lives on for those of us who derive some pleasure from the growth and maintenance of superlative mustaches. The image which accompanies these words (courtesy Andy Gray of the SI Vault Twitter feed and clickable for ample embiggening) accounts for about a thousand of the words I would have composed on the matter.

The remaining words are these: Bob Forsch had a mustache… or did he?

To answer that question, follow these instructions:

1. Become a father.
2. Wait until such a time as your child, upon seeing fog for the first time, asks if the clouds have come down to earth.
3. Take note of your answer. It will reveal your feelings about The Forschadow.

Or, phrased differently:

Dear readers of poetic inclination, as you’re undoubtedly aware, Robert Frost teaches that “Style is that which inidcates how the writers takes himself and what he is saying.”  If indeed that’s the case, then what must beleaguered and unappreciated former Twins reliever Ron Davis think of himself, and what is he saying?

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