That tweet, from Tony La Russa’s daughter Devon (and courtesy of Big League Stew), is in response to a quickly-deleted Sunday night tweet that read:

I saw a crack head doing “The Wash” today. Coincidence? I think not…

I’m hoping “coincidence, I think not” is the phrase she’s apologizing for, or else she just called recovering cocaine addict and Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington a crackhead. But don’t worry, it’s just a phrase she uses! A phrase to describe people who do crack. Hopefully not to describe black people who do crack specifically.

As the guy who writes The Dugout, a comic where Ron Washington’s only appearances are drug-joke related and we once had Dmitri Young use someone’s skull as a bong, I can only cast so many stones. I will, however, point out that my RON WASHINGTON IS A CRACKHEAD commentary is presented in a fake AIM chatroom with pun screen names and tacos that can speak on a sports comedy blog, and Devon’s is not. I’ll also point out that if you’re just messing around, quickly deleting the comment so nobody can see you’ve made it is a good indicator that you quickly realized you were being dumb, and “it was dumb, sorry” would go a lot farther than “crack head is a phrase I’ve coined”.

I urge everyone who discusses this matter to avoid the phrase “freedom of speech” at all costs.

On Saturday night, Albert Pujols gave us perhaps the greatest individual game performance in World Series history. Three home runs, 6 RBI, and a record 14 total bases – completely mind-blowing, but also completely expected from him. That’s why El Hombre is hardly the story today after Derek Holland’s magnificent pitching performance for the Texas Rangers last night. Holland went 8.1 inning, allowing just 2 hits (both to Lance Berkman) while fanning 7. Most impressively, he silenced Pujols, who was 0-for-4 at the plate. Holland’s effort was truly a postseason pitching masterpiece.

So what’s up with the creepy mustache?

It’s all I could think every time Holland was pitching last night. It’s like my grandfather gave him a gorilla mask, with sad little hairs speckled here and there, not really making much of a formation. As a man who is incapable of growing facial hair, I look up to these professional athletes to set a standard with their mustaches and beards. For instance, I can’t stand those Taco Bell ads with Brian Wilson shouting, “Black Ops!” but I sure respect the man’s beard. Hoffman really let us down with this prepubescent flavor savor.

Thankfully, I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan and we are widely regarded as the most intelligent and classiest facial hair aficionados in baseball. That’s why I took some time to put together this list of suggestions for Holland so that he can combine his commanding pitching with a commanding lady tickler.

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Here’s another reason why you shouldn’t have turned on Zooey Deschanel for being “quirky” — she can sing the Star-Spangled Banner without putting her finger in her ear and trying to break it down.

Last week we shared with you the news that the star of FOX’s ‘New Girl’ and YouTube’s The Zooey Deschanel Show (not really) would be singing Our National Anthem before Game 4 of the World Series, and because I love baseball and All The Real Girls and have an “EXCUSES TO POST PICTURES OF HOT CHICKS” tag, here she is. Her performance is so straight-forward, in fact, that the video leaves me with only two questions:

1. When people make the shape of the country out of the flag like that, why don’t they ever try to include Alaska and Hawaii? and
2. Is George W. Bush the only President we’ve ever had who says he likes baseball and actually does? [Terse Political Comment here] but at least he can throw a baseball without looking like a complete liar.

Part of me wishes Zooey had Zooey’d up the anthem and had a hand-clapping children’s chorus in the background, or M. Ward milling around somewhere behind her holding a guitar three sizes too big for him. And if you’d prefer a less indie joke, FOX has lined up Damon Wayans Jr. to sing the anthem for Game 5, and another guy to take over for him two lines in.

This isn’t really a sentence that ever should’ve been typed, but somebody in the St. Louis Cardinals front office forgot to file copyright the intellectual whatever of the squirrels that ran onto the field during games 3 and 4 of their series against Philadelphia, and now that the “serendipitous rodent” has become a “mascot of sorts” for the club, every bootleg t-shirt jockey and sports-minded taxidermist is free the plaster the thing on its wares.

STL Today has the important legal analysis:

“No one can come and say, ‘This is ours,’” Haim Mano, marketing professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said of the Rally Squirrel. “It’s wide open.”

Major League Baseball, he added, could claim copyright of the footage of Games 3 and 4 against the Philadelphia Phillies two weeks ago, when a squirrel temporarily interrupted the game and darted across the field. And vendors could also run into dangerous territory if the squirrel-themed merchandise includes something that looks like a team logo or other trademarked material.

As funny as the discussion gets (and remember, it’s a discussion about how you can make chocolate squirrels and call them Rally Squirrels to sell them to dumb Cardinals fans, but if you put the Cardinals logo on them you’re infringing), it doesn’t get any better than this:

To help market the nuts at the St. Louis shop, a family member dropped off a squirrel statue that has been passed around the family as an inside joke for years. They placed a red background behind it.

“I don’t think anybody can copyright squirrel nuts,” he added.

They need to take advantage of the trend now, because win or lose, the “rally squirrel” won’t be around forever. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could think of another animal to cite when rooting for the Cardinals?

The Texas Rangers lost last night’s Game 1 of the 2011 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2. It was another in a well-played string of games from Tony La Russa, who got an enormous faux-hawk and decided he’d rather not ever lose at baseball again. Game 2 goes down tonight, and then we head to Arlington for Dirk Nowitzki, Zooey Deschanel and everything else you think of when you hear “Texas”.

The real story of the game, at least in my household, was how long I could listen to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver speak before saying f**k it to baseball entirely and playing Arkham City. About three innings. The following Dugout is a verbatim recreation of those three innings.

Enjoy, if that’s possible.

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The World Series got off to the best start imaginable for everyone on Earth last night, as the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Texas Rangers 3-2 with absolutely zero controversy at all. Nope, Adrian Beltre just needs some bigger feet, that’s all. And the world rejoiced over the awesomeness of the Cardinals winning Game 1, as well as Tim McCarver slipping further into dementia, MLB doing the right thing by letting Dirk Nowitzki throw out a first pitch, and a bunch of hippies really showing the corporate World Series what’s up.

But none of that matters now, because Fox has made sure that its love of synergy will melt our hearts.

Zooey Deschanel has double duty on Fox: The star of the new series “New Girl” also is performing at the World Series.

Deschanel is from the indie pop duo She & Him. She’ll sing the national anthem at Game 4 of the Major League Baseball seven-game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers. It airs Sunday on Fox.

(Via WHDH Boston)

This is great news for two reasons. First, for some unknown, godless reason, MLB has Trace Adkins and Ronnie Dunn singing the National Anthem for games 2 and 3, respectively, and that’s just way too much country music for anyone’s taste. Especially Adkins. I’d love to meet the Mad Libs copy editor who wrote his cookie cutter hits like “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” and “Hot Mama” so I can smack him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

The good news is that our beloved Zooey isn’t just some darling hipster eye candy. She really can sing, and she already has a little baseball experience. After the jump, some of her performances, as well as a delightfully gratuitous gallery of our favorite Deschanel sister.

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