What you’re looking at is the best-possible and most serendipitous sports “selfie” you can take.

Meet Tampa Bay Rays reporter Kelly Nash. In addition to being pretty and having a great baseball job, she comes equipped with a magical forcefield that keeps her from getting drilled by fly balls when she’s taking Instagram pics at Fenway Park instead of paying attention. The photo hasn’t been doctored … in fact, representatives from the Rays speaking with Yahoo Sports seemed surprised at the idea that anyone WOULD doctor a photo like that, and I have to agree. I can’t get my phone to take a picture of anything more mobile than a bowl of fruit without it blurring up. This photo was a gift.

If you’re wondering what mystical force kept Kelly from getting brained, here’s a quick conversation from her Twitter this morning explaining why she and actor Tony Danza are so very much alike:

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Please forgive my inability to identify baseball video games, since the only games that I play are old school Final Fantasy re-releases for the iPad because I’m a ballllllller. Nevertheless, this bro was getting a quick nine innings in recently as his dog looked on, and I assume that the video game umpire made a call that he didn’t like or the dog couldn’t believe that his owner didn’t swing at that meatball pitch.

Either way, TIMBERRRRRRRRRRRRRR! But a huge tip of the cap to the gentleman for his reflexes, because I love my dog more than anything, but a broken TV? That’s at least a one-week belly rub ban, featuring no cookie bones until a Day 5 parole hearing.

However, and this is a rare case of me considering animal-on-TV violence, if my dog chose to freak out and attack the TV over a real-life bad call, I could probably make exceptions. For instance, if I were a Tampa Bay Rays fan and had been watching this call live…

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If your Monday morning is starting off badly, consider that it could always be worse … you could be this Hooters ball girl, who scooped up a fair ball during Saturday’s Phillies/Rays game and gave it away to a kid in the crowd. Keep perpetuating those stereotypes, Hooters ball girl! (via Holdout Sports)

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Links

That Time The Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling Tried To Hook Up With Donald Trump |The Mandible Claw|

‘SNL’ Recap: Justin Timberlake (And Steve Martin, Jay-Z, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, More) |Warming Glow|

The Best Of The ‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt Working Out’ Photoshop Challenge |UPROXX|

Review: Oz The Great and Powerful |Film Drunk|

Forget Dennis Rodman, Ric Flair Was The Original North Korean Diplomat |With Leather|

5 Ways The Launches Of The Next Playstation And Xbox Will Follow In The Wii U’s Footsteps |Gamma Squad|

Movie Studios See Revenues Increase Since Megaupload Closing, And Other Kim Dotcom News |Smoking Section|

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You wish, Yankees.

With Spring Training here, it’s time for the most important part of any Major League Baseball preseason – checking out what kind of free stuff teams will be giving away this season. Naturally, most major market and successful teams worth a lick will be giving away the standards like t-shirts and hats, but teams that don’t do as well in drawing fans are sort of like fat girls in the bedroom, in that they need to be better at… certain things.

No team knows this better than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who are trying to gain more fan support not only for the sake of making money, but also to secure a new stadium deal. Of course this means that the team would need some pretty sweet freebies for the Rays faithful, and according to Tampa Bay Times beat writer Marc Topkin, Rays fans will be getting only the best this season.

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On Friday, I wrote about how ABC News used ‘Twin Peaks’ character Laura Palmer as an example of the dangers of cheerleading (she was murdered, wrapped in plastic and dumped in a river … but, you know, on television). I thought that was going to be the last time I saw modern sports tied into 90s pop culture, but now we’re doing it in reverse.

Amy Heckerling’s seminal 1995 comedy Clueless was on TV this weekend, and my good friend and Tampa Bay Rays fan Lex Lybrand (of directing me in a feature film fame) noticed something weird. Near the end of the film, when Alicia Silverstone’s Cher and the late Brittany Murphy’s Tai are making up and settling in to watch Breckin Meyer do some l33t 90s skateboarding, Tai is wearing a what appears to be a Tampa Bay Rays polo. In their current colors. No, seriously, look at it.

The problem with that is that the Rays didn’t exist in 1995, and didn’t switch to that font or color scheme until 2008. There’s an easy explanation — it’s a coincidence, and the TB could represent anything. I’m not an encyclopedia of mid-90s clothing brands, and they could’ve just whipped up a random fake brand logo for a long-forgotten polo in a throwaway scene. Better theory: Brittany Murphy is a time-traveler, which explains the Rays gear and why the girls in gym class look so much like the Brooklynettes. It’s bat-shit, sure, but at least in this theory, Brittany Murphy wouldn’t be dead. She’d just be in the future.

Further evidence (and more 1990s Alicia Silverstone) is below.

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Welp, it sure ain’t as exciting as last year’s Wild Card Wednesday, when the St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs on the final day of the MLB and went on to win the World Series. Oh, and something else happened that day with the Tampa Bay Rays winning on a walk-off home run to make the playoffs or something like that, but nobody was even watching that game. Everyone was glued to the Cardinals blowing out the Houston Astros.

Since the Cards clinched the NL’s second wild card spot last night thanks to Mark Ellis and the Los Angeles Dodgers, I guess we can pay just a little attention to the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles tonight, as they could end up in a tie for first place in the AL East. You know, if that’s something that interests you.

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