I first read, in no particular order, every word Ernest Hemingway ever published in book form in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minneapolis, one block behind the Hennepin County Medical Center. I think I had read For Whom the Bell Tolls, before that, but I plowed through it again, though not with the ferocity with which I attacked The Sun Also Rises, which I read in one sleepless night.

Traveling light because of youth and upheaval, I had no furniture save my bed; no car, no television, nothing but my backpack, one bookshelf with the one box of books I took with me for my sophomore year of college and my own crushing depression and chronic insomnia. Nominally, I was a student, and every day I’d walk past the Metrodome to catch the No. 16 bus across the river. I’d sleepwalk through a couple classes, then hike to the other side of campus to the used bookstore. I was cooking in a bar to pay the rent and I’d use the cash tips from the servers to buy a book, cart it with me to the bar, then start it on the bus on the way home. I’d read all night, partially because I couldn’t stop consuming the sharp, short sentences and in part because HCMC emergency room was the default destination hospital for anyone injured without health insurance in the metro area, and the ambulances peeled out, sirens blaring, at a terrifying clip.

It occurs to me now that I took that first discovered Hemingway in that state, but also that I read the man’s entire catalogue without once thinking about how the author’s life ended. Despite being in a fragile state of mind, myself, Hemingway’s suicide never entered my thoughts. It’s easier to be younger; it’s no country for old men.

So, then, what to make of this: as I made timid progress through David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, a collection of short, fictional pieces, I could not stop lingering on the author’s suicide. What to make of one more thing: the book, though brilliant, shook me in places so much I had to put it down. I read two or three other airplane books in between parts of it. The sixth chapter, The Depressed Person, in particular, kept me up for at least two nights.

I picked Wallace because I am a little embarrassed not to have read any of his fiction. And I picked Brief Interviews because it seemed less of a commitment than his seminal novel, Infinite Jest. Don’t misunderstand, either. Brief Interviews is brilliant in places, and you should read it. But it’s not what I’d call pleasurable, either.

Why does Wallace’s suicide come to the forefront in his writing so much, especially in comparison with someone like Hemingway? Part of it is time. Hemingway was long dead and gone before I was born. Wallace writing contemporaneously forces a reader like me to confront my own mortality. Part is frame of mind. I’m older now, and I know people who have killed themselves. But I think the biggest chunk comes from form and style.

Ernest Hemingway famously envisioned a story as an iceberg. The metaphor is apt, especially regarding Hemingway’s own fiction, and it’s seductive. The bulk of the tale remains underwater. It moves with force and power, but the motion is nearly imperceptible on the surface. What’s more, the Story has clean, sharp edges, shines brilliantly in the light and becomes, when it bumps into other parts of this world, an immovable object. That’s powerful shit, and there’s no doubt in my mind I internalized the mythos of story-as-iceberg since the second I read the Hemingway quotation. It does occur to me, now, though: Who wants to write a fucking iceberg?

The author’s job, then, is to decide how much of the story to leave above water, then shave off the sides. The basic goal is to trim everything down to it’s barest necessity, leaving the smallest possible iceberg-shaped hole in the middle of the tale for the reader to fill in herself. There’s really only one possible emotional truth, but it’s written in by each new reader. Take, for instance, my favorite Hemingway short story, “Hills Like White Elephants.” The narrative consists of a dialogue between a couple contemplating abortion – and with it, the end of their relationship. Were DFW to take on this subject, would he leave the word abortion out of it? Not likely. He’d title the piece “Two Briefly Happy Lovers Can’t Bring Themselves To Say Abortion Aloud In A Train Station.”

Wallace comes at things from a thoroughly post-modern perspective, but he’s shooting to outline the same emotional truth. He walks you through the characters’ mental processes better than even they likely understand them, as he does in the series of eponymous sections in the book, which seem to consist of prison interviews with convicted sex offenders determined to explain how their wires got crossed. Then he adds footnotes – oh, fuck, the footnotes – explaining, further, often with an added perspective, other possible motivations, most often ones that undercut the reliability of the narrator. While Hemingway is devoted to one form in pursuit of emotional truth, Wallace shows an absolute commitment to ANY form to get at the same thing. Interviews with the questions removed, true-false pop quizzes, footnotes that run longer than the main narrative, first-person, third-person, he’ll do anything. And perhaps, I think, that shows an immediacy and desperation that brings to the fore the author’s own sad ending.

Perhaps the best and least reflective piece in Brief Interviews is “Forever Overhead,” the first full “story” in the collection. He captures an extended moment, freezing it in time. A boy uses the occasion of his 13^th birthday to take his first plunge off the high dive. Wallace continually downshifts, capturing the moment by slowing it, slowing it, slowing it until he can focus all the reader’s attention on inevitable moment and ask the question – Which is real, the board, the air or the water.

“The clouds are taking on the color of the rim of the sky. The water is spangles off soft blue, five o’clock warm, and the pool’s smell, like the other smell, connects with a chemical haze inside you, an interior dimness that bends light to its own ends, softens the difference between what leaves off and what begins.”

Then, later:

“Forever below is a rough deck, snacks, thin metal music, down where you once used to be; the line is solid and has no reverse gear; and the water, of course, is only soft when you’re inside it. Look down. Now it moves in the sun, full of hard coins of light that shimmer red as they stretch away into a mist that is your own sweet salt. The coins crack into new moons, long shards of light from the hearts of sad stars. The square tank is a cold blue sheet. Cold is just a kind of hard. A kind of blind. You have been taken off guard. Happy Birthday. Did you think it over. Yes and no. Hey kid.

Two black spots, violence, and disappear into a well of time. Height is not the problem. It all changes when you get back down. When you hit, with your weight.

So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?

The lie is that it’s one or the other.”

This is Wallace at his most successful; you’d be hard-pressed to find a better short story written in the last 20 years, to be honest. The language shines, the metaphor, though simple, holds up well – the line for the board as time, the cool blue sheet of adulthood underfoot, the floating air of adolescence. He’s so gifted he makes something deceptively similar into a metaphysical masterpiece. And when he hits you, with his weight, he then simply types, “Hello.” And that’s the end.

Things come apart – intentionally or not – later in the stories. In particular, the piece “Octet” feels like unraveling.

Octet is a series of pop quizzes which begin with number four and do not proceed sequentially. Rather than the typical postmodern quick question, which is designed perfectly so that any answer is plausible and what actually matters is why one answers yes, no or maybe, these questions take themselves apart. By the second example, Wallace undercuts his premise as fast as he can get it down, sometimes before he presents it, in perfect academic cadence. He admits at the end of the second it isn’t a very good question. He takes a second stab at the second question again, and it only gets longer and more convoluted, stretching for pages and pages with footnotes, themselves stretching for pages and pages again.

It’s plausible this was a first draft and Wallace simply left it as an example of a failed chapter. It’s equally plausible it was an intentional chapter, a winding and weird commentary on the futility of deconstructionism and/or academic thinking and writing patterns to arrive at any kind of Truth. Doesn’t matter, really. It becomes the second, whatever Wallace intended.

But I would argue Wallace means more to us when he’s capturing that moment on the high dive. Even if the footnotes and the post-modern forms used to deconstruct post-modernism are what made him famous, he means more to me when he’s taking the risks associated with modernism: This might be wrong. This might be too simple. This might be just jerking off over a simple image. This might suck.

Every writer, every last one, fears this. We’re all cowards. Wallace is so talented, and the temptation to live in the margins, to simply avoid letting anything stand for itself, to hedge, and let his obvious talent be the tiebreaker, the answer to the unanswerable questions, must have been immense. It’s to his enduring credit that he wrote both pieces, but I respect the hell out of him for writing “Forever Overhead.” It’s a story about time and courage, and it took big brass balls to write. And it should stand up, over the years. Forever.

When I read stories such as “Octet,” I remain unsettled; even now, reading it again to write this, I have a hard time getting all the way through. When Wallace hedges everything, I see a mind and a spirit that can’t find relief. I see suffering. And it isn’t pretty, even when the language is. I want to buy him a beer and tell him it’s OK. If it sucks, you can throw it out, and start tomorrow with a clean sheet of paper.

Maybe I am old, and set in my ways. But I think I’ll always prefer that first kind of story, the kind I read all those years ago with the sounds of ambulance sirens in my ears. Hemingway trying to capture the iceberg for all of us, to frame it right, to paint all the lines clean and cold and clear. The reader provided the Truth.

Reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is watching David Foster Wallace try to melt the iceberg – with a flame thrower, a hair dryer, with burning tires and, one imagines, discarded manuscripts held aloft in anger, with a Bic lighter, a match, his hands, his entire body, and finally, finally, with footnotes and dependent clauses and digressions into dark corners, with the heat of his body, with the beating of his own heart.

There’s a kind of Truth there. But I don’t know if it’s mine.

Well, it looks like old Landslide Romney did it again. Eight fucking votes.

It took him four years, somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million and all the SuperPac money a nice Mormon guy can get dropped in his lap like gold plates from heaven, but he finally won the Iowa caucuses, though he stayed within the Duggar Margin of Error. That he won with nearly the same amount of votes as he got in losing badly to Mike Huckabee last time around seems uncharitable to mention. Then again, we’re uncharitable.

Now that the entire Beltway press corps has caught the 6 a.m. flight out of DSM, we’re about to be treated to a round of stories about how Iowa isn’t that important. It’s become the contrarian conventional wisdom to slag Iowa.

But I’d like to take a moment, while all the wags are on a whisper jet somewhere over Indiana, and praise the obscure corn farmers and window salesmen who get our presidential process started.

Sure, Iowa is lily-white, prone to cranky, crazy politics on the right flank and byzantine to an unseemly amount. Stipulated. But, having lived there for a few years, those people take their responsibility in this process seriously. And that’s more than I can say for most of what passes for a political press in this country.

As the effects of the Citizens United decision continue to corrode our elections process, here’s the most important thing about Iowa: You can’t buy it. Hillary Clinton couldn’t buy it four years ago, and Mitt Romney has bid and failed twice, now. Sure, Mittens was the nominal winner this time out, but that was because there were no better options, not because Iowans changed their mind about the man. One of my favorite Iowa stories from the 2008 caucuses came when some imprudent field staffer for Rudy Giuliani managed to piss off a longtime precinct captain. She lived on a farm, if memory serves — and even if she didn’t, it makes for a better story — and St. Rudy of the Rubble, who at the time led the national polls, had to get on a plane and fly from New York to meet with this woman, in her home. He had to sit there and drink her Sanka and apologize profusely. Cause Rudy needed votes, and no one went through this woman’s precinct without talking to her first.

Too much power for an Iowa farmwife? Maybe. Better than starting the process out in a state such as Virginia or Florida, somewhere with a much higher population that can be carpet-bombed from the airwaves into submission? Almost certainly.

As Charles Pierce points out over at Esquire, the Santorum Surge was no great victory for a post-Citizens United world. And Newt Gingrich might yet have his revenge for the flood of negative ads Romney’s money people sent his way. But from what I can tell, none of the other Republicans got past Romney in this caucus for a simple reason — none of them put in the work. Well, Ron Paul’s people probably did. But Ron Paul’s people are crazy. Which is sorta the definition of being a Ron Paul person.

Mitt Romney will trot out an endorsement from John McCain today, repaying a debt that’s been owed since Mittens dropped out the last time. And he’ll win New Hampshire. Then the hellscape that is sure to be South Carolina, where Newt Gingrich should make his last stand, can begin. But this thing is almost sure to be over by Super Tuesday, when Mitt can spread his money out like a drunk frat boy at the titty bar.

Still and all, those fine folks in Iowa have already told the world all it needs to know about this GOP race: Everyone wishes Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry would go back from whence they came. And no one’s really excited about voting for Mitt Romney. Just cause they’re from Iowa doesn’t make ‘em wrong.

1. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace
2. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
3. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace
4. Native Son – Richard Wright
5. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
6. All The King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
7. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America – Christopher Hitchens
8. Hitch-22 – Christopher Hitchens
9. Under The Banner Of Heaven – John Krakauer
10. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
11. The Postmortal – Drew Magary
12. Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History Of Grunge – Mark Yarm
13. Then We Came To The End – Joshua Ferris
14. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
15. Homeland – Sam Lipsyte
16. Saga of Fire and Ice – George R.R. Martin
17. Pulphead – John Jeremiah Sullivan
18. Run With The Horsemen – Ferrol Sams
19. The Visible Man – Chuck Klosterman
20. Keeper of the Moon – Tim McLaurin
21. Just Kids – Patti Smith
22. Empire Falls – Richard Russo
23. Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon
24. Although Of Course You End Up Being Yourself – David Lipsky
25. Contents May Have Shifted – Pam Houston
26. Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby
27. Winter’s Bone – Daniel Woodrell
28. Dear American Airlines – Jonathan Miles
29. Brief Encounters With Che Guevara – Ben Fountain
30. Boss – Mike Royko
31. Killer Angels — Michael Shaara
32. Music for Torching – A.M. Homes
33. What It Was – George Pelecanos
34. Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson
35. The Art Of Fielding – Chad Harbach
36. Arguably – Christopher Hitchens
37. Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
38. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
39. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
40. Underworld – Don DeLilo
41. Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. Everything Is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
44. Nixonland – Rick Perlstein
45. Carter Beats The Devil – Glen David Gold
46. White Teeth – Sadie Smith
47. Sports Guy – Charles P. Pierce
48. The Journey of Crazy Horse – Joseph Marshall III
49. Gilead – Marilynne Robinson
50. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
51. Broken Harbor – Tana French
52. My Soul Is Rested – Howell Raines
53. Every Man Dies Alone – Hans Fallada
54. At-Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
55. USA – John Dos Passos

The Yankees have been at this for years. A big bat comes on the free-agent market. They throw gobs of money at the batter. Then they sign another guy and another guy who will hit .280 with 30 home runs.

Meanwhile, the Yankees starting rotation hobbles along with rent-a-wrecks. Sometimes those aging veterans have a surprising season, as Bartolo Colon was having before he got injured a few weeks ago. Then the postseason comes along and the Yankees get pitched out of the playoffs.

That’s what makes hating the Yankees so fun. With the exception of C.C. Sabbathia, big-name pitchers have not come to New York. Though the Yankees staff is serviceable, it lacks big names that they could have lured from other teams.

For now, it doesn’t matter. The Yankees will bash their way into the playoffs. But look at those ERA standings. The top of it doesn’t explain anything. But the bottom five teams are the Twins, Orioles, Royals, Astros and Cubs. Good teams can win without great pitching. But the worst teams in the league can’t win in spite of bad pitching.

1. Phillies (49-30): Every team faces injury concerns over the course of 162 games. Philadelphia has plenty of concern. Roy Oswalt is out until at least August with a bulging disc in his back. He hasn’t been very good this season, but Oswalt isn’t the only problem. Jose Contreras is out. Closer Ryan Madson is out. Great teams have depth. The Phillies are going to test their depth for the rest of the summer.

2. Red Sox (45-32): An uninspiring week as the Red Sox took the week off and lost series against the Pirates and the Padres. Roll that around in your mouth for a minute.

3. Yankees (45-31): A theoretically more difficult week than rival Boston had was still not exactly a test. New York took care of the Reds and Rockies, winning a pair of series. The Yankees have produced more runs this year than 28 teams. That other team? The Red Sox.

4. Brewers (44-35): The Brewers swept the Twins for the second straight year in Milwaukee. I went to a game last year during that series. Kudos to Brewers fans for not throwing things on my drunken self. But screw Delta. I missed a whole game because Delta canceled my flight out of Detroit and decided to send me to Minneapolis, then back to Milwaukee. I take that back. Delta is fine when flying out of traditional Delta hubs (Atlanta, Salt Lake, Cincinnati) and terrible out of the old Northwest hubs (MSP, Detroit and Memphis). I hate Delta almost as much as I hate American. That’s saying something.

5. Braves (44-35): Jair Jurrjens became the National League’s first 10-game winner and I’m not 100 percent sure how to pronounce his name. I can’t bring myself to watch SportsCenter. Do they sponsor the opening credits now? “SportsCenter, brought to you by Band-Aids.”

6. Giants ( 44-34): It’s fun to watch a championship team hit the “Go” button, as the Giants did this week by winning five straight to take the lead in the NL West. Perhaps the Giants are starting to get healthy, as 13 different players have been on the disabled list thus far.

7. Diamondbacks (43-36): I might be developing a crush on Kirk Gibson, who had this to say about playing the Tigers last week: “It was a special time and we’ll never forget it. But now they’re the enemy.” I’m sure Gibson will be fired two years from now and I’m sure it will be because he will make some guy play on a torn meniscus or something, but it’s a great story for now. Remember how great everybody thought Richard Dent was for the San Francisco 49ers? How’d that work out?

8. Rangers (41-38): If the Rangers get their act together, they can salt away the West title by the end of August. They’ve got the fourth-best run-producing offense in the AL and a middle-of-the-pack ERA. There’s no reason they can’t put together a little run.

9. Tigers (42-36): The Indians are back in first place and all is more or less right in the Central. The Tigers are doing it in spite of atrocious pitching from everybody whose last name doesn’t start with a ‘V’.

10. Rays (44-34): They’ve Yo-Yo’d to a game and a half behind the Red Sox, thanks in part to going 5-1 last week. It helps when you allow four runs or less in five games, it helps even more when you win 14-10 shootouts. Bottom line: Tampa Bay is winning any way it can.

11. Reds (40-39): At some point, Cincinnati could get hot. Manager Dusty Baker knows it. “You got to keep treading water until you start swimming,” Baker said Sunday after Cincinnati’s 7-5 loss to the Baltimore. Fair enough. Teams can hang around in the standings, and in these power rankings, on potential alone. For now.

12. Nationals (40-38): OK, it was the Mariners and the White Sox. Still, Washington swept Seattle and took a series from Chicago. With a new/old manager in Davey Johnson (really?), the Nationals could, at least, make a run at a .500 season.

13. Blue Jays (39-39): I’m not a big fan of relegation. I can’t explain nor defend that position. However, it would be nice to see the Blue Jays find some way out of the AL East. They would have won the AL Central several times in the past 10 years, if they’d traded places with the Tigers. Perhaps the Tigers should spend time rotating with the Blue Jays between divisions.

14. Cardinals (41-38): Swept by the Blue Jays, the Cardinals were shut out twice in the past week. Yeah, they miss Albert Pujols. “You don’t have much margin for error when you don’t have Albert,” Matt Holliday said. You also don’t have a very good team when you don’t have Albert.

15. Angels (39-40): The Angels were a blown save away from a 5-1 week and a very impressive run through interleague play. Maybe they’re starting to wake up.

16. Twins (32-44): Goddamn it. That was my reaction when a friend put something on Facebook about the Twins being 6.5 games out of the lead in the Central. You don’t say shit like that. Sure enough, Minnesota hasn’t won since that status went up. Nice work, numbnuts. The Twins are in danger of becoming the Twinkies again.

17. Mariners (39-39): Pathetic. That pretty well sums up the offense. Granted, pitching is the main thing. But if the Mariners had just a little bit of offense (current batting average: .228) they would be ruling the West. They scored a combined 10 runs in their last five games. Amazingly, they won two of those games.

18. White Sox (38-41): They are a paltry 6-11 against teams in the AL Central. Two things about that: How have they played so few games against division teams? And how have they been so bad?

19. Indians (40-36): They’re shitty.

20. Pirates (39-38): A polite golf clap here.

21. Mets (39-39): Took series from the Rangers and the Athletics to pretend they still care.

22. Rockies (38-39): Isn’t this about the time the Rockies go on a huge run? They’ve only done it every year for the past six years. Teams in the struggling NL West should be very concerned because the Rockies will get their acts together and they will make some kind of move.

24. Orioles (35-40): I hate to rank teams in order of their records but nobody down here has done anything in the past week. So the rankings remain the same.

23. Athletics (35-44): Fact: Mark McGwire could still bat cleanup for the A’s. As in tomorrow. They have the fourth-worst run-producing offense in the majors.

25. Dodgers (35-44): A nice comeback win in the ninth inning against the Angels suggests they haven’t packed it entirely in.

26. Marlins (34-44): A little story about how bad the Marlins are. With a runner on third in Sunday’s game against the Mariners, pitcher Steve Cishek wanted to issue an intentional walk. The score was tied 1-1 in the 10th inning. Only, instead of throwing the ball to his catcher, Cishek unleashed a wild pitch and the Mariners took a 2-1 win.

27. Padres (34-45): That 3.38 team ERA is mighty impressive. The offense, which is scoring around 3.46 runs per game, is not so impressive.

28. Royals (33-45): Took a series from the Cubs. Attaboys.

29. Cubs (31-46): Lost a series to the Royals. Woe is you.

30. Astros (28-51): Fifty wins is starting to look like a goal.

But mostly we do it because we feel it’s important, and because we will never concede defeat to those rat bastards at corporate headquarters.

– Bobby King, President Indianapolis Newspaper Guild, CWA Local 34070, after Gannett laid off 700 people yesterday

The Athletics. The Orioles. The Nationals. The Rockies. The Blue Jays. These are a few of the teams ranked ahead of the Minnesota Twins by a pair of MLB writers in their power rankings, which moved on the wires Saturday.

This is the last time we’ll chat about this. Promise.

Let’s get the knocks against the Twins out of the way right off the bat. They have one of the worst records in baseball. They were very bad for a long period of time. With a pair of big bats (Jim Thome and Justin Morneau) on the disabled list, they don’t have much pop in their lineup.

However, following Sunday’s harrowing 5-4 win over San Diego, Minnesota has won 14 of 16 games. And the Twins have room for improvement. Joe Mauer is hitting .200. That will get better. The pitching staff has the 24th-best ERA in the majors. That, too, will improve. The Twins are a hot team with potential to improve.

I can see you rolling your eyes out there. It was just last week that I talked about the dark art of ranking teams. But this, well, I just don’t understand this. Larry Stone of the Seattle Times ranks Minnesota 24th. Just as bad, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ranks the Twins 12th out of 14 teams in the American League.

Power rankings should reflect where the team is today and how good it could be going forward. If Albert Pujols is injured, as he was Sunday, that should affect St. Louis’ rankings. Moreover, if a three-game series began today between two teams, shouldn’t the rankings reflect who would be favored in that series?

Put shortly: I can read the standings. You gotta come stronger than that.

Let’s take a quiz. You’re a gambler. The Athletics. The Orioles. The Nationals. The Rockies. The Blue Jays. One of those five teams has a three-game set with the Twins coming up. Your life depends on this series. Do you bet against the team that’s won 14 of 16?

Better still, Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, you have the San Francisco Giants ranked fourth. They start a three-game set with the 24th-ranked Twins this week. Would you like to bet a bottle of West Coast beer against some East Coast beer on the outcome?

Life’s hard out there for pimps, cable salesmen and beat writers.

So we really hate to slag someone for the seemingly minor journalistic offense of self-plagiarism. But this was too good — and by good, we mean bad — to pass up.

In case you missed it, the Boston Bruins restored order to the hockey world by winning the Stanley Cup, pounding Vancouver in their own building in Game Seven.  The final score matters, here, so hang with us.

The B’s got a goal in the first and two more in the second to take a commanding 3-0 lead. For a writer or columnist, this is the dream outcome. At 3-0 after two, you start writing. You have the entire second intermission plus the down parts of the third period — and with Boston forechecking one, that was all of the third period — to write. What’s more, Tim Thomas is the MVP. You knew that before the puck dropped. And he’s pitching a shutout. Really, this shit writes itself.

So what did Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy bang out for his readers back home? Glad you asked.

They won it for every New England mom and dad who ever woke up to drive kids to the rink at 6 a.m., and drank hot chocolate while they waited in the cold. They won it for the Revere girls with the big hair and O’Reilly sweaters; or the shot-and-beer guys who pour every dollar of expendable income into the hockey budget. They won it to avenge losing Bobby Orr to Chicago, too many men on the ice in Montreal, free agents never signed, trades that went bad, unspeakable injuries, and Game 7 disappointments.

At first blush, not awful. Up against it, that isn’t bad. We doubt any of the current Bruins, or their fans, were thinking much about free agents that didn’t get signed as they hoisted Lord Stanley, sure. We’d sub coffee, since we’ve never seen a hockey dad — or mom, for that matter — drink hot chocolate, and sure as shit not at 6 a.m. So there’s an Applebee’s salad bar whiff to this, but on balance, it doesn’t, you know, suck.

Except it does.

Here’s Dan Shaughnessy when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004:

They did it for the old folks in Presque Isle, Maine, and White River Junction, Vt. They did it for the baby boomers in North Conway, N.H., and Groton, Mass. They did it for the kids in Central Falls, R.I., and Putnam, Conn.

Now, as journalistic crimes go, this is a misdemeanor. Every writer plagiarizes herself from time to time. And, let’s face it, we rip off other writers, too. With any luck and level of honesty, though, not intentionally or maliciously.

But it still sucks, and here’s why: It shows a massive lack of respect for the reader. And, what’s more, shows a lack of respect for the craft itself. In an age when journalists get laid off every week, the Boston Globe paid Dan Shaughnessy to travel across the continent and add his perspective to their coverage of the Boston hockey team. The least he can do is sit down and bang out an original 1000 words on what happened that night, and maybe where it fits, in his immediate estimation, in the grand scheme of things.

Give us a thousand words on Tim Thomas’ beard. Give us a treatise on how creepy the Sedin twins are. For fuck’s sake, tell us what it smells like in the arena in Vancouver. Give us something.

And Then The Poets Down Here Don’t Write Nothing At All: Jeff MacGregor makes a different but not dissimilar point today after digesting four rounds of the professional sporting press trying to come to grips with Rory McIlroy being really fucking good at golf.

He’s absolutely right. McIlroy being so good brings into relief how bad we are at simply conveying simple goodness. The apparatus that’s constructed for these events, in the physical world and in the heads of the scribblers, cries out for conflict. For drama. And where none exists, the mediator will construct it, and that probably turns people off more than we can imagine.

Rory McIlroy isn’t Tiger Woods and he isn’t Christ reborn from the crucifixion of an awful round at Augusta. He’s a 22-year-old kid from County Down who for four glorious days did what he does better than most people deemed imaginable.

That really ought be enough.

Chalupa Wept: We’ve long held the opinion that newspapers would be better — and sell better, too — if we simply printed the shit we want to print instead of the shit we think we’re supposed to print. Every night, brilliant headlines and ledes and turns of phrase are self-censored in America’s newsrooms because we’re trying to dumb the end product down enough to be palatable to everyone, instead of just writing the best thing we’ve got and letting the chips fall.

This, however, has us reconsidering all of that.

Grow A Mustache, Kid, It’s Embarrassing: In actual baseball news, Mariners uber-prospect Dustin Ackley finally made his debut with the big club over the weekend, homering and tripling in his first two games. Which is good, because someone has to win the AL West, and it won’t be the Rangers if they keep pulling shit like this. Justin Verlander continues to be unhittable, which is nearly ceasing to be news.

The Twins and Nationals can’t seem to lose (much, much more on this later) and the Marlins can’t win. This prompted their manager to fall on his sword, which will lead to an 80-year-old man managing a big league club. We wish we had a joke that was kind and funny at the same time. We don’t. But that’s really old. Go get ‘em, Jack.

Albert Pujols will miss 4-6 weeks with a broken arm. This will, oddly, make Cardinals games more interesting, because we figure Tony La Russa will now attempt to show everyone how brilliant he is by playing 36 different lineups while his star first baseman is out. Call it a hunch.

Soul Engines Locked In A Night So Tender: There was no Song Of The Week debate this week. Go easy, Big Man. Thank you for your songs.

Slop. That’s how I would characterize the MLB standings and these rankings. Only one team, Philadelphia, has better than a two-game lead in its division. Boston leads New York by two in the American League East. Nobody else leads by more than a game.

The Brewers, Braves and Cardinals all have 40 wins. All of them won two games last week. Flip a coin.

1. Phillies (45-28): They were in a holding pattern, these Phillies, as everyone started putting the Red Sox at the top of their rankings. Then, as if to remind us they’re still really good, Philadelphia rolled off seven straight wins, including five this week. In a year of mediocrity — or parity, if you want to put a smiley face on it — the Phillies remain the best team in baseball.

2. Red Sox (43-28): There have been no standings less stable than the AL East. Boston was famously in dead last in mid-April. Now they’re threatening to pull away from the pack. Welcome to the East. One week a team dips, then that same team gets hot and moves up.  The Red Sox show no signs of slowing, though the injury to starting pitcher Clay Buchholz, and his 15-day DL stint, have to be a bit of a concern. Tim Wakefield can only look superhuman for so long before that knuckleball stops knuckling and the back end of the rotation falls apart.

3. Yankees (41-29): Statistical quirk. New York is 11-13 in series-opening games. That means they’re 30-16 in the other games. The Yankees are starting to deal with injuries, including Captain Derek Jeter, that could hamper their pursuit of the Red Sox. True fact: The Yankees employed The Karate Kid’s Pat Morita for years instead of a physical therapist.

4. Brewers (40-33): Sure, they went 2-5, but so did the next three teams in the rankings. At least they showed a sign of life against Boston on Saturday, eking out a 4-2 win that was bookended by blowouts. Bam. Three ‘B’ words in a row. And they said it couldn’t be done. Balderdash.

5. Rangers (38-35): Swept by the Yankees, Texas recovered some pride by taking two of three from the Braves. However, the Mariners are closing fast. You read that right. So, what to do? How about nothing but play the next nine games. That’s six with the Astros and three with the Mets. I like those odds.

6. Braves (40-33): Atlanta’s pitching has far exceeded hopes before this week. The problem is the offense. The Braves scored four or fewer runs in all but one game this past week. During a recent six-game win streak, Atlanta scored more than four runs twice. The Braves’ margin for error is razor thin. P.S. Turner Field is the second-most underrated park in baseball, behind Detroit. Discuss.

7. Cardinals (40-33): Seven straight losses are a concern. Losing Albert Pujols is a bigger concern. The big first baseman injured his left wrist during Sunday’s 5-4 win over the Royals. The Cardinals have been hit harder with key injuries than many good teams, but they need Pujols healthy to win the cluttered Central.

8. Diamondbacks (39-34): I just played a little game called Name an Arizona Diamondback. Um. Mark Grace? I was sure I’d feel silly about this after looking at their roster. No, I don’t feel silly. Sure, I recognize a bunch of names. But I don’t feel bad about forgetting they had J.J. Putz.

9. Giants ( 39-33): Losing four straight should hurt you in power rankings. Getting swept by the Athletics hurts more. I admit it. I still can’t come to grips with the fact that the Giants won the World Series last year. Better them than 43rd’s team, I suppose.

10. Reds (38-35): They scored just four runs in their three-game series with the Blue Jays. That’s backward from the normal problem, as Jay Bruce and Joey Votto normally provide plenty of offense. Cincinnati has four starters with an ERA over 4.00. Perhaps the offense is cooling down now that the pitching is coming around.

11. Tigers (39-33): Just as their series with the Rockies was going down the tubes, enter Justin Verlander. The ace shuts down Colorado. Problem solved. The Twins and White Sox shouldn’t be concerned about catching the Indians. They need to watch out for the Tigers. That’s just good advice, too. Watch out for Tigers.

12. Twins (31-39): Minnesota had five batters in its lineup Sunday hitting .200 or less. One of those was Joe Mauer. This will not last. The 22nd-ranked batting average and 24th-best ERA will improve. More wins will follow the Twins 14-out-of-16 hot streak. The thing is, they’re not *this* good. To be sure, the Twins have top-10 talent. But no team is 14-of-16 good. It’s payback for an awful April and May. I now wish I hadn’t thrown my TV out the window. It took a half an hour to get it off the wall arm. Anybody want a wall arm?

13. Mariners (37-35): A team with a .229 batting average is greatly overachieving. If you’re a big Seattle believer, you could make the argument that the batting average is going to go up, the offense is going to produce more runs to support its solid pitching staff (with a No. 6 ERA of 3.42), and the Mariners will stay at this level and contend for the West. I am not making such an argument.

14. Rays (39-33): Bounced back from getting swept by the Red Sox by sweeping the Marlins. That’s not saying much, but the Rays are still fighting back, which is more than I can say for some teams below them in the rankings. Starting pitching has been the strength, and that doesn’t just go away in the wind. Tampa will be above .500 but I’d be shocked if it catches Boston or New York.

15. Indians (39-31): They get a token bump here, thanks to a 5-2 week. Yeah, we see you over there. Make it two weeks and I’ll bump them into the top 10. Maybe as high as No. 4, given how terrible the top 10 did this week.

16. Nationals (35-37): This week’s big riser, with a 5-1 mark. I had the Nats too low to fully respect their hovering-around-.500 effort this year. Since when is that laudable? Well, these are power rankings, not a lesson in what’s morally right. Move along.

17. White Sox (35-38): The Sox were swept by the Twins. Some games they couldn’t hit. In others, they couldn’t get an out. In any case, they showed their true colors. They’re old and they’re just not that good. That’s in-depth baseball analysis right there.

18. Angels (35-38): The Angels are MLB’s equivalent of the hare. Well, they could be. They’re too talented to be this low, right? Jered Weaver’s ridiculous. They have above-average starting pitching. They have decent batters. I keep waiting for them to decide to start the chase. Fortunately, they’re in the AL West. The chase will only last a week or two.

19. Pirates (35-36): Again, I hate to laud mediocrity, so I’ll laud improvement. Pittsburgh’s pitchers had an ERA of 5.28 last year. That number is currently at 3.52, eighth-best in the majors. It seems likely to go up — this is still the Pirates, no? — but it isn’t as bad as in the past. That’s something.

20. Blue Jays (36-36): Toronto has been the benefactor of good pitching since the early 1990s, when the Blue Jays picked up guys like Roger Clemens and Jack Morris, winning World Series along the way. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when the Blue Jays pitching gets hot, like it did in the last six games, posting a 2.17 ERA. The sad thing is Toronto still managed to lose two of those games.

21. Mets (35-37): Random stat: Jason Bay has gone 24 games without an extra-base hit. You know what happens when I get to the bottom 10 teams? I start throwing out random stats and talking about the time I drove by the team’s stadium.

22. Rockies (35-36): I drove by Coors Field in October of 1999. Actually, I’m pretty sure I walked around the stadium with a buddy of mine. It struck me that it was gigantic, the outside footprint of the stadium. I wonder if there are numbers on that so I can compare it to other major league parks. There are stupider discussions out there. I just tried to read a piece in ESPN The Magazine (Look, I had to ask the in-laws for something for Christmas and I already get SI and Time) by their stat guy. It was unreadable. Something about BWIAP. Brutal. Tell me how big this stadium is. Simple.

23. Athletics (33-40): Have won five straight to make everybody’s favorite little AL West team look like it has some life. I’m not buying it yet. But seriously. Sports Illustrated had five guys who picked the A’s to make the playoffs. Sidenote: SI’s experts were all male, with one minority in their midst. Just throwing that out there.

24. Orioles (32-37): Baltimore dropped six of seven games before picking up a pity win Sunday. Seriously. Who picked these lumps of crap to finish in the wild card? Show of hands. P.S. The same site that picked the Orioles to win the wild card is now openly wondering if they should trade away their talent. Beware Internet journalism. This site excepted.

25. Dodgers (32-41): Chavez Ravine is the one major league park I have not been to that I do NOT want to visit. Yes, that includes Oakland. Sidenote: I’ve been to 15 of the current parks. Dodgers fans are paying for their asshole-ness as the freefall continues. They went 1-5 this week. If it weren’t for Vin Scully and Tommy Lasorda, I would hate everything about this team, for no reason at all.

26. Marlins (32-40): Lost eight games this week and 10 straight. Florida was in the top 10 earlier this season. Remember that? Good times. Good times.

27. Padres (30-43): Racing the Dodgers to the bottom and winning.

28. Royals (31-41): I find it a little crazy that the Royals have the sixth-best batting average in the majors at .262. Of course, there’s no power in those bats, and the pitching is horrid, but nice job on the .262.

29. Cubs (29-42): Another surprise. The Cubs are hitting .265, fourth-best in the majors. They also have a worst-in-the-majors ERA of 4.79.

30. Astros (27-46): And the Astros round out the unholy triumvirate at the bottom. Know what they all have in common? The three worst ERAs in the major leagues. Pitching, people. Pitching.

In a nod to what we’re sure will be Rory McIlroy’s Sunday evening, we’re going to take this opportunity to reproduce the greatest list of all time.

Dan Jenkins’ 10 Stages of Drunkenness

Witty and Charming
Rich and Powerful
Benevolent
Clairvoyant
Fuck Dinner
Patriotic
Crank up the Enola Gay
Witty and Charming, Part II
Invisible
Bulletproof

We don’t even like golf, but we always read what Jenkins writes. Oh, and if you’re on Twitter and you’re not following @danjenkinsgd, what’s the point? You’re missing stuff like this:

At Camp David, 41 pointed out one of the cabins and told me, “That’s where Roosevelt and Churchill planned the D-Day invasion.” History deal

 You can follow us at @nopepperdotnet, while you’re at it.

“In its simplest form, bilateral leg weakness means he had weakness in both legs.”

– Twins GM Bill Smith, if that is in fact his real name, in the Strib, on Mauer’s stint on the DL.

Thanks for clearing that up, Bill.

[H/T to loyal reader Martin]