Saved for Ted Berg being awesome about gendered marketing.

For a lot of athletes, Twitter has been a forum for hazardous indiscretion. Last week, the A's Brandon McCarthy made the best of the social network's 140-character allotment.

After a game in Anaheim, the pitcher tweeted: "They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight. What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend."

Absolutely scary. Have you ever wondered what Dr. James Andrews' office looks like? I've always pictured it like Sid's room in Toy Story -- just a bunch of arms attached to heads attached to shoulders.

The hyperactive Ryan thought of everything on this one, even realizing he shouldn’t trust himself to bring the engagement ring with him to Japan.

“One of the smartest things I ever did was give that thing to Felix [Hernandez],” Ryan said, “because I figured if anybody was going to lose it, he could afford it.”

"I hate the Yankees," said reliever Pedro Beato, speaking as a native New Yorker, not out of any actual animosity for the crosstown rivals. "My family – I can tell there are no Yankees fans.

A few thoughts about Justin Verlander and his two no-hitters and why I think Verlander will throw at least more no-hitter before he's finished.

Holy crap.

Naming a baseball bat is not a new phenomenon. Shoeless Joe Jackson’s beloved Black Betsy sold for $577,610 in 2001, and the fictional Wonder Boy made Roy Hobbs famous. But leave it to a pitcher, the Mets’ R. A. Dickey, to come up with the most creative names of all.

In the Mets’ bat rack at Citi Field, almost every bat includes a sticker with the player’s number on the knob. Not Dickey’s.

His bats have no stickers. He writes his number, 43, in black ink in the middle, with a name curled around it.

One bat is called Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and the other is Hrunting. Dickey, an avid reader, said that Orcrist came from “The Hobbit”; it is the blade Bilbo Baggins uses in the Misty Mountains. Hrunting — the H is silent, Dickey said — came from the epic poem “Beowulf”; it is the sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s mother.

“Just having fun,” said Dickey, whose mystical weapons must be working. His career average entering the weekend was .246, sixth best among active pitchers with at least 60 at-bats.

“If a person gets up and down a couple of times and they have a sad face,” Debus said, “they will get the yo-yo award, which basically means, just shut up and pitch.”

In a quest to satisfy a curiosity that dates to high school, and to raise awareness and money for a charitable cause, Dickey plans to lead a small group up the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, Mount Kilimanjaro.

One of the other teams gets to hand the ball to Roy Halladay, which I guess is basically the ultimate trump card short of handing the ball to Jesus himself, but that team aside, we've got Felix, and Felix gives us an advantage. On his own, Felix gives this team enough of a boost that they can measure up against anyone.

"This," said Dickey Thursday, "after 14 non-guaranteed contracts in spring training."