THANK GOD IT'S RAINING IN CHICAGO...

The late Doug Pappas (possibly due to his legal background...) was the first complier of ejection statistics; while we've never studied them (it's just not the type of baseball minutiae that makes our sanitary socks roll up and down...) we suspect that a preponderance of "heave-ho's"--and their administrative follow-on, the "pay and go away" (in layman's terms, fine and suspension...) devolve on pitchers.

Yordano Ventura: maybe a dose from
Dock Ellis' LSD stash would calm him down...

After all, they've got the ball, and what they do with it has a greater tendency to cause mayhem.

And this year, thus far, that is a verifiable fact. Most of it, thus far, has been happening in the Midwest, where no one has yet legalized marijuana and so have not been either calmed down or turned into zombie-like creatures with insatiable appetites for junk food--and it's been happening a lot with a team that is either bursting with hubris or still shedding the chips on its shoulder.

That would be the KC Royals, whose long-suffering fans include jump-the-shark saber-tooth types, who are apparently so hot right now that they just have to put more, er, "vehemence" into their work.

Led by strapping young hothead Yordano Ventura, the Royals are cutting a swath of disquietude that has more jingle-jangles than the morning in "Mr. Tambourine Man," or the twilight sky in "Eve of Destruction."

We are greatly relieved to report that the rain that began last night in Chicago has mercifully decided to stick around today, which has postponed any further fisticuffs for a little while, at least.

Suspensions handed out from the fracas on Chicago's south side leaned heavily to the boys in powder blue (and why the hell doesn't a team named the Royals play more consistently in royal blue, anyway? It's enough to make you want to quick-pitch someone, ya know??) and, as noted already, to pitchers.

You know, we just might have to investigate those ejection statistics after all...