Larry, Larry, quite contrary: Hows does your season go?

It'd be a safe bet to say the author does not have his priorities in order. How else could you explain the frighteningly intense desire burning inside him to see Chipper Jones hit .400? Besides for having access to TBS for 23 years of his life, fashioning a paper tomahawk during the 1992 World Series and driving through the traffic disaster that is Atlanta, there's virtually no connection to our brave Brave. For the record, the author pleads ignorance on the tomahawk chop thing. He was eight and thought it was a different version of the rally cap.

Maybe it's because batting average, despite what sabermetrics and Billy Beane say, is still the barometer used to determine who can hit and who should sit. It's in box scores. Every at-bat is accompanied with an up-to-the-minute update on what the hitter's average is. "Player X isn't even hitting his weight" remains one of the most tried-and-true mixed-company stats joke an American boy can use.

You seen grainy footage of Ted Williams' 1941 season and you hear the great story about how he didn't take the easy way out and part of you wants to see a guy take a serious run at it. Chipper Jones was not the guy we expected to be hitting .394 at this point of the season. The pre-season money was on this guy. Or even him. But Chipper is hitting the cover of the ball, and the ball after that and repeating it about, oh if i I had to guess --39.4 percent of the time this year.

There's been .400 teases before. Most notably, this angry man hit .390 in 1980, this jolly (how come he never got a cool nickname) was hitting .394 when greed stopped the 1994 campaign and this Robinson Cano-precursor hit .383 in 1977. And the consensus first calendar day we can think seriously about Jones completing this task, from a sampling of three people the author approached on this, seams to be the end of August. By then he may have faded all the way down to the .320 level. And this post will seem even lamer than it does now.

What do you think? Are you chipper for Chipper? Are you jonesin' for Jones to do it? Or do you simply not care? The author suspects the frozen head of one man may have a rooting interest.

Baseball blotter

The author assumes a lot of golf was played by large, athletic men on Monday. With just five games on the Major League Baseball docket, there was lots of down time for your favorite players to wager more money than you're going to make today per hole. What the schedule lacked in quantity, it desperately tried to make up for in quality pitching match-ups.

Haren tops Beckett in Beantown

Oft-scruffy Dan Haren wove a gem in the what has to be the city at the forefront of the Titletown contest. The Snakes' strarter threw seven innings of two-hit ball to best the Red Sox' Josh Beckett in a 2-1 win. But don't feel bad for Josh. He's done alright for himself.

Braves can't hit Sheets

It's never been more exciting to be an athlete in Wisconsin. For the first time in 16 years they have a chance to be the state's favorite son. That is unless this man comes back. The Milwaukee Brewers' Ben Sheets made a strong case to have his poster on a kid's wall by retiring the final 16 Atlanta Braves hitters en route to a 4-1 victory. Sheets improved his record to 9-1.

Who needs a DH?

Felix Hernandez really taught us about the heights and depths of human emotion in less than an hour during Seattle's 5-2 win over the New York Mets. He blasted the first grand slam hit by an American League pitcher in 37 years, but then left the game with an ankle injury after a collision at home plate. Things just aren't going well out there, are they?