Usually, I’d wait until Friday for your procrastinatory reading of the week. But seeing as how many of you will be calling in sick tomorrow (coughcough! hackwheeze! sniffle!), let’s get to those links today.

Babes Love Baseball has the new SI cover and it’s….bizarro!

Walkoff Walk has an amazingly destructive Albert Pujols leaving nothing but carnage in his wake. Gaslamp Ball has the pictures.

Home Run Derby has video of CC Sabathia farting. Hey, we try to put in a little something for everyone in these posts.

Bus Leagues Baseball wants you to help come up with a nickname for Jay Bruce. “The Bruise,” anyone?

Call of the Green Monster has breaking news: already-diminutive Sox infielder Dustin Pedroia seems to be shrinking.

River Ave Blues makes a strong case for using instant replay to get home run calls right, on the heels of yet another blown call. Earlier this week it was Delgado. During the 2007 ALCS, it was Manny, with the 390 foot “single.” Who else has to get robbed just so we can preserve the “human element”?

The Hardball Times takes the media to task for dismissing the Bonds/collusion whispers as conspiracy theories. For the record, I’ve also dismissed those whispers. But this post is the first thing I’ve read that has made me think again.

DRaysBay makes the case that Tampa Bay has the best 1-2 punch in the AL East. In case you’re keeping score at home, there’s only a week left of May and the Rays are just two games out of first place.

Joe Posnanski has another curiously long post touching on, in no particular order, Mike Piazza, Yaz, and whether Pedro Martinez’s 9 perfect innings should count as a perfect game. He notes that after he wrote this column, in which he included Pedro on a list of great no-hitter hurlers, he received a number of emails from people (including yours truly) saying, “Hey, wait a minute! that’s not technically a perfect game!” Joe posits that while that is technically true, he considers it a no-hitter, “record books be damned,” since Pedro pitched 9 perfect innings (he gave up a double in the 10th). I kind of like the idea that we can damn the record books and restore a perfect game to Pedro, a great pitcher who never seems to get any real run support. However, I think this is dangerous—for instance, can we say that Varitek has called five no-nos because he actually called for the right pitch in Curt Schilling’s eight-and-two-thirds bid last year? I mean, Tek was sure Shannon Stewart was swinging. He called for the slider. Schilling was equally sure Stewart was taking. He wanted to throw heat. Schilling threw a fastball, Stewart swung, and there went history. (Incidentally, Pedro also shook off Tek in the 9th inning of his no-hit bid in 2000. Tek called for a curveball. Pedro, like Schilling, insisted on throwing the fastball. He gave up a single.) To me, that game in 2007 and Pedro’s games in 1995 and 2000 are just examples of those bittersweet moments in sports where greatness just slips away. As Schilling put it last year, “I get a big ‘what if’ for the rest of my life.” And so does Pedro. But maybe I’m full of crap. What do you guys think?

And finally, if you’ve got the extra coin, you can get a Marlins World Series ring on ebay for the buy-it-now price of $6,250.00.

Oh, and I’m going to shamelessly plug my own Boston Metro column too. It’s weird, I wrote this post on Lester’s no-hitter first, and then decided I wanted to write a Metro column on it too. It’s damn hard to write about the same thing twice and find something new to say!

What else should I be reading? Email me!

Today the Arizona Daily Star has a lovely little feature on Bill Hohn, who has umpired major-league baseball games for 18 seasons and is now rehabbing in Tucson after injuries stalled his career.

From the Daily Star:

In the last two years, he has had three surgeries to repair herniated disks in his lower back and the sciatic nerve in his left hip. Hohn, a 52-year-old native of Butler, Pa., missed most of 2007.

During his comeback, he has spent the last seven days on a rehabilitation stint at Tucson Sidewinders games. He is expected to return to the major leagues Friday in Atlanta.

Hohn’s is a feel good story. But his is a look bad face. Behold:

I don’t know what is going on here. It’s more than a mustache, but less than a Fu Manchu. And apparently this is nothing new:

I suppose he has good reason grow the ’stache. After all, umps need to look tough. If I was an ump, I’d want to look like as much of a hard ass as possible. But somebody needs to tell Hohn that the the secret to a successful Fu Manchu is uniformity. The hairs above the lip and along the sides of the mouth need to be the same length. This party on top (lip) and business on the sides look is not good.

Pay attention, Bill. This is how it’s done:

Ahhh. Now that’s some truly fortunate facial hair.