Moundsman Eric Berger has a mustache.

Let us crush the uprising.

Let us check our chained pocket watch before signing the railroad deed.

Let us agree not to speak of the colonel’s history of ravishment.

Let our wives die in childbirth.

Let our sons succumb to the catarrh.

Let our daughters never be born.

Let us poach buffalo from the dining car.

Let us build, in the town square, a monument to the general on horseback as he watches the slaughter through his opera glasses and from the safety of a far garrisoned hillside.

Let us ponder the imponderable while the minister intones.

Let us perpetrate a mining disaster so as to smother the union.

Let us agree that the issue will be decided by the men in this room.

Let us decide that the mining disaster will be our casus belli.

Let us toast the decision.

Let us be sure that all the pine boxes of dead Christians will fit in the vessel’s hold.

Let us withhold wages from the maid-servant as punishment for her lowliness.

Let us over-murder the mewling settlers.

Let us pass the vicar a clod of dollars in a handshake.

Let us threaten the constable with a glance.

Let us see that those coxcombs and jackanapes, so promiscuous with their complaints, are seen to.

Let us pound the the scroll-top desk upon reading the telegram.

Let us forge the order of execution with a plumed quill.

Let us sip rye alone in the dark as the carved longcase clock strikes.

For moundsman Eric Berger has a mustache.

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(This piece originally appeared at FanGraphs. It has since been revised and made even worse, probably.)