The Marlins and Rays played a "carbon-neutral" game in South Florida this week, with the teams offsetting an estimated 440 metric tons of game-related carbon dioxide by investing in reforestation programs. It was a great promotion, but how green were the two teams really? Off-Base decided to find out by going to the very source of all things green and environmental.

"Let me begin by saying that Max Mercy completely missed the point when I hit that home run at Wrigley Field that shattered the scoreboard clock. His column just focused on my four-homer game and the dramatic end to my slump. But I meant that last home run into the clock as a message that we're running out of time. Our planet is heating up. Our forests are disappearing. Our weather is so haywire that lightning bolts appear in perfectly clear nighttime skies. For the sake of our children and ourselves, we need to change our ways immediately. To save the planet, we must go as green as possible.

"And here's how:

"1. Save the Trees! While I applaud the Marlins and Rays for their carbon offsets, the real key to going green is preservation. For instance, do you know how many bats a major leaguer goes through in a season? One hundred! That's roughly one tree per player every season! Multiply that by the 30 or so position players on the Marlins and Rays rosters, plus all their minor leaguers in the farm system and the other 28 organizations and you can see why Louisville Slugger needs its own forest. But those trees will run out eventually -- sooner than you think. To preserve our forests, I advocate that teams use only bats made exclusively from previously fallen trees, preferably those that were split in half by lightning.

"Furthermore, to strengthen and preserve the wood, the bats should be hand-lathed and stored in a trombone case. If the bats are treated properly like this, a player should go through only one bat in an entire career … or at most two bats, if he lands in the hospital due to being poisoned at a party by his shrewish, two-timing tramp of a girlfriend and his team winds up in a tie for first place and has to play a three-game series to determine the champion.

"2. Turn Out the Lights! Hey, I was no fan of our greedy, treacherous, loathsome former owner, the Judge. But there is one area in which I have to tip my cap to that unethical, scheming, unscrupulous SOB -- he conserved energy by keeping his office lights turned off. Sure, he did it only because he was a cheap, stingy, penny-pinching, selfish, gluttonous bastard, but Mother Nature doesn't care about your motives as long as you're helping the planet.

"But get this -- the Marlins and Rays played their "green" game at night, requiring the use of artificial lights. Good grief! With even Republican presidential candidates coming around on global warming, is there any reason teams still insist on playing so many night games? I mean, aside from increased attendance, fan convenience, popularity and profits? The world needs more day games!

"If teams still insist on night games, at the very least they should change over to the new energy-efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs. They use one-fourth the energy and produce one-quarter of the heat of a standard lightbulb. On the other hand, they don't explode into fireworks when you shatter them with a home run.

"3. All Aboard the Big Train! Tampa is just less than 300 miles from Miami. So how did the "Green" Rays get to the series with the Marlins? They flew! And not only that, they flew by private charter! Do they not know that domestic air travel produces 142 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, or just not care?

"Rail travel is a far more environmentally friendly mode of transportation. Better yet, trains are comfortable, with plenty of legroom and opportunities to walk around and play cards with your teammates. Best of all, you meet the most interesting people on a train (though you should probably use some discretion if you strike up a conversation with a dark-haired beauty whose line of questioning seems just a little odd).

"4. Fill Up With Biofuel for Your Pennant Drive! Whenever we were losing, our manager, Pop Fisher, would complain that he should have been a farmer. If he said it once, he said it a thousand times. Well, I called his bluff one day and suggested that he could do both. He could be a manager AND a farmer. So that's what he did. He started by growing tomatoes in the bullpen and from there he began raising soybeans in foul territory. Pretty soon he had converted the outfield into a cornfield and was producing 180 gallons of ethanol per homestand. Not only that, the fans loved the way our team would take the field by walking out of the cornfield.

"Or am I getting confused with another movie?"

BOXSCORE LINE OF THE WEEK

Jacob in Chicago nominates Carlos Marmol for this staggering line last week: 0 IP, 0 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 HBP. And yes, that's one hell of a performance. It isn't everyday a guy gives up four runs without a hit. Then there was Bronson Arroyo's beauty from Tuesday night: 1 IP, 11 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 WP. Again, very impressive.

But Felix Hernandez had an even rarer line Monday night at Shea Stadium. In an eagerly awaited matchup against fellow Venezuelan Johan Santana, Hernandez came up to the plate in the second inning with the bases loaded --- and hit a grand slam against one of the best pitchers in the game. How rare was that? It was the first grand slam hit by an American League pitcher since the inception of the DH and the first in 37 years. It was also the first grand slam by a Seattle pitcher since Fred Talbot did it for the old Seattle Pilots in 1969 during a Home Run for the Money promotion, as recounted in the July 9 entry from Jim Bouton's "Ball Four":

"Fred Talbot hit a home run with the bases loaded tonight. And thus a man named Donald Dubois who lives in Gladstone, Oregon, won $27,500. The applause in the stands had not yet died down when it was decided in the bullpen that tomorrow morning Fred Talbot would receive a telegram from Donald Dubois of Gladstone, Oregon, thanking him for his Herculean efforts and telling him that a check for $5,000 was in the mail as a token of esteem and friendship. Since the telegram was my idea, I had to send it. We agreed that my identity would be revealed only under penalty of death." In an inspired move, Bouton purposely misspelled Talbot's name, which convinced the pitcher it wasn't a gag because "if one of you guys had done it, he wouldn't have misspelled my name."

Anyway, given that Hernandez has as many home runs and more RBIs than Seattle DH Jose Vidro in the past two weeks, the Mariners might want to consider letting Felix bat for himself in the future.

Hernandez's line: 1 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 4 RBI

Of course, Seattle's season being the way it is, Hernandez twisted his ankle covering home plate in the fifth inning and didn't qualify for the win. He's also questionable for his next start.

(By the way, we absolutely refuse to call Hernandez "King Felix" until he, like, wins 15 games in a season or is more than one game above .500 this year, or more than six games above .500 for his career.

(Oh, and according to Bouton, Fred Talbot never received a dime from Donald Dubois of Gladstone, Oregon.)

TELL YOUR STATISTICS TO SHUT UP

• Sadly, George Carlin passed away over the weekend. We'll miss his humor, his candor and his viewpoint on life and the government. Fortunately, we'll always have this, which belongs in the pantheon of baseball alongside Abbot and Costello's "Who's On First" routine and Tom Hanks' "There's No Crying in Baseball" speech.

• Recently we mentioned the two women in Seattle who were told to stop kissing at a Mariners game. This week we call your attention to a very funny David Segal column in the Washington Post about a couple men who were told to put their shirts back on at a Nationals game in Washington. Now, we don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with taking off a shirt at a ballgame or that anyone is particularly harmed by such a fashion statement. And we have no idea what these guys look like or have any information about their body-fat ratios. But we favor the Nationals policy. Offhand, as a general rule of thumb, it's hard to think of a situation where you've been at a ballgame and seen a guy with a beer and thought, "You know, I wish he would take his shirt off."

• You would think the American Film Institute would eventually run out of lists (then again, the AFI probably thinks the same of ESPN.com) but no, it just came out with the Top 10 Movies within 10 genres, including sports movies. An intriguing idea (hey, it got us to look). "Raging Bull" is No. 1. Certainly no problem there -- "Raging Bull" is a great movie. And "Rocky" is No. 2. Again, another great movie. But No. 3 is "The Pride of the Yankees," two spots ahead of the only other baseball movie to make the list, "Bull Durham" ("Field of Dreams" makes the list in the fantasy genre). Did these people actually watch "The Pride of the Yankees" in the past 40 years? Even as a fan of Gary Cooper and Lou Gehrig, and such a sentimentalist that I get weepy over the ballroom scene from "Beauty and Beast," I can't get through an entire showing of "The Pride of the Yankees." The movie is loaded with enough saccharinity that the Surgeon General has determined its viewing a leading cause of Diabetes II. And to say it's better than "Bull Durham"? And to leave "A League of Their Own" off entirely? Infuriating. To those who disagree on "Pride," I have only this to say: Defend the Tanglefoot scene.

• Football fans always point to the NFL's enormous revenues to claim their sport is the nation's most popular. But Mariners president Chuck Armstrong says baseball may match or exceed the NFL in revenue this year depending on how the postseason goes. Among everything else, he said that one boost is the All-Star Game being played in New York. "They don't expect the ratings to go up, but because they're playing the game in Yankee Stadium the advertisers are paying higher rates than they would in, say, Minnesota."

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.