Three questions about the video above:

1. Is Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, haunted?

2. Is Daniel Murphy, the New York Mets hitter whose bat that came off, a wizard with ball-disappearing powers?

3. Does MLB have a new strategic partnership with "Ghost Adventures" to come out and investigate baseballs vanishing?

No to all three? Oh. Well then. I guess we'll have to go with the boring explanation: Murphy's line drive to right field in Thursday's Mets-Cards game flew through a small gap between two pieces of the outfield wall.

(Getty Images)NBC's "The Office" ends its nine-season run on Thursday night and — we'll be completely honest here — it's a couple years overdue.

Nonetheless, around the web right now people are counting off the best episodes and lessons we've learned from this popular comedy about 9-to-5 life. In the sports world, there's one very obvious tie-in: Ryan Howard.

Being a baseball blog, most of our readers associate that name with the Philadelphia Phillies slugger. But Ryan Howard was an "Office" character played by B.J. Novak (also a co-writer for the show) who rose from a temp to a corporate vice president and fell back down the corporate ladder. Howard, the baseball-playing one, actually appeared on "The Office" recently, a bucket-list cameo for a show approaching its end.

It's been said the Ryan Howard character was named after baseball player, since the show takes place in Scranton, Penn. When it was being conceived, Howard was playing for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. So, in honor of "The Office's" series finale, here's a look at Ryan Howard, the baseball player vs. Ryan Howard, the office worker:

Justin Verlander will oppose Yu Darvish on Thursday in a much-anticipated pitching matchup — the perennial Cy Young candidate vs. the second-year strikeout phenom.

But only one of them is on the "Nasty Nine" list put together by Yahoo! Sports. It narrows down the nine pitchers in the MLB this season who have pitched at least 50 innings and have sub-2.00 ERAs. (Click through the slideshow above to see them all).

As nasty as Darvish has been this season — 6-1 with a league-leading 80 strikeouts, but a 2.73 ERA — it's not him on the list. That should tell you something about this "Nasty Nine" designation.

(Getty)

Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno took responsibility Wednesday for his team achieving so little the past three-plus seasons, including its 15-25 record this season. That means the jobs of manager Mike Scioscia and GM Jerry Dipoto are safe.

Moreno told Fox Sports there was "zero" chance of an in-season managerial change with Scioscia, who has managed the Angels for 14 seasons and has a contract through 2018. Dipoto has been GM for a year-and-a-half and, besides, it was Moreno who was the point man on the additions of Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, who cost a combined $375 million over the past two offseasons. And it was Moreno's decision to let Zack Greinke and Torii Hunter walk.

"There are a lot of underlying things we need to fix and adjust in the organization.”

The first order of business might be to let the baseball people build the roster. Still, it's encouraging to hear an owner pull a mea culpa, instead of lashing out with mass firings:

(MILB)When Houston Astros president/CEO George Postolos resigned on Monday, there was some speculation that the team might try to woo Nolan Ryan, who played eight seasons in Houston. Nolan is the CEO and co-owner of the Texas Rangers, though his recent tenure has been a bit rocky. Could it happen? Some Astros fans were hopeful.

Turns out the Astros got a Ryan to be their new president, but it's not Nolan. It's his son, Reid Ryan.

MLB.com's Brian McTaggart is reporting that Reid Ryan will be introduced by the Astros at a Friday press conference. So the intrastate Astros-Rangers rivalry has another new wrinkle (besides both teams now being in the AL West): It's Ryan vs. Ryan, father vs. son.

Reid Ryan, 41, has a baseball-heavy resume: He was president/CEO of Ryan-Sanders Baseball, which owns the Triple-A Round Rock Express (Rangers affiliate) and Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks (Astros). He also served on the board of trustees for Minor League Baseball.

(Millersville Athletics)

It's probably the best save seven players on the Millersville (Pa.) University baseball team could possibly make.

Earlier this month, Millersville's team had arrived late one night for a tournament at Johnstown, Pa., and some of the players got hungry for a snack. On their way to a Sheetz convenience store, they came upon an upsetting scene. But the players — (clockwise from top-left in photo) Tyler Thomas, David Pine, Evan King, Dan Stoltzfus, Tyler Orris, Zach Stone and Tyler McDonald — kept their heads.

A car had hastily turned into a driveway ahead. The players heard screaming. A man held in his arms a young child, who had gone limp. He passed the boy to a woman, who laid him down on the ground. The couple appeared to be in a panic. The man yelled, "My son is choking! He's having a seizure! Somebody help!"

The players quickly approached. From Lancaster Online:

Every baseball city should have a broadcaster like Fred White. He had a 40-year association with the Kansas City Royals, calling their games on the radio with Denny Matthews from 1973 to 1998, and was at the mic for most of the greatest moments in franchise history. White died Wednesday at the age of 76 from complications of melanoma, but his voice is preserved in the memories of Royals fans and in recordings anyone still can listen to.

The Kansas City Star's Bob Dutton wrote a touching obituary for White that's worth reading even if you haven't followed the Royals, and Fox Sports Kansas City made an inspired choice by starting their broadcast of K.C.'s game against the Angels with a half-inning of silence to honor White's passing. It's a beautiful and powerful few moments (condensed to about 90 seconds in the video highlight) when listeners only hear the ambient noise of the ballpark. And it's even more emotional when you realize that Royals broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre (who introduces the silence) was the person who replaced White on radio broadcasts in '98 (a move that was widely unpopular at the time).

Among White's finest moments: Well, anything to do with George Brett. Calling his home run that help beat the Yankees and get the Royals to the World Series in 1980. And saying of the Royals before Game 7 of the 1985 World Series: "This improbable little team, doing improbable little things, now has pushed this thing to the brink."

And then there's the resumption of the "Pine Tar" game with Brett and the Yankees in 1983, when White hysterically described the defensive alignment a defiant Billy Martin fields for the ninth inning:

(AP)You know the speech we’re talking about. It happened prior to the Boston Red Sox April 20 game against the Kansas City Royals, which was their first game at Fenway Park following the tragic events at the Boston Marathon and the subsequent manhunt that paralyzed the city for nearly 24 hours. We also know you remember the powerful (and colorful) words longtime Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz used to punctuate his heartfelt message on that highly emotional day.

Within minutes of the speech, Ortiz's phrase "This is our f***ing city" was the most talked about topic on social media, and within 24 hours it was already being attached to t-shirts with several companies looking to raise money for those affected by the Patriot Day bombings.

Needless to say, it caught on faster than a "Stone Cold" Steve Austin catchphrase in the late 90s, and now Ortiz himself is going one step further by selling actual bats emblazoned with his famous quotes over at a bigpapi.com.

And, once again, all net proceeds will go to the victims of those horrific events.