Here we go. First, a couple from the inbox.

Josh writes:

You mention in today’s post that you recently ordered a Cheesy Gordita Crunch with Flamin’ Hot Doritos Taco inside – this leads me to wonder:  is Taco Bell’s original Double Decker Taco their greatest ever food innovation?  (Per the Wiki, the Double Decker Taco dates back to 1995 and was, as far as I know, the first time they offered an item with a hard shell taco inside a less fragile soft shell of any kind.)

So, it depends on how you look at it. Many credit Taco Bell founder Glen Bell with the invention of the pre-formed hard-shell taco, but it turns out pre-formed hard-shell tacos existed long before Glen Bell entered the Mexican-inspired American fast food game, and that he may have just totally ripped off the idea and claimed it as his own.

But there’s little doubt that Taco Bell played a huge role in the dissemination and proliferation of the pre-formed hard-shell taco. The logical parallel here is Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley absolutely did not invent rock and roll, but for better or worse, he was responsible for a whole lot of people finding out about it for the first time.

So if you want to credit Taco Bell for the pre-formed hard-shell taco, it’s impossible to argue that the Double Decker Taco is a bigger innovation — it wouldn’t be possible or necessary without the crunchy taco inside. But failing that, yeah, I think shoving a crunchy tortilla inside of a soft one is probably the best and most important of many incredible gifts Taco Bell has provided us. Once upon a time, there was no way to eat a crunchy taco while driving. Then someone came up with one, and they used it as a way to put Shaq and Hakeem Olajuwon on a tandem bike for the commercial.

The Double Decker Taco is not currently on menus, a great shame. But the Cheesy Gordita Crunch obviously stands on the shoulders of that giant.

Via email, Steven writes:

Where do you stand on the DH in the National League? I like the idea that I can watch more older, limited players hit and my Mets have a handful of candidates.

This is the mildest take: I like the DH rules as they currently exist, even though they make no sense. It’s fun to me that there’s this slight difference between the leagues, and though I think it does give AL teams a mild advantage in interleague and postseason play, it’s clearly not an insurmountable one. Some pitchers hate hitting, but others love it, and at so many levels below the professional ones, the best pitchers tend to be the best hitters on their teams.

But the universal DH is pretty clearly coming. Pitching is so difficult and requires so much preparation that it makes sense to protect pitchers from the batter’s box and basepaths, the union loves it because it helps prolong veteran players’ careers (and the union is always kinder to and more protective of veterans than young players), and I suspect in 25 years, no one will miss the era of pitchers hitting.

A good argument I’ve seen in favor of the universal DH is this one: It gives AL teams more flexibility in free agency than NL teams have. If an NL team thinks a guy only has a couple years left of being a capable defensive player, it’s going to be reluctant to ink him to a four- or five-year deal. AL teams get the comfort of knowing they’ll be able to find use for him as long as he can still hit, and a means of periodically resting his legs while he’s still regularly playing the field.

I thought about this one at great length and concluded that, in pretty much all cases, I’d rather have quality fillings over quality bread. And I don’t mean to diminish bread’s importance in the quality of a sandwich, at all. Bread is important and good!

But how many times in your life have you had bread that you’d truly call bad? If the bread is fresh, it’s fine even if it’s bland. There’s a lot of truly gross stuff one might put inside a sandwich, but not that many truly gross things you could build a sandwich on. Perhaps nothing turns my stomach as reliably as the thought of slimy old lunchmeat, but bread that’s a day or two too old is just unpleasantly dry.

I’ve had sandwiches with great bread and underwhelming filling, and I’m rarely convinced they’re an upgrade over bread alone. What is this, France? Get out of here with that single-slice-of-ham nonsense. Meanwhile, several of the sandwiches I’ve presented here in the past few weeks have featured quality fillings and sub-standard bread, and most of them were really good.

Oh, here’s a nice little minefield!

It’s very hard to imagine Jesus being any good at baseball, miracles notwithstanding. Unless Judea had some sports I’m not aware of, I doubt He ever did much overhand throwing in his youth, and people who did not grow up with that motion tend to be pretty terrible at it in adulthood. Also, I’m not sure Jesus ever said anything to suggest he had the type of competitive drive necessary to excel in sports. Right? Blessed are the meek, but they bat ninth.

The obvious answer here is that Jesus should be your head trainer. Anyone who can cure leprosy with his hands could presumably work wonders on a UCL.

Jason Statham, obviously. No shame in dying by Statham’s hand or drop-kick.

I have no idea what’ll happen, but I thought the idea of splitting teams into Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues for one year made sense. It would suck for the handful of teams that still have lousy spring training facilities, but every team would at least have its own facility, and — as I mentioned last time it came up — lots of players have homes near their club’s spring training bases.

But obviously every proposal is pointless until we know they can pull one of them off safely. Baseball rules and I miss it very much, but baseball is a frivolity and not worth risking lives for. This whole Q&A is fraught with complicated topics and I’m not trying to start fights online when I know my kid will wake up and command my full attention in 45 minutes.

It’s obviously trampoline. I want to dunk. And I know you’re about to tell me about all the potential drawbacks and dangers in having every surface I step on magically transform into a trampoline, but did drawbacks and dangers stop King Midas? I’m going to dunk, folks.