Rick Vaughn is a folk hero of sorts for anyone who cared about baseball for any amount of time in the 1980s. Charlie Sheen’s character in Major League, known affectionately as “Wild Thing,” came out of prison to serve as the catalyst for the Indians’ rise out of mediocrity.

Of course, all the 103 mph cheddar in Rick Vaughn’s arm won’t do the Indians a lick of good this year as they toil away in Brinson-picked-them-to-be-good-patheticness. However, Indians fans get a brief respite of hope tonight as it’s officially Rick Vaughn Bobblehead Night at Progressive Field. So that’s … something.

The evening is a celebration of the 20th year anniversary of Major League, and honestly, it’s one of the better promotions that any baseball team has pulled off in a while. Of course, the bad news is that it’s made all that much better by the fact that the team stinks — if they were decent, this would just be a blip in the road of a championship season.

Instead, Grady Sizemore is hurt, Travis Hafner had a potential (albeit unlikely) comeback season derailed, Cliff Lee is not pitching like he did last year and Fausto Carmona can’t get right.

And of course, there’s the small matter of the Indians starter tonight: Carl Pavano. Yes, that Carl Pavano. The team, and the city of Cleveland, somehow desperately needs an irony-fueled evening from Carl in which he replicates the pitching of Vaughn in order to make this a true success. Well, either that or Randy Quaid posting up in the outfield and yelling obscenities at Shin-Soo Choo.

The movie adaptation of Watchmen opens tomorrow. The story features dozens of peculiar, fascinating elements, one of which is that of its six primary superheroes, only Dr. Manhattan possesses supernatural powers. And, in fact, Manhattan’s powers are nearly limitless. As the source material puts it, “God exists, and he’s American.”

So who’s the Dr. Manhattan of baseball? To ask another way, which players’ performances are far above and beyond those of his teammates? First, let’s take a look at the hitters.

The values you see here represent the difference between the 2008 adjusted OPS (OPS+)of the player in question, and the next-best OPS+ on the player’s current team. For example, Albert Pujols’ 2008 OPS+ was 190. The second-highest OPS+ performer on the Cardinals (Ryan Ludwick) posted an OPS+ of 150, so the difference is 40. A couple of notes: first, there’s no such thing as a single definitive baseball statistic, but OPS+ is pretty telling of a hitter’s ability. Second, I set the minimum number of at-bats of all parties involved at 400.

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