Some readers have pointed out that I haven’t written about any baseball yet in the blog. So I have punished myself by paraphrasing (homograph-ing?) the title to a Madonna song, and thus, in the infinite reach of the Internet, associated this blog and myself with the single most annoying song from the single most annoying “entertainer” of all time.

I may have punished you, too. If you are at least 35, I apologize for putting that song back in your head.

Now let’s move on to someone more worthy of cultural icon status — Roy Halladay. Wednesday’s perfect game should propel him into the national consciousness, much like Don Larsen became a household name after his 1956 perfect game.

But it won’t. Part of that is baseball’s fault. Baseball messes up promoting its own product in innumerable ways. The most galling is that Bud Selig must have thousands of Internet exterminators surfing the vast expanses of the World Wide Web to eliminate any and all unauthorized footage of anything that took place on a Major League Baseball field, even if it was a catcher adjusting his cup in a 9-0 September game between the Astros and Nationals.

Part of it is Halladay’s fault, too, and he’s probably fine with that.

From all reports, there may not be a more unassuming athlete in sports. He’s not flashy, on or off the mound. I don’t recall him ever even pumping his fist after a big out. He never says anything controversial, never gets accused of head-hunting. He never calls attention to himself, just goes out and does his job. He even has an unoriginal nickname (“Doc”), even though it seems he couldn’t be more opposite than the character Val Kilmer played in “Tombstone.”

It’s really too bad, because Halladay is a great story (for proof, read Tom Verducci’s great story Sports Illustrated from their baseball preview which I would link here if they let us).

The short version is pretty simple — the guy stunk it up with the Blue Jays in 2000 (10.64 ERA in 67.2 innings. That’s Wakefieldian), got demoted to Single-A, listened to his coaches and worked his butt off to get back to the majors in 2001.

A year later, he won 19 games, and he’s been the best pitcher in baseball ever since. And now, after toiling for years with the Blow Jays, he makes his first post-season start and becomes the second pitcher in post-season history to throw no-hitter.

Of course, no dogs died and no women were allegedly assaulted in the making of that story, so the powers that be in the media, led by a certain four-letter network, don’t care.

In true Halladay fashion, he downplayed the historical significance of his no-hitter in the immediate aftermath. He said his primary focus right now is winning a World Series, and it’s hard not to believe a guy who is that earnest on and off the mound.

Ever since the Red Sox were eliminated (I officially bowed out when Hidecki Okajima took the hill in their last Sunday night game with the Yankees), I’ve wondered who I could root for this post-season.

I’ve found my huckleberry.