Where the Diamondbacks do show their age, though, is in the clubhouse before games. Upton and Young bump along to YouTube hip-hop videos they watch on a Mac laptop; ace Brandon Webb and reliever Brandon Medders strum acoustic guitar duets as their teammates engage in a game they've christened Frisbee baseball, in which one player flings an Aerobie at another, who tries to hit it with a bat. Players rush in from batting practice to resume heated games of Connect Four. Byrnes vies with Jackson and Reynolds in a daily Jeopardy! contest in the adjacent TV room.

The players are so irreverent that last season they huddled around a TV cackling at Jackass: The Movie minutes before the majority of them were to play for the first time at Yankee Stadium. Starting pitcher Micah Owings was spotted flying a kite in the Dodgers Stadium outfield hours before a game two weeks ago.