Bartolo's blast among strange but true feats that make MLB great

— -- So here it is, the last week of December. And you know what I can't get out of my head? Bartolo Colon's home run. Yeah, really. What the heck is wrong with me, anyway?

And then I realize. Nothing is wrong with me. I'm thinking about Bartolo's magical home run because it makes me laugh -- but also because it reminds me of something I never want to forget.

That baseball is awesome. And this totally goofy, totally exhilarating, totally out-of-the-blue home run was one of those OMG moments that sums up the strange but true beauty of this incredible sport.

Every single day, for six months a year, we find ourselves asking: How the hell did that happen? Or: When was the last time that happened? Or: Did you just see what I saw? Or something like that. Well, you know what? Even in December, when we find ourselves halfway through baseball's long, cold, box-score-free offseason, that's something to celebrate.

So what better time to savor those beautiful moments than the final week of 2016, when there is no baseball at all -- other than the awesome memories that get us through the winter? C'mon, raise your champagne glasses as we toast the 100 percent nonfictional wackiness that makes baseball so relentlessly cool.

Bartolo-mania

Here's to Bartolo Colon, the strangest but truest offensive force in all the land. Who out there would have wagered that he'd hit a home run this year before Jason Heyward, Justin Turner, Russell Martin, Nick Markakis or his own catcher, Travis d'Arnaud? But it happened.

Hank Aaron hit his last home run -- No. 755 -- when he was 42 years, 166 days old. Bartolo hit his FIRST home run when he was 42 years, 349 days old. Nobody in history had ever waited until they had logged that many years on earth to hit their first home run. But this guy was pretty much the perfect candidate for that feat, right?

"You could tell it was his first home run," quipped Jimmy Fallon, while bringing this up on an episode of "The Tonight Show," "because at each base, he stopped and asked for directions to the next one."

Bartolo made 65 trips to the plate this year -- and struck out in 40 of them. So how amazing is it that, when he wasn't swinging and missing, he did even more cool stuff. Like becoming the oldest man ever to draw his first walk. He did that on Aug. 15, against Arizona's Robbie Ray. In the 281st plate appearance of his career. Barry Bonds once walked 94 times in a span of 281 plate appearances, if that gives you any idea how hard it is to walk zero times.

Hey, but that wasn't all. On Aug. 26, Bartolo hit a double and a single in back-to-back innings. They call that a multihit game, friends. And you know it had been a while since his last multihit extravaganza, seeing as how the team he did it with the previous time (the 2002 Expos) doesn't even exist anymore. In between those unforgettable Bartolo Colon multihit games, all the other pitchers out there got 982 multihit games. Just thought you should know that.

The zero hero