Here's this little ditty from the normally excellent and completely comprehensible, Bruce Miles:

"You know what? I'd rather win ugly than lose pretty," Piniella restated following the 4-hour, 47-minute game.

[snip]

Once again, the Cubs looked bad in the field, with 3 errors, including another late-inning bobble by second baseman Mark DeRosa.

The Pirates helped to paint a mustache on this one, too, as their pitchers walked 11 batters, with their fielders committing a pair of errors.

Emphasis mine, of course. Honestly, I don't mean to be critical, but I truly don't know what that means. Is it that all things are uglier with a mustache, all things are uglier with paint, or that a painted mustache is the ugliest thing of all? Was it the color of mustache that was problematic, or was it perhaps the style (for example, I could see friendly mutton-chops being an issue)?

It would be one thing if I were a wee bairn new to these fancy talking ways, but I'm getting a little too old to be uninitiated to widely distributed colloquialisms. Please feel free to tell me what I'm missing, and why exactly it makes me stupid.