Yesterday, we shared with you the news that beloved (cough) Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has parted ways with the organization because he couldn’t fly to Spain on their dime and wanted a bigger boat. In the Bard’s own words, by way of the Chicago Sun-Times:

“If I leave here, I will say, ‘I leave here because I want to make my [bleeping] money,’ ” he said. “You know why? Because no [bleeping] fans, no [bleeping] Jerry or [bleeping] anybody is going to take care of my grandkids and put me in a 62-foot boat. That’s why there’s free agency.’’

The Dugout has been on a brief hiatus while I was away on vacation and/or readjusting to the rigors of going to work every day in my underwear, so please enjoy this super-sized edition featuring the entire Ozzie Guillen saga, from his announcement of free agency to his Floridian journey and all the way back to Chicago, where the managers flow like wine. If you get concerned about the accents as you read, please remember how Ozzie Guillen actually sounds, and consider that I did him a favor.

The strip will be back in our regular rotation again from here on out (because baseball season being over is the best time for Dugouts, because I’m not watching baseball and things are actually happening) so be sure to like us on Facebook to keep up with the stories and drop us a comment either here or there. We’d also appreciate feedback in the form of 62-foot boats.

Today’s Dugout follows.

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So, it turns out Chicago White Sox slugger Adam Dunn is one of those people who starts a random game with me in Words With Friends and resigns with 77 letters left when I spell “taciturn.”

Via CSN/Chicago:

It was Adam Dunn, who recently returned to the game after being disillusioned playing a former teammate who was clearly cheating (how could Dunn tell? “Because this guy is, no other way to put it, dumb”)…

“I was up at 3 a.m., racking my brain trying to figure out a play, and I hit a huge word, 72 points,” Dunn said. “He came right back with ‘Pleiades.’ What the hell is ‘Pleiades?’ Someone plays ‘Pleiades’ on me, I’ll punch him in the throat.”

I learned it from Final Fantasy, you jerk! And Pleiades is a star cluster. You can’t punch somebody in the throat for knowing a word used in a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I play a lot of Words With Friends (user name Destinys2ndkid, if you want to play) and I’ve come to terms with a few things about it.

1. If you’re cheating, you shouldn’t even be playing. This isn’t NBA Jam, where you put in a cheat code and get to be Bill Clinton. Playing with your brain is the only reason to even be playing this, and anything else is like copying homework you aren’t turning in.

2. Sometimes those stupid words aren’t cheating. For example, I know what “Pleiades” is. I’m an average blogger on the Internet. I also paid attention in school. Not all of us make money showing people what Toby Keith would look like if he struck out 700 times a season.

You can learn a lot of words you don’t know (or words that aren’t words, but count in the game) by playing a lot. For example, I use “za” and “xi” all the time, but other than “an a-bro-viation for pizza” and “a Chinese person’s name” I don’t know what they mean. I just saw someone use the word “noily,” and cheating or not, I now know “noily” is a word and can use it. See how that works? Don’t punch me in the throat.

3. I wonder if Dunn gets upset waiting days for Ozzie Guillen properly spell “remember.”

[h/t Productive Outs]

The Washington Nationals are quickly becoming the “other team” in major league baseball for me. Sure, I have the team I grew up with, and I’ll always love that team. But then I look across the room and I see the Nationals doing all these debaucherous things and think to myself, I gotta get with THAT team. It’s been no secret that the Nationals, with their impressive array of power hitting and equally impressive dearth of suitable pitching, are becoming a sports darling on this site. I would help it if I could.

Anyway, the Nats are chock full of rejects, closet cases, and baseball miscreants, but for my money, no one personifies this band of fuggups better than ex-Red Adam Dunn, aka The White Manny Ramirez. And that means exactly what it sounds like it means. With one significant exception: Adam Dunn either hits a home run or strikes out, generally speaking. More often striking out:

ASYLUM POLL: How many strikeouts is excusable for a slugger?

In 2004, [Dunn, playing for the Cincinnati Reds,] walked 108 times, but struck out 195 times. Of those, 72 were called third strikes, which means he struck out more times looking that season than Williams struck out — looking or swinging — in any season.

Dunn’s strikeouts–or rather, his teams’ tolerance of them–are indicative of a growing trend in baseball. ESPN points out that 90 players struck out 100 times last year, almost triple the number that did so in 1990.

“[In today's game,] you’ll see three pitchers in the seventh, eighth and ninth inning — and most of them are throwing 95 mph,” Dunn said. “For every crucial at-bat I’ll take late in a game, I’ll always be facing the toughest lefty on the other team. That’s why the strikeout rate is up.”

Or it might be because you have the most nauseating at-bat music in the history of the game. Phil Collins? Really? Why not something more upbeat? Like Pachebel’s Canon? Or the sound of puppies sleeping? Whatever gets you in the zone, Adam. You only have 82 strikeouts on the year so far. Better pick up the pace.