Hey everybody, there’s a party in Brian Wilson’s beard and you’re invited! To continue, please click anywhere on Brian’s beard and watch a short video that asks, “do you realize ninjas?”

When you’re done there, turn your television over to Showtime, where “The Franchise” follows the San Francisco Giants in the 2010-2011 offseason as they come to terms with winning baseball’s richest prize and having to listen to this guy talk for more than a minute and a half.

Unable to handle my reaction to Brian Wilson’s comedy, I stranged myself to death and sold this Dugout as ad space for the upcoming “Franchise” season. Today’s Dugout follows, but I’m not responsible for any of it.

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The mistreatment of the planet by human beings is going to cause a mass extinction like the one that killed the dinosaurs, and it all starts with this Lehigh Valley IronPigs player hitting a foul ball into the neck of the Phillie Phanatic and sending him to the hospital. The incident happened during the top of the third in last night’s “World Famous Phillie Phanatic Appearance” at Coca-Cola park, and was followed by an ominous IronPigs tweet: “The Phanatic will not perform again tonight as a precautionary measure after being hit by a foul ball.” Of course, being blasted in the neck didn’t completely end the Phanatic’s performance, as he sold it like a champ before disappearing into the ether of Allentown’s healthcare system.

The Morning Call featured a statement about the incident from the Phillie Phanatic’s Best Friend Tom Burgoyne, but I’m not going to directly link to them because they don’t seem to know how mascots work. The Phanatic is an extremely old bird, not a middle-aged man in a costume. Come on, guys, tighten up.

“The Phanatic is fine,” Burgoyne, 45, wrote this morning on his Facebook page. “He took one off the neck last night at the Iron Pigs game. Since we’re sooo close, I felt his pain and have a nice golf ball-sized knot just above my eye.

In true Phanatic fashion, Burgoyne added: “Bring on the A’s this weekend. “The Phanatic will be ready.”

Maybe this is karma for stomping a Mets hat on Japanese television. Haha, who am I kidding, the Mets aren’t good enough to have karma.

In a related story, Mr. Met fell down a flight of steps and nobody notice for like, two weeks.

[video via NBC Philly, h/t to Mike Westfall]

Three really cool things about this year’s AL Central:

1. It is Tribe Time Now™
2. The Minnesota Twins are hilariously pathetic and in last place.
3. Every good Twins player is hurt, so Jim Thome gets to be their big star.

The worst thing about the AL Central this year is how every week there is a post on every sports blog titled “Are the Cleveland Indians for real?” Are they real? Can the Indians be physically real? Do they exist? What is the nature of our existence? What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets! Yes, the Indians are real, and you should probably stop writing about it. Right now they’re 14 games over .500, and while that could go in any direction (as there is a lot of season to go), you don’t do that by being a flukey anomaly.

Anyway, here’s some more about the Twins sucking!

Sports

Terrible Twins mean it’s Thome Time - Here is some more about the Twins sucking, and how wonderful Jim Thome is. I already knew those things, Yahoo Sports. Maybe next time the Twins will build a stadium that isn’t just Progressive Field plus freezing! [Big League Stew]

13-Year Old Sinks Awesome Bicycle Kick - I thought this was going to be a Mortal Kombat-style MMA thing featuring weenagers, but it’s soccer. It’s still awesome, though, and I wish my goofy body could’ve pulled off something this effective at any point during my life. I remember 13-year old soccer as a sad mix of being winded and getting my legs kicked. [BroBible]

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Back in April, the New York Times did a story about Mets knuckleballer/lobber R.A. Dickey and his unusually named bats, and while having a bat named after The Hobbit is pretty amazing, it’s nowhere near as amazing as the retraction at the bottom.

Correction: May 8, 2011

An item in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in “The Hobbit”; Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins’s sword was called Sting.)

I love living in a world where this is not only factual information about sports, but in need of such a hyper-specific, nerdy retraction. To enjoy today’s Dugout, please remember that R.A. Dickey owns a bunch of bats with Dwight Schrute names and that for a large period of my life I was very lonely and read a lot of books. Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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