He learned from the best.

In baseball news you expect, but never really expect:

Ozzie Guillen is expected to become the Marlins’ new manager in exchange for infielder Osvaldo Martinez and a minor-league player, MLB.com reports.

Guillen was let out of his contract with the Chicago White Sox after Monday night’s game. Being let out of his contract meant Guillen was technically free to negotiate with any team, but the club had arranged a deal with the Marlins should they want to bring Ozzie down, and they do. So ends a managing stint that touched every color of the baseball success spectrum, from the blinding violet of a 2005 World Series Championship to the deep, depressing reds of having to deal with the dumb sh*t the Guillen family posts on Twitter.

In case you thought this story seemed too much like professionals deciding to part ways, the Chicago Sun-Times helpfully notes that Guillen asked out of his contract so he could buy a boat. A bleeping boat.

“You know what I saw a couple days ago?’’ he said. “I saw a 62-foot boat. That’s what I want, and that’s what I’m going to get. People have to pay me for that. White Sox? I don’t know. Marlins? I don’t know. But somebody will pay. I want to buy my [bleeping] boat. That’s my inspiration. My inspiration is money. That’s everybody’s inspiration.’’

He had started to pace, ­energized by what he was saying and frustrated by whatever signals he had been getting from the front office.

“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.’’

And the pièce de résistance, which should be written on a piece of paper and pinned to his satin Marlins jacket, or at the very least engraved on his tombstone:

“I work in this job for money. I don’t work for nothing. Money. That’s it. The ring? [Bleep] the ring. I don’t even wear my [bleeping] rings. I don’t.’’

Good luck in Miami, Ozzie, with your gigantic boat and not five, not six championships. The AL Central will be a much less irrationally emotional place without you.

With Moneyball set to hit theaters tomorrow, Sony Pictures has the PR and marketing armada in full force, with the exclamation point being Brad Pitt on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week. “Moneyball,” of course, is an excellent book by Michael Lewis that tells the true story of Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane and his (sort of) revolutionary sabermetrics system. Moneyball the movie, though, is a fictitious take on the book that stars Pitt as Beane and Jonah Hill as a character based on former A’s assistant GM Paul DePodesta, who didn’t want his name in the movie.

I share similar opinions about this film with our comrade at WWTDD, but baseball movies are still like sex with a pizza to me – it’s never bad. Either way, I was pretty disappointed with the cast of Moneyball, in that there are no current or former MLB players playing themselves. But then one listing caught my attention:

Royce Clayton as Miguel Tejada

That’s right, former MLB shortstop for 11 teams, Royce Clayton is making his acting debut as Miguel Tejada. I pray that he just has one line and he walks into the clubhouse and in a terrible accent asks if anyone has seen his vitamins. Runner-up for best casting choice goes to actor Gary “G. Thang” Johnson as Jermaine Dye. I’m strongly considering changing my nickname to B. Thang.

Also making the rounds for Moneyball is Hill, who was in Oakland yesterday to throw out the first pitch for the Athletics against the Detroit Tigers. Hill is on a first pitch parade, having tossed out the opener at the Chicago White Sox game last Wednesday as well. But Hill’s first effort came more than a year ago, when he threw out the first pitch at a Boston Red Sox game. I thought we might take a look at how his game has progressed.

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Ozzie Guillen is never at a loss for exciting post-game quotes. Actually he’s always at a loss, but that’s what makes these so good. I almost cherry-picked “no energy in the dugout and a horsesh** approach at the plate” or “it’s going to be a f**king long-ass God damn July”, but I think this response late in the interview sums things up perfectly.

“A lot of people say sh*t I talk sh*t because I have to talk sh*t. No I don’t. I talk sh*t because I have [bup bup] what I see, that’s all it I see. Very bad. Very bad.”

Of course, that’s paraphrased. He might’ve been saying something nice.

To his credit, Guillen and the White Sox did have a terrible night. The Chicago White Sox fell 2-1 in 11 innings to the basement-dwelling Kansas City Royals, and during the eighth inning a foul ball doing God’s work hit Ozzie in the eyeball. The way the AL Central looks right now, a bad weekend could put the Sox behind the Twins and even closer to the bottom of the division. As the night dragged on, Ozzie cooled down and hopped on Twitter to close out the story.

According to my three years of high school Spanish (and the educational television program “Destinos”) “vamosa vino tinto” means “going to the red wine.” I’m not 100% on “duro pa lante”, but I have no reason to believe Ozzie’s any better at Spanish than he is at English.

Edit: Because I suddenly have a huge Spanish speaking audience, it’s been brought to my attention that Ozzie’s tweet boils down to “Go Venezuelan soccer team, let’s be tough”. So it’s good that Ozzie could move on from his no good very bad day, and bad that I’m too American to understand anything other than the messed up pseudo-language I speak.

[h/t Big League Stew]

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]

VIDEO: Foul ball lands near President Bush: MyFoxORLANDO.com

I’m terrible at political humor. Here’s a video of President George W. Bush almost getting hit in the face with a foul ball. It missed him, but Bush swiftly combatted the threat by sending tens of thousands of soldiers into the Rangers Ballpark, where they will remain for the next ten years. That’s pretty good. Now for the Conservative joke! Here’s a video of President George W. Bush almost getting hit in the face with a foul ball. A ball also got hit toward Barack Obama, but he couldn’t decide whether or not to let it hit him. And now, a ragtime parody song!

The best part of the video has got to be Nolan Ryan’s wife freaking the hell out and covering her head in terror as though she’s never seen a baseball in her life. The Bushes react like most people would, a mix of “oh cool a ball is coming toward us” and “oh sh** a ball is coming toward us.” Nolan just calmly tries to catch it. Is there any way we could convince Nolan Ryan to be our President? I don’t care if he has a chain of beef restaurants, I’d trust him with my life.

[H/T Sportress]

“Macho Man” Randy Savage died today. I’m sure you’ve been hearing about it from people you’d never associate with wrestling. He meant a lot to a lot of people and was one of the best in history at what he did, even if he was one of the most bizarre and complexly flawed human beings to ever gain fame.

One of the weirdest things about is passing is Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen sharing his thoughts on Twitter. It’s not weird to go on Twitter and share your thoughts, and it isn’t really surprising that Ozzie Guillen follows pro wrestling, but honestly Ozzie Guillen saying anything is weird. So, Ozzie and I are going to cope together. Today’s Dugout follows. Dig it?

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