Q: How do you replace Ozzie Guillen as the manager of the Chicago White Sox?
A: With Terry Francona, Davey Martinez, Sandy Alomar, Tom Nieto (cough) or any number of proven managerial commodities available for the 2012 season.

Or, if you’d prefer, the actual answer: with a former player who has never coached and doesn’t really want to. Robin Ventura, the two-time All-Star and six-time Gold Glove winner most famous for that time in ’93 when he charged the mound on a 46-year old man and got headlocked and punched in the top of the head like a comical bitch, will be taking over as Sox skipper. Oh man, next year’s series against Texas is going to be awkward.

From The Beacon News, guys who live there and still can’t believe this is happening:

“I realize that he wasn’t on anyone’s list out there,’’ [General Manager Kenny] Williams said on a conference call Thursday. “We caught many of you by surprise.”

Considering Ventura has no experience as a manager, “many of you” is the understatement of the year. That lists includes Ventura himself, who said he didn’t set out to be a manager when the Sox hired him in June to be an assistant to [scouting director Buddy] Bell. When things unraveled to the end with Ozzie Guillen and his impending jump to Miami, Williams heightened his interest in Ventura — whose thoughts about being in the dugout never extended beyond a coaching or instructional situation.

I guess Williams and Ventura are interested in making sure every White Sox fan learns what it feels like to be emasculated by noogie. I’d like to say “we’ll have more on this as the story develops”, but I think this is it. Ah well, if Robin has a Twitter account and makes sure to compliment the Twins every few weeks it’ll be business as usual in Chicago. Depressing, depressing business as usual.

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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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]