One of The Dugout’s favorite recurring characters over the last seven years (holy crap) has been art dealer and owner of the Florida Miami Marlins Jeffrey Loria. He’s created championship teams on minimum wage, he looks like the lovechild of John Lithgow and The Great Pumpkin and he wears sunglasses with colored lenses because that’s the kind of thing cool millionaires do. He’s also sort of a son of a bitch, and the kind of guy who can be completely racist without ever really being racist at all.

Anyway, at some point between then and now, the Miami Marlins turned into a financial contender. They’ve got new uniforms, a new stadium, a new name … they’ve signed big name free agents and positioned themselves as a legitimate, unsurprising contender in the National League. Previous rationalization led me to just assume Loria had gotten a concussion and his friends were too afraid to bring it up, but it turns out I’ve got a better explanation.

Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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hey guys, what's going on in this chatroom

After a brief hiatus caused by me doing this goddamn comic strip seven years in a row without stopping and needing a break inactivity in the world of baseball, The Dugout is back and ready to tackle the tough issues, such as Manny Ramirez going swimming with a bunch of old people in a T.O.-esque attempt to show he’s still athletic and able to play professional sports.

As we build to the greatest day of the year (pitchers and catchers report~), we’ll go back and touch on some of the stories we may’ve missed, like Jim Thome getting traded to Philadelphia, Kyle Farnsworth miraculously not being traded anywhere and Brian Wilson putting on spandex that looks like a tuxedo so people will write about him when he does his dishes. We’ll also become increasingly obsessed with Albert Pujols, despite his entire story being “I’m great at baseball so whatever, I’ll go play it for a billion dollars somewhere”. We may also write about Dan Quisenberry, even if you don’t give a righteous f**k who that is.

Anyway, welcome back to the weirdest, most well-established, most sorta-racist fictional world in pro sports reporting. Today’s Dugout is after the jump.

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It wasn’t too long ago that Cleveland Indians outfielder Grady Sizemore was one of the hottest young stars in baseball. Between 2005 and 2008, he had all the makings of a classic 5-tool player, posting four 100-run seasons and showing increasing promise in home runs, RBI and stolen bases. But in 2009, he started having issues with his elbow and soon after he had problems with his left knee. In 2011, he made his comeback and then hit the DL a few times with a sports hernia and some right knee problems, and it seemed like the Indians were never going to be able to trade him to a contender for a bunch of prospects that they could also later trade.

But none of that matters now because Sizemore is in love and he’s marrying his longtime, on-and-off-again girlfriend, Brittany Binger, who you might know better as Playboy’s Miss June 2007. Sizemore and the 24-year old model have had a fun relationship over the last few years, highlighted by Binger’s infamous cell phone “hacking” which led to some risqué bulge photos (semi-NSFW and something for the ladies) of Sizemore winding up online.

I know I definitely speak for our resident Indians homer, Brandon, when I say that we wish Sizemore nothing but happiness and hope that he can return to form next season during his 1-year, $5 million deal so the Indians will trade him to the St. Louis Cardinals for another World Series run. L’chaim!

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wait for it... wait for it...

Pre-show notes:

- Hey, you, person reading this column. Register and leave us a comment. When you’ve done that (or possibly before), click that “like” button over the banner image and/or share this with everyone you have ever met, including your half-siblings and that one weird guy at work who found out you like wrestling and won’t stop trying to ask you about it. He’d love this column.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- For further Raw reading, please consult UGO’s The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Canton’s The WWE Raw Deal. They both hate women’s wrestling and love The Rock, so if that’s your bag, hey.

But first, please click through and enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for December 5.

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Pre-show notes:

- As always, and yes, I’m begging, make sure to drop us a comment when you’re done reading the report. It can be about the report, what you thought of the show, who your five favorite people are in that banner image, whatever. We just want to hear from you. Also, we’re following up our botched WWE Vengeance predictions contest with a Survivor Series version (with the same $250 Amazon gift card at stake), so get in the hang of commenting and interacting now. And no, I’m not going to make you pick who you think will be the sole survivor, I want to actually give this away at some point in my life.

- This show was live (on tape) from England, and if you’ve been watching wrestling for more than a month you know how bad taped shows tend to be. Nothing really happens and they just tread water until they’re back in the States. That means the show isn’t very good, so if I come across as wholly negative, I apologize. Worst case scenario, you got to look at Kaitlyn and AJ for a minute.

- The brand new With Leather pro wrestling podcast, With Spandex is tentatively (TENTATIVELY) scheduled to start up next week. I still don’t know what I’m doing, but dammit, I’ve got to start doing it badly soon.

Please click through to enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw, innit. (British)

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The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. More importantly, I found out that Jim Thome autographs the Halloween candy he hands out.

That’s a Jim Thome signed Kit Kat, shared with Dugout co-founder Jon Bois by @bretwallin, and it’s right behind “that time he dressed as Paul Bunyan” on the list of things Jim Thome has done in real life to pull him closest to our fictional depiction of him here. The only way it could get better is if he accidentally kills something by petting it too hard.

Halloween was two days ago, sure, but this is the reason it should happen every day. Today’s Dugout follows.

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