The Texas Rangers have been one of my favorite teams for almost as long as I’ve been a fan of baseball. The best part about the Rangers is that they’re completely alright with handling bags of explosives. Every major dickhead I’ve ever come to love has decked out in the blue or red then blue again then red again then blue again. Even Elvis Andrus alternate bp warmups are retro!

The Rangers’ most recent fireworks display comes in the form of 23 year-old Leonys Martin. He defected from Cuba in 2010 for the opportunity to escape communism. Or he caught wind of Fatburger and is hoping for a trade to the Dodgers before he retires to sunny, breezy communist torture-jail.

Please enjoy today’s Dugout. I sure hope Ron Washington doesn’t know what the internet is.

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They have the designated hitter in Cuba, but I don’t think that means what they think it means. Here’s a rather angry gentleman that takes a bit of umbrage with being pitched to inside, and decides to express himself the way Cubans do best, by chasing after his antagonist with a large, blunt object. And then he gets out to the outfield, and then I guess he got tired or something, because everyone seems pretty chill after HOLY CRAP WHERE DID THAT OTHER GUY WITH THE BAT COME FROM?!?!?! –The Score, via Petcheskyspin Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody once made the point that if a city has more plentiful options for entertainment, said city becomes less of a “sports town.” That makes sense to me, but it still doesn’t explain how the Florida Marlins can’t get more than 600 people to watch them play. From USA Today’s Game On:

According to unofficial counts by the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, fewer than 600 seats were occupied. Official attendance was announced at 11,211.

But the telling quote came from Marlins reliever Joe Nelson. He told the Sun-Sentinel that, as he left the field after the final out of the 5-3 Florida victory, he wanted to toss the game ball to a young fan.

“I actually had to look for one,” Nelson said.

This is the portion of the post where we would mention that people in Miami are too engorged in hot Latin sex and exotic drugs to get out to the ballpark. But seriously, you’d think with all the Cubans floating into Florida in bathtubs and homemade rafts that some of them would take time out of their immigration-dodging schedule to go see a game. Okay, maybe that comment wasn’t so serious.

Whatever the U.S. population is, you can soon add 8. Don't look at me – the state of Illinois sterilized me while I was in the joint due to an old anti-Irish eugenics policy that was still on the books. 8 Cuban acrobat jugglers disappeared before a performance in Mexico last week and are presumed heading northward to take advantage of the "wet foot, dry foot"policy:

"They arrived on Thursday, bought cell phones, and by eight in the morning on Friday they were gone," said Guadalupe Navarro, a spokeswoman for the Queretaro fair . . . The performers, trained in the circus tradition of the former Soviet Union but with added Cuban dance rhythms, are from a school whose graduates and students have toured the world for two decades . . .  The remaining Cuban performers scrambled to find replacement artists for a delicate pole-climbing act by calling on fellow Cuban circus performers living in Mexico.

I know some lovely ladies who were trained in Soviet circus traditions and are experts in delicate pole-climbing. I've only seen them perform to Nelly's "It's Getting Hot in Here", but I'm sure they could do it to Cuban dance rhythms. Is juggling a sport? If it gives me the slightest reason to post a pic of the lovely Cuban-American Eva Mendes, then yes it is. -KD