Jim Thome hit his 600th home run.

Everyone who has ever read the Dugout sent me a message saying “hey, can’t wait to read the Thome Dugout”. He’s been our signature character for over seven years now. ESPN stuttered saying “Jim” and I couldn’t tell whether or not they did it on purpose. Maybe this dumb baseball webcomic will be erased and forgotten in a hundred years, but I hope the big goofy rosey-cheeked manchild we spotlit along the way gets his big shiny face in the Baseball Hall Of Fame and is never forgotten.

Today’s Dugout follows.

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Jim Thome’s back was aching, his toe was throbbing and his quad was cramping, turning his pursuit of 600 home runs into a painful endeavor that made him wonder if he would even reach the milestone before season’s end.

I’m not going to write anything like that, but I’m happy to put up something here about every good-hearted man’s favorite rosey-cheeked, corn-fed baseball player roped his 600th dinger (or tater, if you will) during Minnesota’s Monday night game at Comerica Park in Detroit. The ball sailed over former teammate Delmon Young’s head and into the stands, capping off a 20-year stomp to the milestone and seven years of Dugouts with capital letters. Jim now enters the official twilight of his career, which will mostly involve pinch-hitting and having to listen to people rationalize why he doesn’t deserve to be in the hall of fame.

Another important part of Thome’s post-600 lifestyle, apparently, will be the nonstop f**king of ladies. Bet you didn’t want that image in your wistful retrospective. According to CBS’ elder statesman (I’m assuming) C. Trent Rosecrans, NuVo condoms have sent 600 samples of their product to the Minnesota Twins to commemorate the event. Also, to reveal that nobody from NuVo condoms has ever watched baseball.

From their full release:

Jim Thome(notes) has reason to celebrate today after hitting his 600th homerun last night versus the Detroit Tigers. As a congratulatory gift for Thome’s incredible feat, NuVo sent the Minnesota Twins 600 condoms. NuVo hopes this offering to the team will help keep the Twins players and their partners safe during their celebrations. The Minnesota Twins aren’t the only people that the NüVo team is looking out for — NüVo has already distributed over 200,000 free condoms this year alone. You can always hit a home run with NuVo Condoms!

I like the idea that a condom company assumes that sports celebrations involve rampant, unprotected intercourse. Man, Yankee Stadium must look like Caligula.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Mets since last Friday, these are the scores from their last four games, not counting the one in progress as this is being written:

6-25 @Rangers W 14-5
6-26 @Rangers W 8-5
6-28 @Tigers W 14-3
6-29 @Tigers W 16-9

Something crazy is happening to the Mets, and in the world of the Dugout that’s a more dangerous topic than “Roger Clemens stabbed somebody in the heart and paid to have it covered up”. The job of The Dugout is to emasculate the Mets at all cost, and if they keep playing like this I’ll have no choice but to start posting wistful Dugout retrospectives about them on Faith and Fear in Flushing.

Today’s Dugout follows.

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A few days ago I announced the return of DraftStreet.com’s free fantasy baseball game at With Leather, including a big photo of Buster Posey and a story about how I drafted him in the last game and he was terrible. Well, fast forward to Wednesday and what happens? Buster Posey dies tragically in a “standing in front of the plate without holding the ball” accident. Okay, he didn’t die, but he got hurt badly enough for me to pretend I’ve got my own Madden Curse.

So, unless you want Scott Cousins to come screaming in and injure the entirety of the Detroit Tigers, you’ll click through this link and sign up for our game. It’s free, and you’ll be saving the careers of up to 25 professional baseball players. Either way, I win! Go Tribe!

The “but no, seriously” section:

But no, seriously, the game is fun. You draft a team of guys for Friday night, and the player with the best results from the day’s games (not counting Pirates/Cubs, because it happens too early) gets money from a $300 cash pool. You get free money for barely doing anything. It’s like being a blogger! Sign up, and support your local website.

Charlie Sheen debuted his live comedy show, “Violent Torpedo of Truth”, on Saturday night at Detroit’s Fox Theatre and by 10 p.m. ET Twitter started heating up with rumors that the celebrity downward spiral du jour was being booed mercilessly by the crowd. Yesterday morning, video clips hit YouTube and news blogs and articles were everywhere, describing everything from his remarkably disorganized performance to him insulting fans. So why then, my lovely With Leatherians, is this being mentioned on a sports blog? Because Charlie was wearing a Detroit Tigers jersey and that’s all I need to justify talking about it.

You can read a collection of quotes about how horrible Torpedo of Truth was over at Buzzfeed, but for the sake of keeping a sports theme, Sheen’s “stand-up” performance was so bad that Matt Millen gave it a 10-year contract. Detroit hasn’t seen this big of a waste of money since Charlie Villanueva signed his contract. Sheen was so much of an incoherent mess that Miguel Cabrera felt his pain. The crowd turned against Sheen so quickly that Vladimir Konstantinov ordered him a limo. Sheen’s act was so terrible that the audience begged Rich Rodriguez to replace him. Sheen’s comedy was so offensive that Fox Theatre management brought in Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson to calm people down.

And I’m spent. Video below, trolls.

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UPDATE: Jim Joyce is behind the plate for today’s Tigers/Indians game, and he came out with the waterworks flowing. Armando Galarraga presented the Tigers’ lineup card to Joyce, who then really turned on the tears. You almost feel bad for him until you watch the video below, which has been updated with a working copy.

Armando “Not So Big Cat” Galarraga flirted with history last night, as he was vying for the 21st perfect game in Major League Baseball history, the unprecedented third perfect game of this early season, and the first in Detroit Tigers history. But with two outs, Cleveland Indians shortstop Jason Donald hit a weak grounder to second that was cut off by Miguel Cabrera, whose throw to Galarraga covering first appeared to be in time. But veteran umpire Jim Joyce called Donald safe, and for the first time ever, the city of Detroit knew the meaning of sad.

Joyce’s insanely stupid bonehead call not only cost Galarraga his perfect game, but a no-hitter as well, leaving the 28-year old Venezuelan with a stinky old complete game shutout. Joyce was booed by Detroit fans throughout the final at-bat for Cleveland, and Detroit manager Jim Leyland put down his pack of Camel Wides long enough to give Joyce an earful, before the 23-year umpire was escorted off the field. After the game, Joyce watched the replay and made a humble admission of guilt for his blind-as-a-bat idiotic doodie-for-brains call.

Spurn your own, MLB.com:

Joyce blew a call, the most important of his life, and he knew it.

“It was the biggest call of my career and I kicked the [stuff] out of it,” he said. “I just cost that kid a perfect game after he pitched his [butt] off all night.”

“I had a great angle, and I missed the call,” he said. “I really thought he beat the ball. At that time, I thought he beat the ball. After I heard from the Tigers, who had obviously seen a replay, I asked the guy in the room to cue up the play as soon as we got in here, and I missed it from here to that wall.”

Galarraga, all things considered, handled the amazingly mind-blowingly batsh*t call with maturity and decency, as he offered only a smile after he realized that Donald was called safe. After the game, and after hearing Joyce’s admission, Galarraga commented: “He apologized. He feels really bad. Nobody is perfect.” See what he did there?

Despite his turd-a-riffic Corky-esque call of epic lunacy, Joyce is widely considered one of the best umpires in baseball. Upon hearing of this debacle, umpire Joe West called a press conference and took credit for the BP oil spill.

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