Actually, I give Sports Illustrated a lot of credit for going with that terrible pun on their cover, because I assume that it was meant tongue-in-cheek. After all, Sports Illustrated has featured New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin on its cover something like 63 times in the last 9 days, so it’s cute that SI can make fun of itself and the rest of the national media for relentlessly blowing this kid while so many other interesting stories have been overlooked. I mean, did they even see the Kate Upton Carl’s Jr. commercial?

But since baseball season is creeping up on us, and it’s my favorite time of the year, I thought I could help SI out with some future headlines in case they decide to reflect on the Miami Marlins’ season and the excitement surrounding their big additions of Jose Reyes, Carlos Zambrano and Mark Buerhle.

MARLINJURIES: Jose Reyes hits the DL because he’s Jose Reyes.
MARLINCARCERATION: Carlos Zambrano facing murder charges after Mike Stanton homers off of him in batting practice.
MARLIN THE RED: Front office stress builds as attendance dips below 6 people.
MARLINSOLVENT: Jeff Loria busted paying players with checks printed on Saltines.
MARLINDICTED: Ozzie Guillen finally brought down after chewing Jeff Loria’s spine from out of his rectum.

See? They practically write themselves.

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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Logan Morrison’s Twitter bio reads

To know me is to Tweet with me! Miami Marlins LF. Twittaholic. All around good guy (with just a pinch of dangerous sexuality)!

… so you’d think that when he’s the guy breaking a story, baseball reporters and major news outlets would go, “heh, logan morrison is trolling twitter” and wait an hour for the punchline. Unfortunately, not everyone in the sports world checks sources thoroughly or is interested in doing their job well. Case in point:

And the real joke, by way of Big League Stew:

Of course that didn’t stop some media outlets, such as WGN Radio in Chicago — flagship station of the Chicago Cubs — from going to the air with the news, while not directly acknowledging the tweets. Sports anchor and Chicago Cubs postgame host David Kaplan reportedly told listeners a deal with Seattle was near just moments after the original tweet, and that the Cubs were likely to miss out on the best free agent left.

Everyone else (well, not everyone else, but almost everyone else) waited an hour for the punchline.

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With the Major League Baseball winter meetings under way in Dallas, this surprisingly stagnant free agency period is hopefully about to get a lot more entertaining. When the Miami Marlins are providing the only real excitement by signing Jose Reyes and overpaying Heath Bell, we’ve got a problem. Hell, I was at least hoping that 4 or 5 teams would be running smear campaigns against each other for the sake of signing Prince Fielder. But nope, bunch of jerks running these teams.

Thankfully, we have journalists like Jon Heyman, of Sports Illustrated and Scott Boras’ supple teat fame, who strapped a car battery to the testicles of this week’s meetings with a Tweet that would make Donald Trump proud.

If albert pujols wants to beat $200M 9-yr cardinals offer, he should produce birth certificate. skepticism abounds over 31 claim

Ah yes, the age thing again. You see, Albert Pujols is from the Dominican Republic, so he is most certainly lying about his age. It’s just like how all Iranians are terrorists, Greek men have sex with sheep and the Irish are all drunks. OK, maybe that last one is a bad example. But Heyman’s accusation – which echoes that of Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria – is pretty ballsy.

Let’s pretend for a minute that Pujols isn’t 31-years old. Let’s also go ahead and assume that he’s completely loaded up on steroids and HGH like some ignorant baseball fans like to believe to make themselves feel better about their teams sucking. Wouldn’t someone out there, some young, hungry bloodhound journalist, be trying desperately to reveal the truth? You know, instead of Tweeting it like a keyboard hard ass?

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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.