Baseball Hall of Famer and Minnesota Twins legend Harmon Killebrew said on Friday that he’s ending his battle with esophageal cancer, and plans live out the final days of his life in hospice care. It’s not a story with a lot of funny to make it pop online (and I’m sorry about the title), but if you’ve got any reverence whatsoever for professional sports you’ll understand the importance of Killebrew, if only in how much he means to the people who saw him play.

“It is with profound sadness that I share with you that my continued battle with esophageal cancer is coming to an end,” Killebrew said in a statement released by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“With the continued love and support of my wife, Nita, I have exhausted all options with respect to controlling this awful disease. My illness has progressed beyond my doctors’ expectation of cure.”

That is just a punch in the stomach. If we can find some sort of context in the stats he collected, his 573 career home runs are the 11th most in baseball. He played 21 of his 22 years in the Bigs in the Minnesota/Washington Senators organization, and brought in over 1,500 RBI. The Twins retired his uniform number in 1975 and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984. He’s not going away, no matter where he goes.

“I look forward to spending my final days in comfort and peace with Nita by my side.”

Good luck, Mr. Killebrew.

[Reuters]

HEY GUYS

Before Thursday, the only way baseball players got injured is by conditioning improperly and requiring Tommy John surgery, conditioning properly and requiring Tommy John surgery, kicking or punching inanimate objects in anger, or trying to iron a shirt while wearing it. You never actually break your leg playing baseball, unless you’re the Twins’ Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who did so during yesterday’s game.

As it often tends to do, the real baseball world tends to bend over backwards to accommodate serendipitous Dugout storylines. This is one of those times. In today’s Dugout, we are afforded the opportunity to check in with an old friend.

P.S. this is the first Dugout I’ve written in over a year. Happy to be back. If you’re inclined to hear me say more words about sports, you can find me at SB Nation, where I’m an associate editor, and Twitter, where I’m a jackass.

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For those of you who are new to The Dugout, each year we spend March writing “The Dugout: Spring Training.”  We cover 30 teams in 30 days, and fans of the Pirates or the Astros get their one strip a year before we start calling Alex Rodriguez gay and Manny Ramirez stupid for seven months.  With a March 15 end date set for FanHouse, I started 2011′s Spring Training in the middle of February, thinking it would give me time to get to everyone before I was outsourced.  Out of nowhere, the Sporting News decided they wanted FanHouse to be incomprehensible and awful RIGHT AWAY, and March 15 became March 1.

Now that The Dugout is back in full swing on With Leather, we can pick back up where we left off.  Today’s Spring Training is about the Twins, and it has nothing to do with Jim Thome being a member of the team and me wanting people to like these right away, swear to God.

So read, enjoy, and drop a comment.  I love The Dugout fan community more than I love baseball itself (which is not a lot, apparently), so make your voices heard.  Dugout got, after the break.

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The Rangers' Great Druggy Hambino Josh Hamilton stole the show even if he didn't win it last night during the Home Run Derby, launching a record 28 [homespun term for home run]s in the opening round though ultimately coming up short in the finals against Justin Morneau. In addition to being besieged by reminders of how truly intimidating it must be to bat in the mystique of Yankee Stadium (Oh my gawd! Lights! People! Professional baseball players aren't used to this!) viewers got a heavy dose of the it's-heartening-because-he's-a-white-guy back story of former heroin addict turned burgeoning star Josh Hamilton. We get it, addiction overcome. The guy was a former no. 1 pick who fucked up and righted the ship. Maybe have him string together a few years of productivity before lionizing him completely.

Hambino put on one of the best shows ever in a Home Run Derby in the opening round, but to hear Rick Reilly drone on with cornball lines like "It's a lousy night to be an athiest!" made it more than a bit difficult to really enjoy.

Also ruining things, per the usual: Yankees fans. Being insufferable dipshits, they wrestled for balls in the stands, started "asshole" chants and lustily booed Evan Longoria and Chase Utley. Lucky for viewers, Chase wasn't letting that go unanswered, as you can see after the jump.

It looks like the Twins are probably going to the playoffs this year, and it will be largely in part to MVP candidates/youngsters Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer. SI's newest issue has a feature that takes a look around the two-bedroom, three-story house that Morneau and Mauer share.

Considering that Mauer and Morneau are 23 and 25 and make millions of dollars to hit and catch baseballs, it might be the least surprising story ever. They have a gigantic flat-screen. They only have beverages in the refrigerator. One of them is messy; one's neat. They have a vending machine that serves Gatorade and beer. Add in the fact that Mauer is from St. Paul and Morneau is from Canada, and they're probably the nicest, most laid-back guys on the planet. I can't make fun of that.

But then there's this: "Last month Morneau downloaded the first season of Prison Break; one off day the two watched the show for six straight hours." Guhhh. Six hours? I couldn't watch that show for six minutes. It's like a cross between "Oz" and The Shawshank Redemption… only bad. I don't know how FOX did that, but I suspect the most important part was getting rid of swearing. Oh, and Mauer has a picture of Miss USA Chelsea Cooley cuddling up to him, so that sealed it: they're definitely gay. Yep, lots of butt-sex between these two.

I didn't want to be their friend anyway. I've got lots of friends. Like my mom. She thinks I'm the handsomest boy in my grade.