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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This is the most interesting part of a Florida Marlins 11-2 midseason victory over the Washington Nationals. A praying mantis showed up in the Florida dugout, causing the Marlins announcing and production teams to completely forget about baseball happening and just film players reacting to it. What happens then comes dangerously close to infringing on Jon Bois “three-act play” storytelling as Marlins hitting coach Eduardo Perez and players Clay Hensley and Logan Morrison illustrate the only three ways I can think of to react to an unexpected, monstrous bug.

Act 1: Clay Hensley

Hensley initially reacts like we all would, going OH MY GOD WHAT and spinning around in circles slapping at his back. But reality quickly sets in, and Hensley realizes 1) a praying mantis isn’t going to hurt him, and 2) it’s not every day that you’re a professional baseball player with a bug standing on your head, so why not relax and enjoy it. Hensley’s point of view evolves from confrontational to accepting, and I think that’s the only way to get through life.

Act 2: Eduardo Perez

Perez has the best and most identifiable reaction, noticing it out of the corner of his eye and just kinda looking at it for a while. Maybe he was trying to figure out if he was still at the baseball game, or if he’d been taken on a vision quest and was staring down his spirit animal. When he processes it, his reaction turns into a smile and a “ha, hey guys, look at this thing”.

Act 3: Logan Morrison

Morrison’s reaction is that of youth. He waves at the praying mantis as if he’s enlightened enough to commune with nature, then FLIPS THE HELL OUT when the mantis accepts his greeting and jumps on his shoulder. Probably a pretty normal reaction for a guy who spends all day on Twitter. Bugs are weird, right?

The Chorus

Ugh, the praying mantis isn’t watching home plate, you goons, it is a bug. Pay attention to the baseball.

[h/t Mike Westfall]

Major League Baseball in Florida has turned into my family. Its young people are out of control and don’t care about anything, and the only people with any hope of paying attention to them or teaching them anything are 80 years old and from a repressive old school and are about to die. Enter: 80-year old “Trader” Jack McKeon, the second oldest manager in the history of baseball behind Connie Mack. He’s turning the Marlins around with his unique brand of smoking and “not liking the way they run”.

Of course, “being old” is the second easiest way to be the topic of a Dugout. The first is to beat up your girlfriend or wife! Today’s Dugout follows.

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