Baseball season is officially upon us, and that means only one thing — the return of The Dugout, the Internet’s longest running and most critically acclaimed webcomic about baseball players with pun screen names pretending to curse at each other over AIM. Yes, this is still a thing.

And to celebrate Major League Baseball splitting Opening Day up into like 40 smaller, less important games over the span of a month and at least one ceremony meant to humiliate Muhammad Ali, the normal Spring Training event we like to do has been replaced by Opening Days, a Dugout maxi-series that will span all 25 teams and let you find out what your favorite players are up to in 2012.

There are still only 25 teams, right? Well, 25 important ones. Or was that 5 important ones?

Anyway, whether it takes me a month or I’m still writing Opening Days segments into 2013, here’s episode one: The Tampa Bay Rays.

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The Tampa Bay Rays are planning to pay tribute to the 1951 International League champion Tampa Smokers by wearing throwback Smokers uniforms on July 2. The Rays themselves have only been around since 1998 and don’t have anything to “throw back” to, so they have to do the thing the Nationals do where they pretend the Washington Senators are them and not the Twins. The only problem is that the Smokers … uh, have “smoking” in their name, and because this is 2011 the Rays are removing the image of a cigar from the Smokers jerseys.

This begs a few questions, the most pressing ones being “Why are you paying tribute to a team called the ‘Smokers’ if you’re worried about people thinking about smoking?” and “Are you worried that kids are going to start smoking because they saw a picture of a cigar?” Maybe they removed it because it looks like a turd. When The Tampa Tribute asked about the PC Thug whitewashing, the Rays issue the following statement:

“We have chosen to wear the Smokers jersey to celebrate the rich heritage and traditions surrounding baseball in Tampa Bay and this version of the logo is intended only to be a slightly more contemporary version of that wonderful history.”

Man, that’s weak. That would be like the Cleveland Indians realizing the big smiling caricature face of a Native American was prejudiced and offensive and trying to change the logo to a cursive letter I, or even worse, a block letter C.

My suggestion? Let the Rays play the July 2 game in screenprinted shirts with Fred McGriff on the front. That’s really all you have to throw back to.

[h/t to Big League Stew]